Nunn Seeks Safeguard Against Accidental Launches : Proposal on Protection From A-Missiles Gains

When Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the respected chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the Defense Department last January to consider building a system to protect the nation from an accidental launch of an enemy nuclear missile, the Reagan Administration reacted with barely disguised hostility.

Nunn’s modest proposal, complained White House science adviser William Graham, would merely divert funds from President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the futuristic space-based system popularly known as “Star Wars.”

But as Pentagon analysts have set upon Nunn’s proposal, they have begun to recognize its possibilities not only for building bipartisan and popular support for the concept of missile defenses but also for providing a practical opportunity to test limited parts of an SDI system.

‘All Sorts of Flaky Schemes’

“If the senator’s saying yes to some form of missile defense, we’re not going to kick sand in his face,” one Administration official says privately now. Exploration of Nunn’s proposal has called forth “all sorts of flaky schemes,” he adds. But it cannot be dismissed, he says, if it will broaden the appeal of missile defenses across party lines.

Already, the accidental launch proposal has drawn the support of a collection of “strange bedfellows,” observed Rep. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Conservative Republicans are welcoming it as a potential means of breaching the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which they see as an impediment to the broader Star Wars missile-defense plan, while moderate Democrats can use it to demonstrate their party’s commitment to a strong national defense.

Meanwhile, defense industry giants have seized upon the idea. Rockwell International Corp. recently joined two of the nation’s top five defense contractors, McDonnell Douglas Corp. and Lockheed Corp., in unveiling a version that features new designs for rockets and radars. The variety of options carry price tags from $4 billion to $12 billion.

Protection System

In a report that reached Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci last week, an advisory team of the defense industry’s leading scientists and engineers recommended that an accidental launch protection system be added to the Pentagon’s planned first phase of Star Wars deployment.

However, amid the swelling support, concerns are growing among some skeptics about what is happening to Nunn’s original small-scale “insurance policy” against a terrible nuclear mistake.

The system would involve radars to spot an accidentally launched nuclear missile and an array of ground-based interceptor missiles to destroy it.

But of the three plans drawn up by defense contractors, only one would remain within the limits of the ABM treaty, which restricts missile systems that can be used by the United States or Soviet Union to defend their territory. The treaty allows the protection of only a single site, using no more than 100 interceptor missiles and two radars.

Large Areas Undefended

Lockheed officials say that such a limited system would leave large parts of the United States undefended and do little to stop what some consider the most likely kind of inadvertent launch--the firing of a fusillade of nuclear missiles from a Soviet submarine off the U.S. coast.

To provide a broad, effective defense might require as many as five separate missile sites and the development of new radars not now permitted by the treaty, say experts reviewing the proposal. In response, the Soviets would demand similar missile-stopping capabilities to protect their much vaster territory.

“It’s difficult for me to imagine what would be left of the treaty” in the wake of such an expansion, said John Pike, a space policy expert for the Federation of American Scientists.

Critics of Star Wars

At the same time, critics of the Administration’s Star Wars program are warning that the accidental launch shield could be co-opted by the Pentagon to help push SDI. Opponents consider the Pentagon system too expensive and unworkable.

They note that while Nunn billed his idea as a redirection of the Star Wars research effort, the Pentagon has been quick to consider it as part of its planned three-phase deployment scheme. It could become the “camel’s nose under the tent,” Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.) said recently.

For his part, Nunn has steered clear of the controversy, refusing interviews on the subject of accidental launch protection, and refusing so far to rein in the ambitious schemes he sparked with his vague Jan. 19 speech on the subject.

The powerful Georgia Democrat has strongly supported research on anti-missile defenses but has been openly skeptical of the Administration’s broad concept for an umbrella defense for the entire nation. He has also opposed breaching the ABM treaty, saying originally that his concept of an accidental launch defense would involve “at most . . . a modest amendment” of the arms control pact.

A Modest Proposal

Peter D. Zimmerman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a supporter of Nunn’s proposal, said Nunn and Congress must resist the Pentagon’s impulse to exploit his modest proposal.

“The SDI organization has an ulterior motive in supporting any defense against an accidental launch--they can promote lots of systems that are part of their program and say it’s all for ALPS (accidental launch protection system),” Zimmerman said. “That’s a possibility Congress can foreclose by putting really rigorous restrictions on it and by exercising firm oversight. And Sen. Nunn’s in a position to do that.”

In the meantime, however, Star Wars advocates are finding more and more to like about Nunn’s idea.

Carlucci has not decided whether to endorse the new system, but his advisory group, in its nine-page study submitted April 13, praised it as a valuable installment in a larger space-based system.

“SDI has been ghettoized in the fever swamp of the right wing for so long,” Pike said. “But if the idea of defending America is winning political respectability, as Nunn’s proposal suggests, (the system) might get them a hearing in a Democratic Administration. There’s no reason for the SDI’s program officials to pooh-pooh Nunn’s ALPS scheme.”