[ RadSafe ] The questionable future of nuclear weapons and the ICBM

[John Jacobus]

>From the Slate at
http://www.slate.com/id/2117172/nav/ais/

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war stories
What's Next for Our Brave Missileers?

Are there good "alternative uses" for ICBMs—or are the
missile men just looking for something to do?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 21, 2005, at 3:06 PM PT

For a while, it looked as though the intercontinental
ballistic missile—the 20th century's most awesome
emblem of bristle and power—was headed into history's
dustbin along with other Cold War relics and detritus.
But this week, Gen. Lance Lord, commander of U.S. Air
Force Space Command, told the National Defense
University Foundation that, to the contrary, the ICBM
still has a bright and potent future.

As Walter Pincus reports in today's Washington Post,
Gen. Lord is preparing "alternative uses" for the
ICBMs—such as arming them with non-nuclear warheads
that can attack underground bunkers or any other
target with stunning swiftness.

"The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the
Cold War have actually increased the importance of our
Minuteman III ICBM," Gen. Lord declared. And R&D
programs for new intercontinental missiles and
payloads—with names like Prompt Global Strike, Common
Aero Vehicle, Joint Warfighting Space and
Operationally Responsive Space—are, as he put it, "up
and running."

What is going on here?

There are two ways to look at this development. First,
from a conceptual standpoint, military strategists
over the past two decades have written about extending
the global reach of American armed power while
reducing dependence on overseas bases. What could be a
longer reach than firing weapons from U.S. territory
with ballistic missiles that can reach their
target—any target, anywhere—in a matter of minutes or,
at most, an hour?

Second, from what some may deem a more cynical—or
others a more pertinent—point of view, it may well be
that the Air Force missile men are simply,
desperately, looking for something to do.

America's ICBM force was once a vast and mighty
enterprise—1,000 missiles, armed with over 2,000
nuclear warheads, buried in blast-hardened silos, and
surrounded by security complexes and launch-control
centers spread across 40,000 square miles of U.S.
territory. Now the force has dwindled to 500 missiles,
the Minuteman IIIs, each with three warheads (but
being converted to carry a single, more powerful
warhead). The 50 MX/Peacekeeper missiles, which
dominated the U.S. strategic buildup of the 1980s—each
of them carried 10 warheads, which could each unleash
enough explosive power, with enough accuracy, to
destroy Soviet missile silos—have been deemed
obsolete, without controversy; only seven remain, and
they'll be dismantled by September.

And yet, as Gen. Lord noted in his speech (for a
transcript, click here), the Air Force employs "9,000
ICBM professionals"—9,000!—to maintain a mere 500
missiles. He said, in a speech to the same
organization last year, that these "dedicated ICBM
professionals" (back then they numbered "over 10,000")
are "super-busy" till 2009. They're replacing the
Minuteman IIIs' guidance electronics, re-pouring the
solid propellant in the rockets' first and second
stages, re-manufacturing the third stages, and keeping
all the hardware in such immaculate spit and polish
that the missile units boast a 99.5 percent alert
rate.

But, it's all too clear, these officers are looking
for something to do. Back in the 1950s, when the
nuclear arsenal consisted of bombers—men flying
airplanes and training to drop H-bombs over the
targets, manually—Gen. Curtis LeMay, the founder and
leader of the Strategic Air Command, didn't much like
the coming era of missiles. He worried that SAC would
deteriorate from a fighting force into a mere
maintenance crew—"the silent silo-sitters of the
Sixties," he woefully predicted.

Now the silo-sitters aren't even perched on the edge
of their seats. There's not the slightest chance of a
Russian first strike—the nightmare scenario of the
Cold War. In his speech this week, Gen. Lord talked
about the "warrior ethos" that's vital to the Air
Force missileers. He contended that the Minuteman III
service-life extension program perpetuates this ethos.
"There is no better skill to have as a Space
Professional than a complete and comprehensive
appreciation for nuclear operations. It teaches us all
the meaning of 'bomb on target.' It gives us our
'Warrior Ethos' and it has been pivotal in
transforming our command from a research and
development background to an operational Major Command
in our great Air Force."

But come on. It's obvious this general needs a
mission. ICBMs clearly don't fill one these days. So
he's developing a whole new kind of ICBM. He also—in
both speeches—called for "a new generation of 'wizards
of Armageddon' " who can devise new ideas and
strategies for the new missiles. (For an explanation
of this phrase, click here.) 

Which leads us back to the conceptual way of looking
at this development. Is there anything to this notion?
Is it an idea worth exploring? Whether it is or it
isn't, the Air Force wing of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency is looking into it. That's
what the Common Aero Vehicle, which Gen. Lord
mentioned, as well as another program called FALCON,
is all about. (For more details, click here, here, and
here.) The idea is to load a bunch of cluster bombs
into a missile's nose cone and fire the missile in the
vague direction of the target; the CAV ejects, glides
more accurately toward the target (guided by GPS
satellites or other means), then releases the smart
bombs when it comes near.

Congressional committees rejected CAV when the Air
Force put the program in the budget last year. They
wanted to know which missile would boost CAV into its
orbit. They discouraged consideration of using the
current ICBMs for the job, since the Russians and
Chinese might get the wrong idea and react in a
dangerous manner if their radars were to detect a few
dozen Minuteman IIIs lifting off from their launch
pads all of a sudden. So, the Air Force and DARPA have
now also started a new rocket program, the Small
Launch Vehicle.

But wait. During both wars against Iraq and the air
war over Kosovo, B-52, B-1, or B-2 bombers took off in
the morning from bases far away from the theater (in
some cases from their home bases in the United
States), dropped their bombs, then flew home in time
for dinner. There's also the possibility of launching
such attacks from submarines, which can move close to
shore—any shore, anywhere. Subs and bombers are
platforms that certainly don't require the sort of
technical leaps involved in a brand-new, small, and
cheap ICBM.

There's a problem with these solutions. Bombers, when
used in such capacity, are controlled by the combat
commanders (for instance, if the war's in the Persian
Gulf, U.S. Central Command). Submarines are operated
by the Navy. What's left for the missileers?

There may be a geo-strategic aspect to the
intercontinental nonconventional ballistic missile—a
fulfillment of Fortress America unilateralism. John
Pike, who runs the globalsecurity.org Web site, puts
it this way: "After we've turned everybody against us,
when we're all alone and armed to the teeth—when even
the British have kicked us off their bases—we can
still reach out and crush someone."

If that's what's going on, let's have a clear debate
about it. If it's not, then we need to ask what is
going on.

It's reminiscent, in a way, of a scheme devised in the
late 1950s. This was the era of the "missile gap" and
fallout shelters—when the American people first became
all too aware of their vulnerability to nuclear
nightmare—and the military started publicizing the
arms buildup's wondrous consumer benefits. (This was
around the same time that NASA boasted that the space
program had produced Tang and Formica.) In 1959, the
Postmaster General cooperated with the U.S. Navy in
setting up a program called "Missile Mail." The idea
was to create near-instantaneous mail delivery by
sending it via missile. On June 8, 1959, an actual
shipment took place. The nose cone of a Regulus cruise
missile was loaded with 3,000 pieces of mail. The
missile was launched from a Barbero submarine
stationed in the Atlantic Ocean and landed off the
naval auxiliary air station—22 minutes later. The
experiment was never repeated.

It's too late to revive Missile Mail. Now, after all,
we have the Internet. And so we have the non-nuclear
ICBM.

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"Embarrassed, obscure and feeble sentences are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure and feeble thought."
Hugh Blair, 1783

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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