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Past the Victorian villas with their waterside views, you come to Fass Lane on the g Gerlock, the deep sea lock that's HQ to

Britain's submarines. Suddenly it's high security fences, razor wire, watch towers, security cameras, and at the entrance, men and women

with guns. Behind it, there's a whole town, home and workplace for about six and a half thousand people.

Even when you're expected as we were a few weeks ago,

it takes over an hour to get through security.

Finally, badged up and checked, we're driven to the docks and come face to face with Britain's

defense strategy, at least a multi-billion pound part of it.

One of the Trident carrying subs is docked across from the submarine

we've come to board the newly commissioned HMS Artful loading up for her first

deployment.

We're her to find out what food, cooking, and meal times mean

when for months on end, you're cut off deep

under the ocean to almost every outside contact.

There's a lot of bustle as crew members watched over by a machine gun-toting soldier in camouflage,

unload the trucks with the food that might have to feed them for up to three months.

Artful is big and threatening, painted in undersea camouflage shades of grey and washed out green.

You descend into a brand new submarine just the way they do in the movies down a long steel vertical ladder

to a place where the air has a different quality in spite of the hatches being open.

It's poky and cramped. All the unenclosed wiring and cabling seem to press in on you.

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