Mobile Missile Deal Is Shot Full of Holes

The Bush Administration has struck a Faustian bargain with members of Congress concerning mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. In broad outline, the deal involves the following:

--The executive branch will agree to find almost $1 billion extra from the defense budget to invest in the development of the Midgetman ICBM over the next four years.

--Congress is supposed to agree that it will approve the Administration’s funding request for both a rail-mobile version of the MX and a road-mobile Midgetman.

--Once that is done, the Administration will abandon the proposal in the draft strategic arms reduction treaty that calls for a complete ban on such mobile systems, offering instead schemes for constraining the permitted numbers of mobile missiles and for verifying such limitations.

This is a political compromise that makes no sense fiscally, strategically or in terms of prudent arms control.

Under present and prospective budgetary conditions, mobile missiles--at upwards of $25 billion for the Midgetman and $5 billion for the MX--are an unjustifiable expense. Even if the country could afford to pay for them, it is inconceivable that the United States could operate the missiles--either in a rail-based or road-mobile scheme--in a manner offering levels of survivability comparable to those enjoyed by Soviet SS-24s and SS-25s.

Unfortunately, the Soviets have some decisive advantages with their mobile missiles--for example, the enormity and barrenness of the country’s landmass and the absolute priority given to the military in that society. As a result, such systems are routinely and realistically exercised in the Soviet countryside. By contrast, American mobile missiles, if they can be deployed at all, seem certain to be constrained in ways that will impinge on (if not eliminate) their benefits. The Air Force plans to deploy the rail-mobile MX missiles on its bases, from which they would be dispersed in times of crisis or conflict. Unless and until they are dispersed, these missiles would be even easier to destroy than if they were left in their present silo launchers. They simply could not escape the operating bases in the event of a surprise attack. It is even a debatable point whether the nation’s political leadership would be willing to disperse the MX force onto the rail network in a time of escalating tensions but before warning of an actual attack. Such flushing of the missiles could be misinterpreted by Moscow as the signal that preparations for a U.S. nuclear strike were under way, thereby risking Soviet preemption.

Similarly, Midgetman may have its own survivability problems. Cost considerations would probably preclude significant numbers of these missiles from ordinarily being deployed away from their operating bases on U.S. military reservations. Missiles not so dispersed would be readily targetable. In other words, under any foreseeable circumstances, U.S. investment in an effort to mimic Soviet mobile-missile programs is unlikely to produce strategic benefits commensurate with the cost in defense resources.

The Administration and congressional supporters of its mobile-missile plan have also set the stage for a rout in the arms-control negotiations. The Soviets have been put on notice that the United States is not serious about its current proposal calling for a complete ban on such missiles. Evidently, in exchange for congressional funding commitments that have proven in the past to be utterly ephemeral, the Administration has promised that it will, instead, introduce a proposal for limits on mobile ICBMs.

There is simply no way to verify such limitations. Over the years, a variety of possible solutions to this intractable verification conundrum have been considered and found wanting. Were mobile missiles to be permitted under START, militarily significant Soviet cheating would be greatly simplified. Mobile launchers enable non-deployed and/or covertly stockpiled missiles to be utilized rapidly and with a minimum of discernable preparations. Sufficient Soviet capability could be retained under any identified limitation scenario to permit Moscow to minimize, if not largely offset, the strategic effect of reductions stipulated by a START treaty.

It is time for those who consider themselves serious about arms control and responsible about national security to recognize the new deal on mobile missiles for what it is: an impermanent marriage of convenience that will make effective strategic arms reductions even more problematic and preclude steps urgently needed to provide for the common defense. Resources should be applied differently, namely to development and deployment of effective strategic defenses and to less ambitious ICBM modernization programs--programs that are compatible both with U.S. deterrent requirements and with verifiable arms-control agreements.