MX and Midgetman: a Utility Team : Deploying Some of Each Is Best Bet for Arms Control

As Congress and the President near the decision point on the next defense budget, and as the date for new arms-control negotiations approaches, it becomes more necessary than ever to reach a binding decision on which American ICBMs to build and how to deploy them. Indecision on our intercontinental missile force has endured for a decade; George Bush is the third President to confront it. His Administration’s solution: Put 50 MX missiles on trains that will leave their garrisons when an attack is imminent; meanwhile, continue to develop the truck-mounted Midgetman ICBM at a slow pace.

This two-pronged approach in the budget Bush submitted to Congress seems to satisfy everyone and no one. Midgetman is Congress’ missile; the MX is the Air Force’s bird.

Midgetman is small, has the mobility of a truck, and carries only one warhead; MX is six times larger, can be moved easily only on trains, and carries 10 warheads. Both missiles can survive a Soviet first strike if they can dash fast enough so that the enemy must blindly barrage a huge area.

Arms controllers prefer Midgetman because it carries only one warhead and is not a particularly lucrative target for the other side, which would have to use two warheads to knock out one Midgetman. But Midgetman is expensive to buy and to run. It requires a gigantic “hardened mobile launcher,” or HML, to haul it around either the Great Plains or the southwestern desert. HMLs, which are tougher than tanks, aren’t cheap. In addition, at least two men will be needed in the cab of each HML, 24 hours a day, every day.

The Air Force prefers the rail-garrison MX. Each missile is more deadly because it carries 10 weapons. Trains are cheap to buy or build; 50 special missile and command cars wouldn’t cost as much as even a few HMLs. Furthermore, trains could roam the tracks in safety for hours or days waiting for the moment to retaliate after an attack, while HMLs would endure for only a few hours until the personnel in the cabs became fatigued.

Given three hours’ advance warning of an attack, and the will to act, rail-garrison MX missiles are at least as survivable as HMLs and their Midgetmen. In fact, we can be more confident of the design of the trains, because real trains were once tested against real atomic bombs in the Nevada desert. However, if a bolt-from-the-blue attack caught the trains in their garrisons on Strategic Air Command Bases, they would probably be destroyed.

The effort to choose just one new missile and deployment scheme has failed with good reason. No single missile system is best at meeting all strategic needs: delivering striking power against an enemy, riding out a first strike, providing arms-control stability and coming in at the right price over a 10- or 20-year life cycle. Furthermore, no matter how deployed, no missile system can be sure of survival unless an appropriate new arms-control agreement limits the size of the Soviet missile force that threatens this country.

If cost were no object, building 500 Midgetman missiles might be sufficient. However, the price-tag for such a system is around $40 billion, while putting the MX on trains will cost $5 billion or $6 billion. The MX missiles have already been built and paid for.

If a nuclear Pearl Harbor were an absolute impossibility, and if we were sure that we would always take decisive action to scramble the trains when we had warning of an attack, the rail-based MX alone would be satisfactory. But some of the American land-based missile force must be able to survive a surprise attack. A smaller number of Midgetmen could be deployed in ways that would let a part of the force escape with almost no warning at all, but the price for that survivability is very high.

To some extent, we must also deploy new missiles in order to negotiate away a large portion of our strategic arsenal. The Soviets have a rail-based missile, the SS-24, and a road-mobile one as well, the SS-25. With no mobile missiles in our arsenal, the American side has been severely handicapped in dealing with the Soviets. But the Bush Administration’s choice of missile deployment now gives the chief U.S. strategic arms negotiator, Richard Burt, the levers he needs to extract the best possible deal from the Soviet Union when arms reduction talks resume a month from now in Geneva.

The decision to put MX on rails and afterwards to procure small numbers of Midgetmen was reached for political reasons, to satisfy Congress and the Air Force simultaneously. But consider: It will provide a cheap, deadly and moderately survivable new ICBM in the short run; a few years later, it will add a small missile that complements the MX by being stabilizing, highly survivable and, if only 200 are deployed, affordable.

Since the two-missile solution--whether reached by accident, by design or as a political expedient--is also likely to lead to the best deal in Geneva, it and it alone is the optimum choice.