Missiles: the Right Choice

The Air Force will be lobbying Thursday to get Congress to kill a missile that fits neatly into nuclear-arms-control goals. The Air Force wants to divert the money into a missile that does not fit the goals at all. The price of the right weapon is steep, but Congress must insist that the Air Force make the correct choice.

What fits is Midgetman, a ballistic missile with a single warhead about one-third as heavy as the 10-warhead MX and therefore far easier to move around and to hide.

Hiding missiles is important to the theory of deterrence. Soviet targeters know where the silos are that hold all of America’s land-based missiles and how many missiles it would take to destroy them. Midgetman would force targeters to guess where to aim, would make it virtually impossible to ward off a retaliatory strike and thus would reduce the odds of a surprise Soviet nuclear launch to virtually zero. Because Midgetman missiles have only one warhead, a mere 500 of them would not pose a first-strike threat against the Soviets, further reducing nuclear tensions.

What makes the right choice crucial is that American and Soviet negotiators are in Geneva trying to draft a treaty that would reduce inter-continental missiles in both countries by 50%. As the number of missiles dwindles, the last thing that either country would want is a residue of threatening multiwarhead missiles sitting in silos that are, if not sitting ducks, at least easier to hit than mobile missiles.

The Air Force wants to terminate Midgetman and put 100 MX missiles on railroad cars that would swarm out of their permanent bases onto the nation’s rail system if attack seemed imminent.

It can be argued that the United States probably does not need any more missiles at all to provide a deterrent, because hundreds of D-5 missiles are scheduled to be installed over the years on Trident submarines. The new missiles are as accurate as the best of the nation’s land-based missiles. The Air Force also is adding 50 B-1 bombers to the third element of the nation’s nuclear forces.

But the strongest argument of advocates of more land-based missiles is that one day the Soviets may get so good at detecting the whereabouts of American submarines that Trident cannot hide and the country will need a fallback land-based missile network.

Congress can meet that argument now by ordering the force of Midgetman missiles that the country would want as a deterrent force if its submarines could not hide at will.