Wilson Urges More Warheads for Midgetman

Foreshadowing a major congressional battle over the small, single-warhead mobile missile known as Midgetman, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) vowed Wednesday to fight its development until Congress considers converting it into a multiple-warhead missile.

Wilson, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said that the Pentagon will be wasting more than $22 billion if it proceeds with Midgetman because it is too small to penetrate Soviet anti-ballistic missile defenses.

He claimed the support of several other leading Senate Republicans on defense issues and said he will fight to halt funding for full-scale engineering development of the missile in fiscal 1987 until the Pentagon provides Congress with a report on the feasibility of arming it with at least three warheads.

‘Underweight Missile’

He said proponents of Midgetman are suffering from “missile anorexia nervosa, clinging desperately to this underweight missile, resisting the attractiveness of greater capability and greater cost effectiveness and insisting, instead, on a single warhead.”

Wilson faces tough opposition among Democrats in Congress who have made Midgetman the centerpiece of their new effort to fashion a pro-defense image for their party. Just last Monday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) issued a 32-page paper that argued against the conversion of Midgetman to a multiple-warhead missile.

Aspin said that the missile is too valuable to be “diverted with options that could cause delay in deployment and signal indecisiveness and incoherence in American security policy.” His recommendation to proceed with the missile is expected to be bolstered by the report of a special Defense Department advisory panel later this month.

Although the Pentagon has requested $1.4 billion in fiscal 1987--double the amount appropriated for the current fiscal year--to proceed with full-scale engineering and development of a prototype of Midgetman, Defense Department officials are known to be divided over whether to proceed with it. At the Geneva arms control talks, President Reagan has proposed a ban on mobile missiles.

Wilson’s Position Shifts

Wilson’s proposal for a multiple-warhead missile reflects a shift in his position from last year, when he opposed Midgetman outright on grounds that it could not survive Soviet defenses. After citing a classified Air Force study that found the survival rate of Midgetman would be “shockingly low,” he noted that even the Democrats now concede the single-warhead missile will need devices to help it penetrate Soviet airspace.

Instead of 500 Midgetman missiles with a single warhead each, Wilson is proposing to deploy 166 larger mobile missiles with three warheads each. Such a missile would exceed the 30,000-pound limit that Congress has mandated for Midgetman.

He said his proposal would trim the cost of Midgetman, now estimated at $44 billion, at least by half and argued that the savings would be important as Congress grapples with paying for a variety of strategic programs under new budget constraints.

Wilson scoffed at those who contend that a larger missile would be less mobile. He noted that the Soviets’ fully mobile single-warhead SS-25 weighs more than 80,000 pounds. He added that the mobile launching vehicle designed for Midgetman has proved capable of carrying up to 70,000 pounds at highway speeds of up to 50 m.p.h.