Prime Minister Keir Starmer has welcomed home the submarine from the longest-ever patrol by the Royal Navy’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet during a visit to Faslane.
HMS Vanguard returned to port over the weekend after 205 days at sea, breaking a previous record of 204 days set in March 2025. It’s the ninth patrol in a row to exceed over five months with six and a half months becoming a worrying new normal for Britain’s nuclear-armed fleet and their crews.
These records came in years after reports of accidents onboard Vanguard vessels, including an electrical fire on HMS Victorious, and a faulty depth gauge on another vessel which led to it plummeting towards the seabed, before disaster was averted.
The average patrol on the previous generation of nuclear submarines rarely exceeded 60-70 days. Back in 2022, former submarine commander Rob Forsyth expressed concern that crews were regularly spending over 150 days at sea, and what impacts this would have on crew discipline, morale, and psychological wellbeing. In the three years since raising those concerns, patrols have increased by 30%.
Starmer, who recently faced calls to cut welfare budgets in order to fund a surge in military spending, visited the crew at Faslane on what Downing Street called a “defence and security trip” to Scotland. This did not include a meeting with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar who in March called on the PM to resign for making “too many mistakes” during his leadership.
Despite nuclear weapons spending accounting for between 20-25% of the Ministry of Defence’s budget, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) watchdog has repeatedly warned the government that projects related to the modernisation of Britain’s nuclear submarine are failing or at risk of failing.
Meanwhile the National Audit Office has called “unrealistic” the government’s costings of giving the Royal Air Force a nuclear role with the purchase of nuclear-capable F-35As to be assigned to NATO’s Dual Aircraft capability.
CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:
“Whilst Starmer poses for photographs with these submariners, trying to present them as heroes making great sacrifices for national security, in reality, these patrols show how reckless the government’s determination to maintain the so-called ‘continuous at sea deterrence’ is – and it puts us all at risk. These unsustainable patrols put even greater strain on nuclear-armed submarines that should have been decommissioned years ago. We’ve heard reports of near-catastrophic accidents onboard Vanguard vessels and it is only a matter of time before one does not return to port.
We’ve seen multiple reports from government agencies who have deemed these projects unsustainable, so why keep up this deadly farce any longer? Nuclear arms control is under threat of collapse, with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own chief warning of the real risk of nuclear proliferation in the years ahead. It’s time for Britain to cut its losses on nuclear weapons and show some global leadership by breaking its special nuclear relationship with the US.”
Image credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street / Flickr