Drawing from The Guardian's July 16, 2016 articleby Paul TorpeyandPaul Scruton"Trident: what you need to know before the parliamentary vote".
The UK Parliament (in the House of Commons) is due to vote whether the UK squadron of 4 SSBNs, that carry Trident missiles, should be replaced. The vote may be around
- London time - 4pm Monday July 18, 2016 and - Australian Eastern time - 1am, Tuesday, July 19, 2016 (see the BBC report on ABC TV Channel 24).
The Vanguard-class UK SSBNs operate out of the deep-water naval base at Faslane on the Clyde, abive Glasgow, Scotland, UK. But the UK SSBNs also makes use of the US navy’s base at Kings Bay in Georgia. Lockheed Martin Space Systems manufactures the Trident missiles at its factory in Sunnyvale, California. BAE Systems, Babcock International and Rolls-Royce are the main industrial partners in the Successor-class project.
The UK MoD states that maintaining and sustaining Trident supports more than 30,000 UK jobs. Approximately 2,200 people across the MoD and all three companies are currently working on the (SSBN replacement) Successor programme, of whom more than 50% are engineers and designers. Jobs are expected to peak at 6,000 during the build phase and involve an estimated 850 British companies in the supply chain. Four Vanguard-class nuclear submarines carry the US-made Trident ballistic missiles that give the weapons system its collective name and which each have the capacity to deliver up to 12 thermonuclear warheads.
The UK has the smallest stockpile of nuclear warheads. The UK is one of five legal nuclear weapon (P5) countries under the "first pillar" concept of the NNP Treaty (NNPT). Among these countries, the UK is also unique in relying on a single nuclear weapons system – Trident. There are nine known nuclear powers, chief among them the US and Russia, which retain formidable stockpiles despite substantial disarmament programmes. Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea are not legal nuclear weapon countries under the NNPT.