An Uncontrollable Tomahawk?

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Mighty. Powerful. Threatening. The battleship New Jersey steaming off the coast of Beirut looks all of these things. But had she been armed with nuclear SLCMs she might not have been there at all, considering her presence could have escalated U. S. involvement. Will nuclear Tomahawk-carrying ships on show-of-force missions drive potential crises out of control?

On 31 May 1984, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to the 1985 Department of Defense Authorization Act to ban deployment of any sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) designed to carry a nuclear warhead. This amendment did not constitute a legal basis to prevent deployment of nuclear-armed Toma­hawk (TLAM-N) SLCMs, and deployment was begun in June 1984, as previously authorized by Congress.

In September 1984, the House-Senate Conference Committee reached agreement on the 1985 Defense Au­thorization Act, which was subsequently passed by the Congress and signed by the President. The act contains no restrictions on deployment of nuclear-armed SLCMs. The conferees’ decision to delete the proposed House restric­tions was explained on the House floor as follows:

“In view of the deployment of nuclear-armed sea- launched cruise missiles by the Soviet Union since 1962, and the absence of existing reliable means whereby the presence (or absence), range, warhead or capabilities of sea-launched cruise missiles can be veri­fied, the conferees do not believe that a moratorium on the deployment of nuclear-armed Tomahawk sea- launched cruise missiles would be consistent with the national security interest of the United States.”

The conferees, however, directed the President to sub­mit a report to the Congress by 15 March 1985 that will do two'things. First, describe an arms control method by which it would be possible to determine whether a cruise missile designed to be launched from a naval vessel is conventionally armed or nuclear armed and by which it would be possible to effectively verify an arms control limitation on the number of cruise missiles that are armed with nuclear warheads and deployed on naval vessels. Second, state whether the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of Central Intelligence have agreed that the method described would be a high-confidence method as applied by the United States to cruise missiles of another nation and would be an acceptable method for use when applied by another nation to cruise missiles of the United States.

The message is clear—in the future, the surface Navy will be affected by arms control much more than it has been in the past.

Background: The primary goal of SALT II negotiations, begun in 1972, was to replace the interim agreement reached under SALT I with a long-term comprehensive treaty providing broad limits on strategic offensive weap­ons systems, including new types. During the negotia­tions, it became clear that there was fundamental disagree­ment between the United States and the Soviet Union on two major issues: how cruise missiles were to be ad­dressed, and whether the new Soviet “Backfire” bomber would be considered a heavy bomber.

During SALT II agreements, White House National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger used the ploy of offer­ing up a cruise missile system that did not exist. He of­fered to limit what was then a nonsystem to a maximum range of 3,000 kilometers. Kissinger then pushed for a cruise missile program that would fulfill his bargaining position.¹

The SALT II agreement signed by President Jimmy Carter in June 1979 limited the number of long-range cruise missiles per heavy bomber to 20. A protocol to SALT II, valid until 31 December 1981, limited the range of sea-launched cruise missiles to 600 kilometers.

“Good” and “Bad” Weapons: Arms control is much more than mere numbers. Although more armaments do not guarantee more security, fewer weapons may decrease rather than increase stability. Various criteria forjudging whether weapons can be classified as “good” or “bad” have been suggested.

Morton H. Halperin, a pioneer in strategic nuclear thinking, established criteria calculated to achieve stability

through mutually assured deterrence. This means doing nothing that would undermine the adversary’s capability to retaliate successfully. Halperin postulates that as long as each side knows it has little to gain from striking first and also knows that it can retaliate with a devastating blow, there is mutual deterrence.

According to Halperin’s thesis, good weapons are in­vulnerable to nuclear attack; therefore, there is not pres­sure to “use ’em or lose ’em.” Good weapons also are not themselves accurate and/or powerful enough to attack the adversary’s military targets in a first strike.

Bad weapons have the opposite characteristics. They are vulnerable and sufficiently powerful, accurate, and fast to knock out the adversary’s retaliatory force. The MX missile is a bad weapon under Halperin’s thesis.

It is also frequently argued that a defense system, such as the antiballistic missile (ABM) or Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), is bad because it could blunt a retaliatory blow and thus encourage an adversary protected by a de­fense system to launch a first strike. But it can also be argued that even an imperfect defense system would radi­cally complicate the planning and execution of an adver­sary’s first strike and thereby deter him from making one.

Other criteria for judging weapons have also been de­fined. In the Pastoral Letter, the bishops stated two criteria should be used in tandem. The first concerns the relation­

ship of technology, politics, and ethics. For example, MIRVing has made arms control, and therefore progres­sive disarmament, much more difficult. The second con­cerns the cost of weapons. Human needs are great, and we should not spend scarce funds on systems that may inten­sify the danger of the arms race rather than enhance the purpose of deterrence—to prevent nuclear war.

Albert Wohlstetter, a pioneer of strategic nuclear doc­trine, suggests different criteria forjudging weapons. He stresses the need for systems whose use would be credible and save lives should deterrence fail. For example, the U. S. threat of massive retaliation against Soviet cities should the Soviet Navy employ nuclear weapons against the U. S. Navy in a localized confrontation is mutually suicidal and therefore not credible. This would not be a valid deterrent against the postulated Soviet action.

A valid deterrent to a Soviet naval nuclear attack is a capability to respond in kind. Whether judged by Halper­in’s, the Pastoral Letter’s, or Wohlstetter’s criteria, SLCMs are good weapons.

• They are not highly vulnerable because of their maneu­verability and potential wide dispersion.
• They are not themselves relatively powerful (as nuclear weapons go) and not appropriate for a first strike.
• They are credible because they are small and flexible enough to be used incrementally in accordance with the situation.
• They are not expensive.

How Congress Views Nuclear-Armed SLCMs: Assess­ing nuclear-armed SLCMs in the context of “good” and “bad” criteria is not a straightforward operational re­search task. The Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus cited a number of arguments for and against nuclear SLCMs at the time the House of Representatives voted to ban deployment of Tomahawk TLAM-Ns.²

The caucus’s arguments for nuclear SLCMs include the following:

• Nuclear Tomahawk deployment will improve the flexi­bility and effectiveness of the Navy in projecting power ashore. The Navy could move from a fleet centered on 15 nuclear-capable aircraft carriers to a fleet with potentially more than 140 nuclear strike platforms. This force could threaten areas of the Soviet Union not now targetable by naval forces, thus stretching the Soviets’ air defenses be­yond their capabilities. This new SLCM force could also provide flexibility in Third World areas facing a Soviet threat. The U. S. Navy should have the flexibility to re­spond to a Soviet incursion with forces more effective than the present conventional weapons and troops, but less pro­vocative or destructive than a strategic nuclear strike.
• Tomahawk deployment would increase the survivability

Because the MX missile, facing page, is powerful, accurate, and fast enough to knock out an adversary’s retaliatory force, and because it is vulnerable and very expensive, it is classified as a “bad” weapon. Tomahawk’s opposite charac­teristics make it a “good” weapon, and when deployed on submarines, it provides us with a survivable nuclear reserve.

of the U. S. naval deterrent by dispersing the fleet’s nu­clear capabilities beyond aircraft carriers to cruisers, de­stroyers, and battleships, which previously had no nuclear strike capability. By deploying these missiles, the Navy disperses its nuclear retaliatory threat so widely that any Soviet attempt to attack the U. S. sea-based deterrent would be virtually doomed.

► Nuclear-armed SLCMs, especially when deployed on submarines, will serve as an additional secure strategic reserve. This would provide the United States with a cred­ible and survivable nuclear arsenal that could be used in a limited nuclear conflict against targets of naval interest, such as ports or naval airbases, or in a strike against mili­

The bad news is that many U. S. allies, like Japan, greet U. S. ships possibly carrying nuclear weapons and visiting their ports with protests and demonstrations. The good news is that nuclear Tomahawk deployments on more than 140 platforms could threaten areas of the Soviet Union not now targetable by naval forces.

SYGMA (GRAIG DAVIS)

tary or industrial targets in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, or elsewhere.

• Nuclear SLCMs are the least expensive nuclear deter­rent the United States has ever developed. The three-mil- lion-dollar-per-missile price tag is virtually nothing to pay for a weapon that secures a second-strike capability and augments the strategic reserve—especially when com­pared to other strategic programs such as the MX, which will cost more than $70 million per missile.
• Finally, impending Soviet deployment of new nuclear SLCMs (the SS-NX-21 and a yet undesignated follow-on missile) makes it essential for the United States to move ahead with its nuclear SLCM program. Although the Sovi­ets have long had nuclear SLCMs, their new missiles pose a much greater threat to the United States than any previ­ously deployed. The greater range, speed, and accuracy of the new SLCMs makes these weapons particularly threat­ening to the United States since they allow the Soviet Navy to target vital tactical and strategic assets at a safe standoff distance from U. S. coasts. To deter the Soviets from ever using these weapons, the United States must be able to pose a similar threat to the Soviet Union. If the Soviets know that any use of their nuclear SLCMs will provoke a U. S. response in kind, they will have few in-

centives to initiate such an exchange.

Although it would have been preferable if both sides had chosen not to deploy these new weapons, the Soviets “started” the SLCM race, and it is now too late to put the nuclear SLCM genie back in the bottle. The pace of Soviet SLCM development indicates their commitment to ex­ploiting the potential of cruise missile technologies. It would be naive to expect that a unilateral U. S. halt of the nuclear Tomahawk program would lead the Soviets to abandon their programs.

Opponents of nuclear SLCMs argue the following points:

• By replacing sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in their present second-strike retaliatory mission, SLCMs make them available for a first-strike force against hard Soviet military targets. As SLBMs (such as the Trident II D-5) become more accurate, the Soviets will view SLCM developments as part of a larger U. S. attempt to attain a counterforce capability. Thus, they will be encouraged to accelerate their efforts for similar capabilities, resulting in decreased security for both sides.
• The United States does not need additional warheads to threaten targets of naval interest, such as ports or naval air bases. It is far from certain that a tactical nuclear war could be kept limited for long, since it involves attacks on Soviet territory that would be difficult to distinguish from strategic strikes. In addition, these attacks would inevita­bly result in substantial damage to Soviet society. Deploy­ing nuclear SLCMs in support of a warfighting strategy will only further contribute to the mistaken belief that a nuclear war can be controlled or won, when, in actuality, any use of nuclear weapons will more likely result in a massive and mutually devastating exchange.
• The nuclear SLCM seriously threatens future prospects for verifiable arms control agreements. Since the nuclear Tomahawk is externally indistinguishable from the con­ventional Tomahawk, its presence cannot be easily de­tected through national technical means of verification.

If national technical means are insufficient, any limits on nuclear SLCMs would require either intrusive on-site warhead inspections—which would probably be unac­ceptable to either side and may not even be fully effective— or “counting rules” which treat each SLCM carrier as a nuclear weapons platform. Such rules, by assuming that each carrier holds the maximum number of SLCMs, would greatly inflate the number permitted in any agree­ment. Although any SLCM negotiation will be complex, a total ban on SLCM deployment will be far easier to verify than some future numerical ceiling.

• The actual military use of the nuclear SLCM has been questioned by some critics, who suspect that the missile will never be able to perform its warfighting mission and who argue against the desirability of transforming the en­tire U. S. fleet into a strategic target. The proliferation of nuclear weapons at sea may indeed complicate Soviet planning, but it will also increase Soviet incentives to tar­get the entire Navy for immediate destruction in any future conflict. This would accelerate Soviet antisubmarine and antiship warfare efforts and thereby reduce the survivabil­ity of U. S. warships.
• Soviet SLCM development does not really justify U. S. development. The Soviet threat is far from new. The Sovi­ets have had nuclear-armed antiship SLCMs since the 1950s and nuclear land-attack SLCMs since the 1960s. Neither of these concerned U. S. strategic planners, in large part because the United States had, and has, carrier- based' nuclear-capable aircraft available to deter the use of Soviet SLCMs. Although the new Soviet SLCMs have improved—with increased range, accuracy, and speed— their deployment does not provide a rationale for the nu­clear Tomahawk, but rather demonstrates the need for arms control covering this type of weapon.

Finally, the United States—even with technologically superior SLCMs—would ultimately lose a SLCM arms race, because the United States, unlike the Soviet Union, has its major targets (the capital, industrial centers, and military installations) near its coasts and within range of an SLCM. Consequently, the United States is more vul­nerable to SLCMs than the Soviet Union and should there­fore lead the fight for a ban on deployment.

• Potential deployment of nuclear SLCMs on any U. S. ship will ultimately undercut the use of the U. S. Navy to show the flag abroad and could transform all naval shows of force into exercises in nuclear saber rattling. There are