The United Kingdom announced this week it will nationalizing operations of its Atomic Weapons Establishment next June after letting contractors run the shop for nearly three decades.
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 new business model will see AWE [Atomic Weapons Establishment] plc continue to draw on private sector specialist support to strengthen capability as well as playing a key role in managing capital projects and contracts,” according to a Monday statement by U.K. Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace.
AWE Management Ltd was most of the way through a 25-year contract awarded by the British government in 1999 when the Ministry of Defence announced it would turn the Establishment into an arms-length body under government control. The U.K. started considering nationalization in 2019, according to the ministry’s statement.
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 anglicized version, Holbrook, includes non-nuclear parts sourced from the U.S.
The British nuclear arsenal is in the middle of a refresh that will initially include new Dreadnought submarines and new warheads, the latter of which were to have commonality with the proposed, but presently unfunded, W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead the National Nuclear Security Administration wants to start designing in earnest this year.
A senior Pentagon official warned last month that without funding for the W93, the U.S. “couldn’t support the U.K. in the alignment of programs we have where we support them with non-nuclear as well as science and technology.” The continuing resolution funding the U.S. government through Dec. 11 has no money or authorization for W93.
