Viewing page 18 of 23
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
Articles Dispelling Myths About Verification of Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles George N Lewis Sally K. Ride, John S. Townsend It is widely believed that an arms control limit on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles would be nearly impossible to verify. Among the reasons usually given are: these weapons are small, built in nondistinctive industrial facilities, deployed on a variety of ships and submarines, and difficult to distinguish from their conventionally armed counterparts. In this article, it is argued that the covert production and deployment of nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles would not be so straightforward. A specific arms control proposal is described, namely a total ban on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles. This proposal is used to illustrate how an effective verification scheme might be construed. THE UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION ARE NOW engaged in negotiations to reduce their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons. These Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) would limit both the number of strategic delivery systems such as ballistic missiles and bombers and the total number of nuclear warheads that these systems carry. The Soviets have insisted that sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) be limited under START; U.S. objections have centered on the difficulty of verifying such limits without an unacceptable degree of intrusiveness, Following the Washington summit in December 1987, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev issued a joint communique which stated that "the sides shall find a mutually acceptable solution to the question of limiting the deployment of long-range, nuclear-armed SLCMs." Nonetheless, SLCMs remain one of the key obstacles to completion of START. To date, no progress has been made on this issue. The prospect that disagreement over SLCM verification could greatly delay or even prevent the successful conclusion of START requires that this verification problem receive careful analysis. U.S. and Soviet SLCMs To understand the issues associated with verification of limits on SLCMs it is necessary to review the characteristics of U.S. and Soviet SLCMs and the numbers deployed by the two countries. There are several types of SLMCs, of widely varying ranges, designed for ship attack or land attack, carrying nuclear or conventional warheads. The START negotiations will determine which types will be controlled under the treaty. In 1983 the United States began deployment of a new SLCM, the Tomahawk. The Tomahawk (Fig. 1) is a small, unpiloted jet aircraft, which flies subsonically and is capable of highly accurate delivery of nuclear or conventional warheads. There are several Tomahawk variants, which have essentially identical airframes, but with internal differences to accommodate the different warheads and different missions. The short-range, anti-ship variant, which carries only a conventional warhead, has an operational range of approximately 450 km and uses radar to seek its target. There are three long-range, land-attack variants: one carries a nuclear warhead, has a range of over 2500 km, and uses terrain contour matching to update its inertial guidance; the other two carry conventional warheads (either submunitions, or a unitary warhead), have about half the range (because the conventional warheads leave less room for fuel), and have additional guidance based on digital scene matching in the terminal phase to achieve the precise accuracy required for conventional munitions(1). All Tomahawk variants are deployed in canisters and can be launched in a variety of ways and from a variety of platforms (Fig. 2). There are currently about 70 U.S. surface ships and submarines capable of firing Tomahawks, and current plans for this number to increase to nearly 200. The United States has procured approximately 370 nuclear nuclear and 1650 conventional Tomahawks to date and plans to purchase about 2000 more Tomahawks between now and 1994, including approximately 390 nuclear ones (2). The only other SLCM deployed by the United States is the Harpoon, a conventionally armed, anti-ship weapon with a range of about 100 km. The Soviet Union has deployed SLCMs since the early 1960s. Over the years they developed several short-range models, designed primarily for ship attack. Their ranges vary from approximately 50 to 550 km, and most are capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. All are larger than the Tomahawk and are launched from surface ship or submarine launchers, are not from torpedo tubes (3). It is estimated, based on a count of launchers, that the Soviet Union currently has approximately 1000 short-range, dual-capable SLCMs deployed on a wide variety of surface ships and submarines. The number of Soviet short-range SLCMs that carry nuclear warheads is unknown, but it has been estimated that roughly 400 of these short-range Soviet SLCMs may be nuclear armed (4). In 1986 the Soviets began deploying their first long-range, land-attack SLCM, the SS-N-21. This missile appears to be quite similar to the Tomahawk. It has a small jet engine, flies subsonically and at low altitudes, and is small enough to be launched from torpedo tubes. At present there in only a nuclear-armed version of the SS-N-21. It is believed that at most a few tens are currently deployed and on only a few submarines. Figure 3 provides an overview of the types and ranges of SLCMs of both countries. ______ G.N. Lewis, a physicist, is a Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. S.K. Ride is a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093. J.S. Townsend is a professor of physics at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711. 10 NOVEMBER 1989 Articles 765
