Our latest briefing on the UK nuclear weapons programme – available to download or order print copies.
His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde is one of the UK’s three Royal Navy bases, and the home port for all the UK’s submarines. The base occupies several sites, but HMNB Clyde is typically used to refer to the part of the base situated on the eastern shore of the Gare Loch, a sea loch which opens into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. The naval establishment and facilities on the site are given the collective name ‘HMS Neptune’. However, the site itself is more often known, both inside and outside the Navy, by the name of the bay on which it is built: ‘Faslane’.
When the UK first acquired submarine-launched nuclear weapons, a separate site was built to store nuclear warheads and missiles, on the shore of Loch Long, an adjacent sea loch to the west. This site, Royal Naval Armament Depot (RNAD) Coulport, is technically part of HMNB Clyde, but is operationally managed by a coalition of contractors.
Read the full briefing attached