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by the US or FRG. The purchase of LANCE is an important
collaborative venture within the Eurogroup and cancellation would
be likely to lead to considerable political repercussions, not
least in the sense that an opportunity to use standardisation to
maximum effect would have been lost.
Abandonment of UK tactical nuclear weapons for the RAF and RN
143. Initial savings would be £3m p.a., rising to £10m p.a. by
1983/4, making a total of £65m over the LTC period, sub.sumed
the £21m in paragraph 138 above. If RN tactical nuclear weapons
were given up, we would have to rely on the US to supply warheads
to ships; there may well be difficulties in their agreeing to this,
and its implementation in a Naval environment. Extra expense would
be incurred on modification of aircraft, and on custodial arrangements.
Total abandonment of Naval nuclear capability would yield only small savings and would have serious operational consequences (e.g. we
would have no certain method of sinking modern nuclear submarines
using full evasive tactics). Some similar considerations apply to
the RAF: total abandonment of the RAF's nuclear strike role would
leave large gaps in SACEUR's GSP, and would significantly reduce the option for selective release of nuclear weapons.
Total abandonment of all UK nuclear capability
144. Apart from the saving in Polaris running costs indicated above
averaging £50m a year, there would be savings in support and
infrastructure costs amounting to some £53m a year at the start
falling to about £44m a year by 1983/4. This would mean a loss of
10,000 jobs, including those in industry. (There would be a
residual charge of about £6m per annum on Defence Votes to cover surveillance, safe disposal, nuclear fuel for SSNs, etc). Total
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