Off target
From Mr Andrew Gilligan Sir: Geoffrey Hoon's hair-trigger response (Letters, 5 February) to my piece on Tri- dent underlines the Ministry of Defence's sensitivity about this costly virility symbol. But he employs the low politician's trick of denying a whole string of allegations that I never actually made. I was quite careful not to say that we are 'about to share our nucle- ar deterrent with France'. I actually said that we were 'preparing plans to share some of it . . . above all, research and develop- ment facilities', and to base British sub- marines at French ports. In his letter, Mr Hoon was silent on the first point — and was kind enough to confirm the second.
On the question of HMS Vanguard's nationality, Mr Hoon probably needs to check again with his officials. My statement that it was `two thirds built in the United States' derives from parliamentary answers and testimony by his own department. It is true that the vessel's hull — its basic shell — was built in Britain, as was its reactor. But its entire missile compartment, launch tubes, navigation systems, command and control system and many of its computers — amounting to just under two thirds of the submarine by contract value — were built in America. Again, the hull aside, none of the four Trident submarines was `designed . . . in this country'. They are scaled-down copies of the US Ohio-class vessels.
Finally, I did not dispute that Trident was `under Her Majesty's Government's control'; 1 said that it depended for that control on systems run by the Americans. These, in case Mr Hoon has not been told about them, are the ELF (extra long frequency) communica- tions system and GPS (global position sys- tem) navigation satellites. I made clear that Trident could still be fired using a different, indigenous communications set-up, but the missiles could not be targeted very accurate- ly. Mr Hoon's letter appears to have suffered from similar targeting problems.
Andrew Gilligan
BBC Television Centre, London W12
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