The government has "stack-ed the deck" in favour ofan immediate decision to replace the Trident submarine fleet that carriesBritain's nuclear deterrent, according to one of theUS's most eminent physicists.

Richard Garwin, principal architect of the first US hydrogen bomb design and a long-standing consultant to successive US administrations on security matters, says the decision announced by the government in December to build three or four submarines to replace the existing Vanguard-class ships is "highly premature".