The Nassau Agreement, concluded on 21 December 1962, was an agreement negotiated between President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to end the Skybolt Crisis. A series of meetings between the two leaders over three days in the Bahamas followed Kennedy's announcement of his intention to cancel the Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile project. The US agreed to supply the UK with Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles for the UK Polaris programme.
Under an earlier agreement, the US had agreed to supply Skybolt missiles in return for allowing the establishment of a ballistic missile submarine base in the Holy Loch near Glasgow. The British Government had then cancelled the development of its medium-range ballistic missile, known as Blue Streak, leaving Skybolt as the basis of the UK's independent nuclear deterrent in the 1960s. Without Skybolt, the V-bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) were likely to have become obsolete through being unable to penetrate the improved air defences that the Soviet Union was expected to deploy by the 1970s.
At Nassau, Macmillan rejected Kennedy's other offers, and pressed him to supply the UK with Polaris missiles. These represented more advanced technology than Skybolt, and the US was not inclined to provide them except as part of a Multilateral Force within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Under the Nassau Agreement the US agreed to provide the UK with Polaris. The agreement stipulated that the UK's Polaris missiles would be assigned to NATO as part of a Multilateral Force, and could be used independently only when "supreme national interests" intervened.
The Nassau Agreement became the basis of the Polaris Sales Agreement, a treaty which was signed on 6 April 1963. Under this agreement, British nuclear warheads were fitted to Polaris missiles. As a result, responsibility for Britain's nuclear deterrent passed from the RAF to the Royal Navy. The president of France, Charles de Gaulle, cited Britain's dependence on the United States under the Nassau Agreement as one of the main reasons for his veto of Britain's application for admission to the European Economic Community (EEC) on 14 January 1963.
Background British nuclear deterrent During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the prime minister, Winston Churchill and the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, signed the Quebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined British, American and Canadian project. The British Government trusted that the United States would continue to share nuclear technology, which it regarded as a joint discovery, after the war, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) ended technical cooperation.
Fearing a resurgence of United States isolationism, and Britain losing its great power status, the British Government restarted its own development effort, now codenamed High Explosive Research. The first British atomic bomb was tested in Operation Hurricane on 3 October 1952. The subsequent British development of the hydrogen bomb, and a favourable international relations climate created by the Sputnik Crisis, led to the McMahon Act being amended in 1958, resulting in the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship in the form of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement, which allowed Britain to acquire nuclear weapons systems from the United States.
Britain's nuclear weapons armament was initially based on free-fall bombs delivered by the V-bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF). With the development of the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear strike on the UK could kill most of the population and disrupt or destroy the political and military chains of command. The UK therefore adopted a counterforce strategy, targeting the airbases from which bombers could launch attacks on the UK, and knocking them out before they could do so.
The possibility of the crewed bomber becoming obsolete by the late 1960s in the face of improved air defences was foreseen. One solution was the development of long-range missiles. In 1953, the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Operational Requirements), Air Vice-Marshal Geoffrey Tuttle, requested a specification for a ballistic missile with range, and work commenced at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough later that year. In April 1955, the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir George Mills expressed his dissatisfaction with the counterforce strategy, and argued for a countervalue one that targeted administration and population centres for their deterrent effect.
At a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Paris in December 1953, United States secretary of defense, Charles E. Wilson, raised the possibility of a joint medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) development programme. Talks were held in June 1954, resulting in the signing of an agreement on 12 August 1954. The United Kingdom with United States support would develop an MRBM, which was called Blue Streak. It was initially estimated to cost £70 million (equivalent to £ in ), with the United States paying 15 per cent. By 1958, the project was in trouble. Its deployment was still years away, but the United States was supplying American-built Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles under Project Emily, and there were concerns about liquid fuelled Blue Streak's vulnerability to a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
To extend the effectiveness and operational life of the V-bombers, an Operational Requirement (OR.1132), was issued on 3 September 1954 for an air-launched, rocket-propelled standoff missile with a range of that could be launched from a V-bomber. This became Blue Steel. The Ministry of Supply placed a development contract with Avro in March 1956, and it entered service in December 1962. By this time it was anticipated that even with Blue Steel, the air defences of the Soviet Union would soon improve to the extent that V-bombers might find it difficult to attack their targets, and there were calls for the development of the Blue Steel Mark II with a range of at least . Despite the name, this was a whole new missile, and not a development of Mark I. The Minister of Aviation, Duncan Sandys, insisted that priority be accorded to getting the Mark I into service, and the Mark II was cancelled at the end of 1959.
Skybolt
Confronted with the same problem, the United States Air Force (USAF) also attempted to extend the operational life of its strategic bombers by developing a stand off missile, the AGM-28 Hound Dog. The first production model was delivered to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in December 1959. It carried a W28 warhead, and had a range of at high level and at low level. Its circular error probable (CEP) of over at full range was considered acceptable for a warhead of this size. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress could carry two, but the underslung Pratt & Whitney J52 engine precluded its carriage by bombers with less underwing clearance like the Convair B-58 Hustler and the North American XB-70 Valkyrie. It entered service in large numbers, with 593 in service by 1963. Numbers declined thereafter to 308 in 1976, but it remained in service until 1977. Hound Dog was replaced by the AGM-69 SRAM starting in 1972. Despite its being superior in performance to Blue Steel, the British showed little interest in Hound Dog. It could not be carried by the Handley Page Victor, and there were doubts as to whether even the Avro Vulcan had sufficient ground clearance.
Even as Hound Dog was entering service, the USAF was contemplating a successor. An Advanced Air to Surface Missile (AASM) that could carry a warhead with a range of and a CEP of . Such a missile would make crewed bombers competitive with Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). However, it would also require significant technological advances. The missile became the AGM-48 Skybolt. As costs rose and support diminished, the USAF decreased its specifications to carrying a warhead and a CEP of . This was estimated to cost $893.6 million (equivalent to $ in ). A May 1960 report to the chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), George Kistiakowsky, the PSAC Missile Advisory Panel stated that it was unconvinced of the Skybolt's merits, as the new LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM would be able to perform the same missions at much lower cost. PSAC therefore recommended in December 1960 that Skybolt be cancelled forthwith. United States Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, Jr., elected not to request further funding for it, but avoided cancellation by reprogramming $70 million (equivalent to $ in ) from the previous year's allocation.
A crucial reason for Skybolt's survival was the support it garnered from Britain. Blue Streak was cancelled on 24 February 1960, subject to an adequate replacement being procured from the US. An initial solution appeared to be Skybolt, which combined the range of Blue Streak with the mobile basing of the Blue Steel, and was small enough that two could be carried on the Vulcan bomber. Armed with a British Red Snow warhead, this would improve the capability of the UK's V-bomber force, and extend its useful life into the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like the USAF, the RAF was concerned that ballistic missiles could eventually replace crewed bombers.
An institutional challenge came from the United States Navy, which was developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the UGM-27 Polaris. The US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, kept the First Sea Lord, Lord Mountbatten, apprised of its development. By moving the deterrent out to sea, Polaris offered the prospect of a deterrent that was invulnerable to a first strike, and thereby reduced the risk of a first strike on the British Isles, which would no longer be effective. It also had greater value as a deterrent, because retaliation could not be avoided. It would also restore the Royal Navy to its traditional role as the nation's first line of defence, although not everyone in the navy was on board with that idea.
The British Nuclear Deterrent Study Group (BNDSG) produced a study that argued that SLBM technology was as yet unproven, that Polaris would be expensive, and that given the time it would take to build the boats, it could not be deployed before the early 1970s. The Cabinet Defence Committee approved the acquisition of Skybolt in February 1960.
The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, met with President Dwight Eisenhower at Camp David near Washington in March 1960, and secured permission to buy Skybolt without strings attached. In return, the Americans were given permission to base the US Navy's Polaris-equipped ballistic missile submarines at the Holy Loch in Scotland. The financial arrangement was particularly favourable to Britain, as the US was charging only the unit cost of Skybolt, absorbing all the research and development costs. Mountbatten was disappointed, as was Burke, who now had to face the possible survival of Skybolt at the Pentagon. Exactly what was agreed with regard to Polaris was not clear; the Americans wanted any later offer of Polaris to be as part of a scheme for deployment of NATO MRBMs known as the Multilateral Force. With the Skybolt agreement in hand, the Minister of Defence, Harold Watkinson, announced the cancellation of Blue Streak to the House of Commons on 13 April 1960.
American concerns