Anti-nuclear campaigners have described plans by the National Museum of the Royal Navy for a major new exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Britain’s first nuclear submarine patrols as a “propaganda offensive”.

Firing triggers for Polaris nuclear missiles, warhead nose cones as well as Cold War cultural items such as posters of the 1990 Sean Connery film The Hunt for Red October will form part of the event, which will open on 15 June at the navy’s submarine museum in Gosport, Hampshire.

“The exhibition will highlight the need for a continuous at-sea deterrent but will not shy away from debate,” according to documents describing the show, which comes at a time when there are divisions in society over Britain’s continued possession of nuclear weapons and plans to replace the current Trident missile system.

Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), has taken issue with the project. “At a time when the defence budget is severely stretched and key equipment is unfunded, it is shocking to read that the Ministry of Defence-sponsored navy museum is undertaking a propaganda offensive at taxpayers’ expense,” she said.

“It will ‘highlight the need for a continuous at-sea deterrent’. This is a highly contested political view and certainly does not fit within the published charitable objectives of the NMRN. We urge the museum to think again about how it marks this significant anniversary.”

A Polaris firing trigger. Photograph: Alexandra Geary

The £60,000 cost of the exhibition has been raised privately, according to the museum, which is a public body sponsored by the MoD and in receipt of lottery funding.

Existing items from the museum’s collection will be used, including a radar mast from a Resolution class submarine, while the exhibition will also give an insight into life on board a nuclear submarine through items such as the books taken on Polaris patrols. But voices of opposition will also feature, including subversive works from the artist and political cartoonist Darren Cullen, who last year placed spoof posters, mocked up to look like Royal Navy recruitment advertisements, in bus shelters around London. They bore the slogan: “Become a suicide bomber”.

Cullen told the Observer that the museum had acquired two posters from him – the suicide bomber one and one with the slogan “Trident: the final solution to all problems”, which were posted in bus stops in 2015 as part of protests against a defence and security equipment arms fair. He was not aware that the works would be used in a new permanent exhibition.

“Museums are an important record of the peaks and troughs of human civilisation,” he said. “I hope this exhibition is housed deep enough to survive the Royal Navy’s plan to destroy civilisation entirely if Britain loses a war.

“Nuclear bombs are suicide bombs – it is impossible to use these weapons without also killing ourselves. They are an expression of a genocidal and suicidal, not to mention very expensive, form of national insanity.”

Professor Dominic Tweddle, director general of the NMRN, said: “The new exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of the first Polaris patrol with HMS Resolution. It will be an objective assessment of the deterrent patrols, with the story of the Royal Navy’s submarines and submariners at its heart. We are also planning to hold a conference on the same subject.

“We cannot ignore protest nor pretend that it does not exist. It has been government policy – whatever party has been in power – to have an independent nuclear deterrent. The exhibition and conference will be balanced and reflect the views of both sides of the argument.”