UK Trident replacement will cost more than expected

The Guardian : The combined cost of replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system and building, equipping, and running two large aircraft carriers will be as much as US$260 billion, far more than the UK government has admitted, says an in-depth study by the political action group Greenpeace .The discrepancy is because the government’s published estimates on Trident do not include the cost of conventional military forces directly assigned to support the nuclear force, nor the cost of new installations that would be required at the atomic weapons establishment at Aldermaston , or exchange rate fluctuations in equipment and supplies such as the F-35 jet fighter bought from the US. David Cameron , leader of the conservative party, the main opposition group in the UK Parliament, said that a strategic defence review would be carried out rapidly should the conservatives win the general election. He made it clear that no area of the defense budget was exempt from discussions.The Labour party , which runs the government, indicated that it might consider scaling back the number of Britain’s nuclear missile–carrying submarines from four to three.There is also widespread opposition replacing Trident among army chiefs, reflected yesterday by Lord Guthrie , chief of defence staff under former prime minister Tony Blair. Britain needed to keep a deterrent to maintain a voice in international nuclear weapons negotiations, he told the Guardian. However, he added: “We must examine ways of delivering a weapon more cheaply.”