U.K. To Build Four Polaris Submarines

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30028, 12 January 1963, Page 11

U.K. To Build Four Polaris Submarines

(N.Z.P .A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, January 11.

Britain planned to build four submarines capable of being equipped with Polaris missiles at a cost of 700 million dollars, Mr Julian Critdiley, a British Conservative member of Parliament, said in Washington yesterday.

Speaking to reporters at the Defence Department, where he had been conferring with United States defence officials, Mr Critchley said that the cost of building Polaris submarines would probably be the same as that of equipping Royal Air Force planes to fire the now discarded Skybolt air-to-ground missiles.

But in the long run, the cost would be greater, he said, because Britain would have to take other measures to close a “gap” in Britain’s nuclear force between the time when British Vulcan bombers go out of commission about 1967 and when the submarines come into service, about 1970.

Under the Nassau agreement between President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan, Britain will build her own submarines and buy the Polaris missiles from the United States. Britain will furnish her own nuclear warheads.

The United States and Britain will report to the permanent Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Paris today on the impact their Polaris agreement will have on future defence plans.

The reports will be given by the American Undersecretary of State. Mr George Ball, and the head of the British delegation, Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh. Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh would also invite Britain’s European partners to study how the agreement could be made the basis of an expanding nuclear strike force for NA.T.O., it was learned in usually well-informed quarters.

fine suggestion he was expected to make was that some of the non-nuclear powers Inside N.AT.O. must participate in the control of such a force.

President de Gaulle is expected to define France’s attitude to the question at a press conference on Monday.

-Skybelt Very Efficient” In Montreal yesterday, the chairman of the British Conservative Party defence committee, Sir Arthur de Vere Harvey, said he was convinced the Skybolt had not been ditched because of technical troubles. In Montreal on personal business on his way back to London after talks with officials at the Douglas Aircraft Corporation in Los

Angeles, he said in an interview with the Canadian Press that the Skybolt was a “very efficient weapon.” Commenting on the announcement that the Skybolt had been successfully fired and a later report which said it exploded in the air, the British defence expert, a former air commodore in the Royal Air Force, said: “I have one or two suggestions to make to our Defence Minister when I get home.” He said the United States

Government’s decision to call off the Skybolt programme would eventually leave the United States Strategic Air Command jet bomber force as powerless as the R.A.F.’s Vulcan bombers.

“Of course,” he said, “S.A.C. still has the Hounddog missile, which has a

pretty formidable range, quite comparable with the Blue Steel.” (The range of the British Blue Steel airborne missile has never been disclosed, but it has generally been credited with 200 miles.) "Dangerous Plot” The British - American agreement at Nassau last month was “one of the most dangerous plots ever hatched against world peace,” the Soviet armed forces newspaper, "Red Star,” said today, Tass reported. The newspaper said: “The idea of a N.A.T.O. nuclear force —as foreseen by the agreement—stems entirely from the aggressive strategic plans of the United States, from the basically reactionary foreign policy of the imperalists.”