Cheney Pulls Risky Missiles Off Aircraft

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, responding to growing concerns about safety problems with a short-range nuclear-tipped attack missile carried by American bombers, has ordered the Air Force to take the weapon off aircraft on alert status.

In an interview with The Times, Cheney said the missile--called the SRAM-A, for short-range attack missile--suffers from a “special problem” that makes it too risky to leave on aircraft that are parked on runways ready to be dispatched rapidly on nuclear missions.

Cheney’s action could affect almost 1,000 missiles carried aboard three types of intercontinental bombers stationed at 11 bases across the nation.

Examination of the SRAM-A’s safety problems was part of a sweeping review of weapons safety by a new panel established by the Defense and Energy departments. Other warheads, including the types used on the Trident missile and on nuclear artillery shells based in Europe, are under review, but Cheney said he has limited his action to the SRAM-A until he receives the recommendations of the review panel.

While the SRAM-A order was based on safety concerns, it also reflects a profound change in attitudes toward national security as the Cold War wanes. Cheney’s decision marks the first time in the last 20 years that the United States, citing safety concerns, has removed an entire class of warheads at once from alert status.

No comparable action has been taken, so far as is known, since the late 1960s, when a B-52 bomber with nuclear weapons aboard crashed off the coast of Spain. That crash and the resultant scattering of its atomic weapons created an international furor, and the Pentagon discontinued the practice of carrying nuclear weapons aboard alert bombers aloft.

“It says something about the mood” of superpower relations, said William M. Arkin, director of nuclear research at Greenpeace, a group of environmental activists, commenting on the SRAM decision. “What they’re saying is that deterrence with a thousand fewer warheads is just fine. Nobody feels less safe.”

Safety concerns about the SRAM-A center on the danger that it contains highly volatile rocket fuel, which could catch fire and possibly explode in an accident, scattering the weapon’s deadly plutonium, officials said.

The problem came to light within the Defense and Energy departments in 1980, after a B-52 bomber caught fire on the runway of Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. Investigations of the incident raised the possibility that, although a nuclear detonation was considered unlikely, a fire could lead to an explosion and the dispersal of plutonium.

Cheney acted less than two weeks after the directors of the nation’s three government laboratories, Energy Department facilities where the weapons were designed, urged him in private meetings to remove the missiles from the special high-readiness status.

Cheney said his decision was made to “enhance the degree of safety above what was already I think a safe procedure.” Nonetheless, he said, “The labs design these systems and build them, and if they express concerns about them I feel I’ve got an obligation as secretary to act accordingly.”

But Cheney, who has regularly warned that the Soviets have continued to modernize their nuclear arsenal at an aggressive pace, added that he is not worried about the military effect of the move.

He noted that the nuclear-tipped missiles could be put back on aircraft in a crisis. The SRAM-A was designed to clear corridors in the Soviets’ air defenses for other bombers to move through.

The Defense Department is developing a successor for the SRAM-A, called the SRAM-II, and expects to deploy the new weapon in 1994. The program was delayed for a year by engineering difficulties, but is now proceeding without substantial congressional opposition.

Critics of the program say Cheney’s action could change that, though unintentionally.

“If they can live without the SRAM-As, they need to answer the question of whether they need the SRAM-II,” said Greenpeace researcher Arkin.