HM Naval Base Clyde

HMNB Clyde
Gare Loch, Argyll and Bute, Scotland
View of HMNB Clyde
Type	Military base
Site information
Controlled by	Royal Navy
Site history
In use	1964–present
Garrison information
Current commander	Commodore Mark Gayfer
Garrison	Clyde Flotilla

Her Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde (HMNB Clyde; also HMS Neptune) primarily sited at Faslane is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Devonport and HMNB Portsmouth). It is the service's headquarters in Scotland and is best known as the home of Britain's nuclear weapons, in the form of nuclear submarines armed with Trident missiles.

Faslane was first constructed and used as a base in the Second World War. During the 1960s, the British Government began negotiating the Polaris Sales Agreement with the United States regarding the purchase of a Polaris missile system to fire British-built nuclear weapons from five specially constructed submarines. In the end, only four were constructed; HMS Resolution, HMS Repulse, HMS Renown and HMS Revenge. These four submarines were permanently based at Faslane.

Faslane itself was chosen to host these vessels at the height of the Cold War because of its geographic position, which forms a bastion on the relatively secluded but deep and easily navigable Gare Loch and Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. This position provides for rapid and stealthy access through the North Channel to the submarine patrolling areas in the North Atlantic, through the GIUK gap to the Norwegian Sea. At the time it was chosen, the location was also close to the American SSBN base at Holy Loch, which operated 1961–1992. One boat was always on patrol at any given time.