Trident nuclear submarines could remain on the Clyde for decades after Scottish independence, a top military analyst has warned.
An independent Scotland would also have to keep the UK's nuclear deterrent if it wanted to be part of Nato, according to Professor Malcolm Chalmers.
The defence policy director of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) also warns that independence would have a drastic effect on Scotland's defence industry. He describes the SNP's claims that Scotland would have armed forces to rival those of countries like Norway as "over optimistic".
The report is the latest in a series of warnings from military analysts. Last night Labour described the report as "devastating", but the SNP hit back as the report only allocated a £2 billion a year spend despite the fact that Scotland contributes £3.3bn annually to the UK's defences.
On Trident, the paper warns that recent historical precedents of countries becoming independent "suggest that [nuclear weapons] could remain for some considerable period of time, likely to be measured in decades rather than years".
Mr Chalmers also warned the defence budget would be "significantly less than those of neighbours such as Denmark and Norway", countries frequently cited by the SNP.
He warned that "much of Scotland's defence industry could, over time, migrate southwards in order to service the much larger UK market", and that a decision to withdraw from NATO would impact negatively on foreign relations.
Jim Murphy, the Labour shadow defence secretary, said: "This is a devastating, game-changing report that ends once and for all any idea that independence would be good for Scotland's defence."
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said: "The First Minister can't have his cake and eat it. Either he chooses to uphold his long-standing aim to get rid of nuclear weapons at Faslane – home to 6500 workers – and rip us out of the most successful military alliance in the globe or he backtracks on leaving Nato, which he has hinted he will do, and keeps the nuclear fleet."
Angus Robertson, the SNP's defence spokesperson, said: "An independent Scotland will not have unwanted, unneeded and hugely expensive Trident nuclear weapons based in Scottish waters, which will be removed in the soonest possible timescale – just as the vast majority of countries which co-operate on defence are also free of nuclear weapons, including Partnership for Peace members such as Sweden, Austria and Finland, and of course Norway, which is in NATO."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article