Paul Flynn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether his Department has made an assessment of the relevance of the Final Report of the US Defense Science Board Task Force on Resilient Military Systems, published on 10 October 2012, to the security of Trident submarines.

Mr Philip Dunne

The Ministry of Defence are aware of the report in question which has not alerted us to anything new. We continue to place a high priority on assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent and managing the associated risk. We continue to monitor and evaluate capabilities and technologies that could threaten the nuclear deterrent, including from cyber-attack. It would not be appropriate to go into specific detail of the steps taken to mitigate against these threats but note that the report points out that submarine platforms have isolation "designed into how they operate and fight" and that this isolation provides nuclear armed submarines with additional resilience over other nuclear weapon systems.