Trident review could suggest downgrading of nuclear deterrent Sir Nick suggested that having developed this technology, the UK could then "simply put it away in a cupboard and keep it as a contingency in case there ever were to be a deterioration in the global security picture that might need the UK government to take it out of the cupboard." If this option were pursued, the warheads would be kept in a secure military location until they were needed. The Liberal Democrats promised in their 2010 manifesto to oppose a "like-for-like" replacement of the Trident submarines and the nuclear warhead-carrying missiles they fire. Sir Nick wants to abandon the so-called "Moscow criterion," which recommends Britain retains an arsenal capable of destroying the Russian capital. He told a fringe debate at his party's conference in Brighton: ""If you can just break yourself out of that frankly almost lunatic mindset for a second, all sorts of alternatives start to look possible, indeed credible. The Russia of the 21st century - economically diverse, vaguely democratic, but definitely a very different sort of place from where it was in 1980 - might find all sorts of damage to be unacceptable short of flattening Moscow. Therefore to convince ourselves that the only point of having any deterrent at all is the capability of flattening Moscow is the wrong and distorting lens through which to view the debate. He hinted that Whitehall, senior military figures and Labour might be persuaded of the case for downgrading the deterrent. Senior military commanders are privately questioning the need for maintaining the same level of deterrence when the Trident system is taken out of service in 2028.