Sir, If we abandon Trident (leading article, June 20), we shall leave France as the only strategic nuclear power in Europe, and we shall come under irresistible pressure to give up our permanent seat on the UN Security Council while France will continue to retain hers. A nuclear submarine armed with ballistic missiles is the only weapons system that allows pressure to be brought on an enemy state anywhere in the world.

Coupled with the two planned carriers, an updated Trident system will give the UK the most potent force projection that can be bought for the money — about £30 billion spent over 10 to 15 years or an average of about £2.5 billion per annum. This should be compared with the £10 billion net per annum we shall soon be spending in direct contributions to the EU or £3 billion plus per annum on local authority “cultural services”.

Can anyone seriously suggest that we will derive better value as a nation from these other expenditures?

Professor S. F. Bush

Thurston, Suffolk

Sir, Field Marshal Lord Bramall said (letter, Jan 16, 2009) that nuclear weapons are “completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently, or are likely to, face — particularly international terrorism”. To keep Trident in the face of military opinion (concurred in by such as generals Lord Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach), would continue the political folly that began in 1948, when the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, humiliated during a begging bowl visit to the US, told the Cabinet that “We’ve got to have this thing over here whatever it costs”. Thus began decades of British aspiration to world power status as a nuclear-armed state.

In the face of military reality we can only keep our stick-on hairy chest virility symbol by the folly of forgoing a range of essentials from protected vehicles and optical rifle sights for soldiers in Afghanistan to aircraft carriers. Our straitened circumstances are a blessing in disguise and a chance to put that right.

Air Commodore Alastair Mackie

London SW15

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