December 30, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 01,1430

LONDON, Dec 29: Britain feared it was too weak to resist Soviet attack during the Cold War after a confidential assessment showed its airforce only had enough missiles for three days, showed declassified documents.

“Heaven help us if there is a war,” wrote the then prime minister James Callaghan in 1978, in formerly secret documents.

Callaghan was driven to despair after the report on Britain’s ability to fight the Soviet threat, which also revealed other major equipment shortages.

Callaghan, who led a left-wing Labour government between 1976 and 1979, described the situation as a “scandal.” The documents, from the National Archives in London, have just been released under British laws which allow classified files to be made public after 30 years.

Britain’s position was exposed after its Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) issued a report looking at how easily the Soviet Union could launch an attack.

Callaghan demanded to know how Britain was placed to respond.

“I take it someone has worked out whether we can defend ourselves?” he wrote in October 1977, after the JIC report was sent to him.

In response, the Chiefs of Staff prepared another report which warned that Britain “cannot match the threat” outlined by the JIC.

“In the case of nuclear attack by ballistic missiles, there would be no defensive capability, save the indirect defence of our nuclear forces,” the defence chiefs wrote in January 1978, when thousands of US troops were based in Britain during the Cold War.

“Given even the maximum use of warning time, it is unlikely that the UK defences could prevent the loss of a substantial proportion of Nato’s forces based in the UK.” Britain had less than 100 fighter planes to combat an estimated threat of over 200 Soviet bombers, the report said, adding the British fighters “have sufficient missiles for only two to three days’ operations.”

Callaghan met his defence minister Frederick Mulley at Downing Street the following month to discuss the findings and seemed particularly concerned about the shortage of ammunition for fighter aircraft.

“The prime minister asked why we were in this situation; it seemed to him a scandal,” an official note of the meeting said.

“The prime minister said that the conclusion he drew from the paper was that one or two people should be sacked.” In March, Mulley sent Callaghan a briefing paper arguing it was unnecessary for Britain to be entirely self-reliant because its membership of Nato, which sees an attack on one member as an attack on all, would be a deterrent.

But on the top of that document, Callaghan highlighted the lack of Hunt class warships and Britain’s apparent inability to build more of them quickly enough.—AFP