At war: Edinburgh and London ministers clash over sending indy Scotland troops to Sandhurst

But Defence Secretary Philip Hammond poured cold water on the prospect of officers from an independent Scottish army being allowed to continue to train at Sandhurst and other military academies in the same numbers as they do at present.

MPs on the Commons Defence Committee, who are considering the impact independence would have on defence matters, asked Mr Brown if he envisages an independent Scotland setting up its own Sandhurst-style academy to train officers.

The Veterans Minister told them that Scotland "already contributed substantially" to the cost of establishing and running the Royal Military Academy.

Setting up an officer training centre in Scotland is "another possibility" but the Scottish Government wants to look seriously at collaboration with the rest of the UK, Mr Brown said.

"Sandhurst trains people from nationalities around the world. It's an excellent teaching centre." he said.

"One of the possibilities is collaboration, and we want to look seriously at that. Another possibility is setting up our version of that. But I think we want to have that discussion with the UK Government first of all."

It is hard to see why "collaboration, perhaps accessing the training available at Sandhurst, why that would be an issue if the establishment currently services personnel from armies around the world", Mr Brown said.

Labour's Thomas Docherty claimed that an independent Scottish army would need as many as 200 officer cadets a year to attend Sandhurst but that the training base only takes 75 international recruits a year.

But Mr Brown said: "The 75 international places doesn't currently include those from Scotland, those from Scotland who join the UK Armed Forces are currently accommodated within Sandhurst. It's perfectly possible to reach an accommodation within the constraints you mention."

Mr Hammond told the committee any Scots training to be officers would be regarded as part of the "overseas contingent" which numbers around 75 students from countries all over the world.

Asked whether there would be room for 200 students annually from Scotland, Mr Hammond said: "I certainly wouldn't want to guarantee that we could make that number of places available. We would want to manage this looking at the interests of the academy and our own training programme."

The MoD regard it as important to maintain the "appropriate balance" of UK and non-UK students at Sandhurst in order to preserve the essential character of the institution, he said.

Mr Hammond said he would have no difficulty in filling the places at military academies currently taken up by Scottish members of the UK Armed Forces if Scotland became independent.

Mr Hammond went on to say that overseas students train at Sandhurst and other UK military academies only "on our terms, on a full cost-recovery basis, capped and limited in such a way that it enhances the training of our own cadets, rather than detracting from it".

During his evidence Mr Brown told the MPs that if Scotland were to be independent, there would be 15,000 people in its Armed Forces with 5,000 in reserve. Its defence budget would be £2.5 billion year, he said.

If Scotland became independent, further procurement of equipment would be required, Mr Brown said.

Of the £92 billion of defence assets that would have to be divided after a Yes vote, Scotland's share would amount to between £7 and £8 billion, he said.

He called for discussions between Westminster and Holyrood over how these could be divided in the event of independence.

"We don't think it's possible to have an agreed division of assets which would give us all that we need, so we would be looking for further procurement."

More details on this would be included in the Scottish Government's White Paper on independence, due to published in the autumn, he told the committee.

But he highlighted "the absence of maritime patrol aircraft in the north of Scotland, the fact that there is no major surface vessel in Scotland and hasn't been for sometime", as he told MPs: "You can see why Scotland with 8,000 islands and a vast coastline would would want to have substantially better sea capabilities than we currently have. That would obviously be a priority for us.

"In terms of maritime patrol, we would like to have more capability in relation to that and we are looking very seriously at how, how we are going to achieve that."

Scotland's shipyards have "world-leading expertise" and if the country leaves the UK, the rest of the UK would still have "a very viable shipbuilding industry", suggesting it could order ships from north of the border.

"I've seen some reference in this committee to the fact the rest of the UK would have no intention or no eagerness to procure from Scottish yards," Mr Brown said.

"Given the massive procurement the UK undertakes with the United States, the idea that they could not trust an independent Scotland, with all the defence equipment at the point of independence, all the defence personnel, all the joint working which goes on, all the history in Nato, should lead to a substantial level of trust.

"So I don't see this as a bar to either the rest of the UK or other countries wanting to tap into that world-class expertise. For that reason I think they would have a very bright future."

But Mr Hammond said he would not expect the UK to continue to commission warships from the shipyards of the Clyde if Scotland became independent, though he suggested that there might be work for Rosyth refitting ships that were built there.

"The UK, except during the two world wars, has never bought complex warships that have been built outside the UK," he told the committee.

"We have chosen to source our warships in the UK even though the cost of shipbuilding in the UK is very significantly higher than countries outside, including other Nato countries.

"We choose to do that because we think it is strategically important to maintain a sovereign capability in this area.

"Clearly, if Scotland was independent that capability would no longer be sovereign. It would be subject to the whims of a foreign government and we could no longer, in my judgment, justify paying the premium we do over and above the base cost of a warship for the sovereign capability to build and maintain it."

Mr Hammond said he is "not opposed in principle" to co-operation with an independent Scotland on defence procurement.

"I suspect that given that the UK's naval shipbuilding programme is expected over the next 20-odd years to just about sustain, just sufficient to sustain, one shipyard and any putative Scottish Government's programme could be projected to be around one-12th of that, therefore would not sustain any shipyard.

"I suspect we would be under very strong pressure from any other shipbuilding locations to source any complex warships we chose to build in the UK."

The skilled Clydeside workforce which built many of the Royal Navy's existing ships "would be in a very strong position to bid for refitting work" but would not necessarily win the contracts, Mr Hammond said.

Scotland could not rely on EU competition rules to give it access to UK military contracts, as "warlike goods" are exempted from the regulations which require European companies to be allowed to tender for public contracts on a level playing field.

Mr Hammond said he would not necessarily be "accommodating" when it came to sharing out UK military assets with an independent Scottish government.

The Defence Secretary has previously suggested that assets might be divided after independence in line with population proportions, leaving Scotland with about one-twelfth of the total.

But he made clear that Edinburgh would not be allowed to pick and choose the assets it wanted.

Responding to the suggestion that Scotland would take none of the UK's nuclear submarines but would want more Typhoon fighter jets in return, he told the committee: "I'm not sure that I would be that accommodating.

"The starting point would be an assumption of pro rata sharing and then there would be a negotiation.

"It would be a mistake to assume that they would simply cherry-pick the asset register."

Mr Hammond said it could take as long as 10 years after independence before the UK's nuclear forces were removed from Scotland, even if the new government in Holyrood made it its top priority.

"A referendum Yes vote would simply be the start of a negotiation which would be very complex, and one of the most complex areas would be around the nuclear deterrent," he told the committee.

"We don't know what the priorities of the Scottish government would be. If it were to decide that removing the nuclear deterrent from Faslane was its number one priority, regardless of the cost impact, regardless of the deprioritisation of other issues, so this simply became a question about how quickly it could be done, I would think we are talking in the order of a decade.

"Anything involving nuclear activity invariably has a long time-cycle attached."

Negotiations would have to include the question of how to share out the "very substantial costs" of dismantling facilities at Faslane and Coalport, building new facilities elsewhere and decommissioning retired nuclear subs at Rosyth, he said.

Mr Hammond said an independent Scotland would have to apply for membership of Nato, and other members might look askance at its opposition to the siting of nuclear weapons on its soil.

"All Nato members would find it very strange to be dealing with an applicant who was at one and the same time claiming to understand the benefits of Nato membership and seeking to damage one of Nato's most important strategic assets," he said.

The remaining UK would not necessarily back Scottish membership, but would adopt a position of "considered self-interest" on whether having Scotland within Nato would enhance UK defence or detract from it, he said.

"We would want to look at the defence posture being proposed by the Scottish government and how much resource they were prepared to commit to the defence of Scotland and a Scottish contribution to Nato. We would want to look at their attitude to sharing the burden of common defence platforms including the UK nuclear deterrent, which is 100% declared to Nato as a resource to protect the Nato alliance."

Mr Hammond also warned that an independent Scotland may find it difficult to establish intelligence-sharing relationships with the remaining UK and with the "Five Eyes" group of Anglophone nations - the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - which currently co-operate on security issues.

"Any new applicant to the intelligence community would have to demonstrate its integrity, its trustworthiness and its ability to maintain very high levels of secrecy," he said.

"They would also have to demonstrate that they would bring something to the table."

Any expansion of the "Five Eyes" group would require unanimous agreement of all existing members, he said.

"Any applicant would have to show it could add significant intelligence or analysis values to that which the group already had," said Mr Hammond. "Bearing in mind who are the members of that group, that might be challenging for a fledgling state which has no tradition of intelligence-gathering or analysis."