UK Defence Ministry Blasted for Wasting $1.6 Billion on Trident Nuclear Programme Upgrade

Earlier this year, the National Audit Office warned that the UK Ministry of Defence kept repeating mistakes made during the last cycle of investment in the nuclear deterrent, in the 1980s and 1990s.

UK Defence officials have been accused of repeating past mistakes, which has led to £1.3 billion (approximately $1.6 billion) being wasted in a Trident nuclear programme upgrade.

The projects to upgrade the infrastructure supporting the UK’s nuclear deterrent are running up to six years late, according to MPs.

“To utterly fail to learn from mistakes over decades, to spectacularly repeat the same mistakes at huge cost to the taxpayer – and at huge cost to confidence in our defence capabilities – is completely unacceptable,” the Commons public account committee on avoidable errors and poor management chairman Meg Hillier said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.

“The department knows it can’t go on like this, it knows it must change and operate differently,” the chairman added.

Costs for the three upgrade programmes were originally put at £2.5 billion, but the sum has increased £1.35 billion, according to reports.

The Trident nuclear programme, announced in 1980, covers the development and operation of British nuclear deterrence forces. It came as a replacement of the submarine-based Polaris system, which was in operation from the late 1960s until 1996.