The United Kingdom is nationalizing operations of its Atomic Weapons Establishment after letting contractors run it for nearly three decades, the Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence announced Monday.
The Atomic Weapons Establishment will become a wholly-owned, arms-length body controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which will take over the heart of the U.K. nuclear weapons complex from the AWE Management Ltd. consortium that includes: Jacobs Engineering, Dallas; Lockheed Martin, North Bethesda, Md.; and Serco Group, Hook, Hampshire, England.
“The change in model will remove the current commercial arrangements, enhancing the MOD’s [Minitry of Defence’s] agility in the future management of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, whilst also delivering on core MOD objectives and value for money to the taxpayer,” MOD wrote in the release.
The Ministry has been weighing such a change since 2019, according to the press release.
The United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal consists solely of ballistic-missile submarines, and their armament somewhat mirrors the seaborne leg of the U.S. triad. The U.K.’s stealthy submarines carry Lockheed-made Trident ballistic missiles reportedly tipped with a variant of the U.S.-designed W76 submarine-launched, ballistic-missile warhead.
The U.K. is gearing up to replace the warheads with a weapon that will feature commonality with the proposed, though currently unfunded, U.S. W93 variant. The Kingdom also plans to replace its current fleet of submarines with a new Dreadnought model.
