U.S. Scratches Nuclear Targets in Soviet Bloc

For the first time since the advent of the Nuclear Age, a large number of targets in the former Communist world are being deleted from the U.S. nuclear war plan following a two-year, top-secret Pentagon review, according to U.S. sources.

The reductions--well over 1,000 and perhaps more than 2,000--represent about 20% or more of the total group of about 8,500 Soviet Bloc targets that were to be struck by about 12,000 U.S. nuclear weapons in the event of an all-out war, two knowledgeable sources said.

The changes represent a major “peace dividend” provided by the end of the Cold War. They also reflect anticipated reductions in U.S. long-range nuclear weapons as budget cuts and arms control treaties bite into the Pentagon’s arsenal over the next decade.

About 1,000 of the scratched targets are in the former Warsaw Pact states of East Europe. These include former Soviet military bases and command facilities in those countries, as well as the former allies’ military bases and war-making industrial sites, such as steel mills in Bulgaria and tank factories in Czechoslovakia.

The rest of the eliminated targets are in the Soviet Union itself. Some will be removed from the war plan by “scrubbing” targets that were highly dubious to begin with, such as unmanned alternative command posts and reserve airstrips.

Other changes will reduce the number of required weapons by reforming wasteful “overkill” rules, such as dropping four or more weapons on the same target to ensure destruction of such “high value” facilities as underground command centers and setting unnecessarily high “damage expectancy” criteria.

The targeting review appears to be the first step in a long-awaited effort to reform America’s nuclear war plan. It is a significant departure from past practice at the Pentagon, which for decades expanded the list of targets to keep pace with nuclear warhead production.

“With all the weapons they had, they (military planners) seemed to have targeted almost every telephone pole and Communist Party headquarters out in the sticks,” complained one former senior Pentagon official.

Gen. G. Lee Butler, the new chief of the Strategic Air Command, recently told Congress that he intends “to review every single target that is proposed” for future war plans. He also promised to scrutinize “every single weapon that is nominated to be placed on any of those targets.”

Butler, who helped push for targeting reform in his previous job as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strategic plans directorate, said he will judge each target and weapon to ensure that it meets presidential directives on targeting, calling the work “my sanity check of why a target needs to be struck and with how many weapons.”

The targeting review was completed last month by a small team composed of senior Pentagon civilians with little input from other government agencies or the White House. It was endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sent to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney for final approval.

Some of the reforms, such as elimination of the East European targets, already have been incorporated into the current U.S. war plan. Others will be reflected in the next war plan, to be called SIOP-1993, that takes effect Oct. 1, Butler said. SIOP stands for Single Integrated Operations Plan.

Only twice before in the last 45 years have the number of SIOP targets been reduced, but in neither case were the cuts as deep or far-reaching as the current reductions. Even when cuts were made in the past, weapons added to the arsenal through technological advances quickly were assigned new targets to strike.

U.S. military leaders, not civilians, asked for the latest review because “U.S. strategic forces (long-range, nuclear-tipped missiles and bombers) had taken on a life of their own, grown almost mindlessly in our competition with the Soviets,” said a former senior military official.

Congressional, academic and press criticism also created pressure for a searching look at the process by which the Strategic Air Command’s planners chose “ground zeros” for the nuclear warheads and bombs of the Pentagon’s delivery “triad”--bombers, submarine-based missiles and land-based missiles.

Several factors came together to produce the targeting reforms:

The political and military revolutions in Eastern Europe. Most Soviet forces already have been withdrawn from the region, eliminating them as targets, while the six nations of the former Soviet Bloc are no longer viewed as enemies.

Fiscal constraints and the anticipated Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. U.S. defense spending is expected to drop 25% by 1995, and the treaty will reduce the number of U.S. nuclear weapons to about 9,000 from 12,000 during this decade.

The willingness of Cheney, backed by White House National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, to sanction a review and devote enough time to understanding the issues, according to military sources.

As a result of the changes in Eastern Europe and the fiscal pressures at home, the Pentagon “has substantially scaled down” its strategic program, Defense Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress recently, with the goal of “smaller, more affordable, post-START” forces.

At most, 75 B-2 strategic bombers will be purchased, instead of 132 as originally planned, for example, and the Minuteman ICBM force will be cut in half, to 500 missiles, with two rather than three warheads on each of the remaining missiles.

The review’s approach to the Soviet Union was tempered by the “enormous uncertainty” about recent developments in Moscow, including the rising influence of the Soviet military. Even more important, the modernization of Soviet long-range nuclear forces aimed at the United States has continued unabated, Wolfowitz indicated.

The “new thinking” in Soviet defense policy has not curtailed Soviet strategic force improvements in any discernible way, according to intelligence officials, and it appears necessary for the United States to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent posture.

While the number of Soviet nuclear weapons is expected to fall to about 8,000 from 13,000 during the current decade, the remaining weapons will be more accurate and at least as threatening as the larger force, officials maintain.