Without Mobility, START Won’t Go : To Be Able To Live With 50% Cuts, We Need Midgetman

The proposed U.S.-Soviet strategic arms reduction treaty, which the Reagan Administration wants to conclude with such unseemly haste, is not only internally contradictory but also at odds with the sound advice of the President’s own 1983 blue-ribbon Scowcroft Commission on strategic forces.

As outlined by Administration spokesmen, the agreement--known as START--would mandate about a 50% cut in existing American and Soviet inventories of strategic nuclear weapons. Reportedly, this would include a limit of 1,500 warheads on land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles.

Proponents argue that cuts of this magnitude enhance deterrence by drastically reducing the number of warheads that the Soviets could launch against so-called “hard” targets like American ICBMs. Unfortunately, this argument ignores the fact that the same agreement would drastically reduce the number of U.S. hard targets that the Soviets would have to cover.

Moreover, a 50% cut would place a premium on attaining the highest measure of survivability for the remaining U.S. strategic nuclear forces. In the case of land-based ICBMs, this would seem to dictate a sharply reduced reliance on fixed-silo delivery systems--such as the Minuteman III or MX missiles--in favor of mobile systems. These include the Midgetman ICBM, recommended by the Scowcroft Commission, or the more recently proposed rail-mobile MX. Finally, a 50% cut would seem to mandate the avoidance of concentrating too many warheads on a relatively small number of missiles; to do so would inflate the potentially catastrophic consequences of a Soviet first strike against U.S. retaliatory forces.

The Soviets clearly understand these imperatives. They understand the self-evident truth that it is harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one and, therefore, that the investment in mobility enhances deterrence by reducing incentives to strike first.

The Soviets are already deploying the rail-mobile SS-24 and the road-mobile SS-25. They also are moving away from their traditional penchant for cramming the most possible warheads on each missile; the SS-25 carries only one warhead.

By contrast, the United States has yet to deploy a single mobile missile. Worse, the Administration has done little to promote the Midgetman (the Defense Department opposes it) and has even instructed its arms-control negotiators in Geneva to seek a complete ban on mobile missiles.

It is difficult to fathom the Administration’s reasoning on this critical matter. Has it proposed the ban simply for bargaining purposes? If so, does it really believe that the Soviets would be prepared to trade away systems they have already deployed in exchange for the undeployed Midgetman, for which the Administration itself has shown no enthusiasm?

Has the Administration concluded that there are not enough dollars or votes in the Congress to carry the Midgetman to deployment? (If so, this would be attributable in large measure to the Administration’s own inaction.)

Does it believe that any nuclear delivery system not subject to effective verification should be eliminated? And how would a ban on mobile missiles be verified?

Or is the Administration’s proposed ban just another example of inconsistent and confused thinking when it comes to mastering the challenge of relating arms control to force planning?

The key question is whether mobile ICBMs enhance the stability of deterrence. It is not (for example) whether a ban on mobile missiles would make a START agreement easier to conclude and verify, thereby affording the Reagan Administration one last arms-control “triumph.”

Given the prospects for a 50% cut in strategic nuclear weapons, the rationale for the Midgetman is greater today than it was in 1983 when first recommended by the Scowcroft Commission.

Deployment of, say, 250 to 500 single-warhead Midgetmans would also distribute remaining land-based ICBM warheads over a much larger number of missiles. This inflation of “aim points” would make it virtually impossible for the Soviets to “clean out” the entire U.S. land-based ICBM force in a single strike.

A total ban on mobile systems, attended by a limit of 1,500 warheads for land-based ICBMs, would force the United States to distribute those warheads over a smaller, and therefore more vulnerable, force of already deployed missiles. The present force of 50 MX missiles, each carrying 10 warheads, would consume fully one-third of that total. The remaining 1,000 warheads could be retained among the older U.S. Minuteman II and Minuteman III ICBMs.

But since there are 450 single-warhead Minuteman IIs and 550 triple-warhead Minuteman IIIs, a large number of both types would have to be junked to accommodate the warhead limit. The end result--a U.S. land-based ICBM force smaller in size and lacking mobility--would be a far more tempting target for a Soviet first strike. A real “window of vulnerability” could then open.

Paradoxically the Administration, though indifferent to the Midgetman, favors deployment of 50 additional MX missiles in a rail-mobile mode. How the Administration can reconcile its support for a rail-mobile MX with its proposed ban on all mobile ICBMs remains a mystery. Moreover, deployment of 50 more MXs could mean concentrating 1,000 warheads, or two-thirds of the permissible limit for land-based ICBMs, on only 100 missiles.

Unless the Administration’s object is simply to hang another arms-control treaty on the wall, its present approach to START makes no sense, either in terms of promoting stability in the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance or in terms of harmonizing U.S. force planning and arms-control objectives.

The proposed ban on mobile ICBMs should be discarded and deployment of the Midgetman accelerated, or START should be stopped.