Missile-Go-Round

The Reagan Administration still hasn’t got the message that Congress just doesn’t want any more MX missiles.

President Reagan over the weekend announced his desire to deploy more MX missiles--the new ones to be put aboard railroad cars that would roll out of military bases onto the national railway system in time of international crisis. He also proposed that the Pentagon move forward with the development of the small mobile missile known as the Midgetman.

The deployment of 50 MXs, large missiles that can carry up to 10 nuclear warheads each, has been approved by Congress. The Pentagon has made plain its desire to deploy at least 50 more. However, Congress has flatly refused--and for good reason.

No one has ever come up with a politically acceptable way to deploy the MX in a mode that would keep it relatively invulnerable to enemy attack. From the arms-control point of view, this means that the big missile would be an inviting target--by knocking out one MX, the Soviets would knock out 10 warheads in the process.

Congress has sensibly pressed the Pentagon to rely instead on the development and deployment of the Midgetman--a small, mobile, single-warhead missile that would be a more difficult target for the Soviets to destroy because it would be trucked from one place to another on vast military reservations.

But the movement of MXs on railway cars out of military bases in time of crisis would undoubtedly be observed by Soviet satellites, and might lead the Russians to conclude that the United States was preparing for a first strike. That in turn could encourage them to launch a preemptive attack. Congress should refuse to appropriate even one dollar for the scheme to base MXs on railroad cars.

The second half of the Administration’s package, the proposal for development of the single-warhead Midgetman missile, is a sensible alternative to the MX. The problem is that the Pentagon, which is bureaucratically dedicated to the MX program, is trying to play games with Congress and the American people.

For weeks the Washington rumor mill has reported that the Administration would recommend going forward with both the MX and the Midgetman in the cynical expectation that, in an era of tight budgets, the two projects would inevitably become rivals for scarce defense dollars. And, since the Midgetman would indeed cost more per deployed warhead, the MX would ultimately survive and the Midgetman would be killed off.

Key members of Congress are on to the Administration’s game. They should lose no time in letting the Pentagon know that it won’t work--that the money that the Administration would like to spend on additional MX missiles will instead go to the Midgetman, which offers the best combination of survivability and counterpunch.