RNAD Coulport

RNAD Coulport stands on the eastern shore of Loch Long in Argyll, a Royal Naval Armaments Depot built into the hillside near the village of Coulport. Sixteen reinforced concrete bunkers house the warheads for Britain’s Trident programme, the last depot in the country to keep the RNAD title. Two docks lie at the water’s edge, one older jetty used for Polaris weapons and a newer covered jetty for handling Trident warheads. The site was set up during the Cold War to store and load Polaris missiles before switching to Trident after the 1980s upgrade. A floating dry dock, one of the world’s largest concrete structures of its kind, now serves the submarines at Coulport. The depot’s importance is shown by the scale of the Trident Works Programme, which took thirteen years and cost about £1.9 billion at 1994 prices. Safety rules kept the storage bays at least 1,300 metres from the main base while keeping both sites within an hour’s sailing time. The Nassau and Polaris Sales agreements of the early 1960s set the project in motion, with construction running from 1963 to 1968. After the 2014 referendum, the future of the base was discussed but Scotland’s vote to remain in the UK left the arrangement unchanged. The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston designs and builds the warheads, while the US supplies the missiles from Kings Bay in Georgia. Visitors cannot enter the secure areas but can see the hillside bunkers and the two docks from outside. The covered explosive handling jetty shelters warheads as they are loaded onto Vanguard-class submarines bound for Faslane. Safety exercises such as Bowline test the response to any accident, with command and control drilled regularly. Tritium leaks from ageing pipes between 2010 and 2025 caused low-level pollution in Loch Long, prompting upgrades. Road convoys move warheads between Aldermaston and Coulport under heavy police escort, watched by protesters and monitored from central control rooms.