The UK Warhead Replacement Program: Prospects and Challenges

About

This talk will examine the UK’s decision to build a replacement for its current nuclear warhead. It explores the potential reasons for the decision, the choices that the UK is facing in its replacement warhead program, and the political, financial, technological and strategic implications of those choices. This includes consideration of the challenges of producing a new nuclear warhead in the post-CTBT era, the state of the UK’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, the UK’s cooperative relationships with the United States and with France, and the ways in which public scrutiny of the warhead program might be improved.

Speaker

Matthew Harries is a senior research fellow in the Proliferation and Nuclear Policy program at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), based in Berlin. Before joining RUSI, he worked on the staff of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Matthew was previously managing editor of Survival and a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He has also worked as an adjunct professor of strategic studies at SAIS Europe (the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna), and as a research associate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He has also previously served as a trustee of VERTIC. Matthew holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, and a First in Modern History and Politics from the University of Oxford.