MX: A New Look and a New Math

A commisson proposes a two-phase plan for land missles

After three months of deliberations that included 28 full meetings and consultations with hundreds of experts, the eleven-member Commission on Strategic Forces brought forth its 26-page final report last week. There were few surprises. The blue-ribbon panel, appointed last January by President Reagan as a last-ditch attempt to find a home for the orphan MX missile, recommended the prompt deployment of 100 MX missiles in existing Minuteman silos and research on silo "hardening." For the long term, the panel proposed the development of an unspecified number of smaller (15-ton) single-warhead missiles with a range, like the MX's, of 8,000 miles.

The report argued that the highly accurate, nearly 100-ton MX, with ten warheads, is needed immediately to "remove the Soviet advantage in ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] capability" and goad Russia into serious arms-reduction negotiations. For the 1990s, however, the so-called Midgetman missile must be developed because, with one warhead to the MX's ten, it would make a less tempting target to the Soviets.

To enhance the two-phase plan on Capitol Hill and limit warhead totals, the commission wedded missile deployment to arms control. "The land-based ICBM cannot be preserved without arms control," said Commission Member John Deutch of M.I.T. "This was our truly unanimous view." However, the shift back to single-warhead missiles scrambles the prevailing mathematics of arms control. With this in mind, the commission recommended a different method of calculating strategic threats: counting the number of warheads and their size rather than the number of missiles possessed by each side. While the new math won prepublication plaudits from Pentagon officials, it could further complicate the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in Geneva.

The commission also had a creative response to the issue of missile vulnerability. In his 1980 campaign for the presidency, Ronald Reagan warned that a "window of vulnerability" hung over U.S. missile silos, opening them to a pre-emptive first-strike attack by the Soviet Union. So strong were his admonitions that Congress in the past 18 months has rejected two Administration-backed basing modes for the beleaguered MX because they did not solve that problem. The commission's approach: redefine the concept. While admitting that survivability of fixed targets, such as MX missile silos, "may not outlast this century," the panel argued that the triad of bombers plus land-and sea-based strategic weapons, "assessed collectively and not in isolation," guarantees deterrence.

At $19.9 billion, the plan's five-year price tag is $3 billion less than that of the Administration's dense pack proposal, defeated last December. And, like the recently enacted Social Security-reform package, the recommendations represent a bipartisan political compromise. But the proposed solution still faces problems on Capitol Hill. The commission has argued that the combination of recommendations is a seamless package, but an effort in Congress to jettison the MX and vote only on the Midgetman seems likely. "Few, if any, will consider our recommendations an optimal solution," summed up retired Air Force Lieut. General Brent Scowcroft, the panel's chairman. "If such were available, this commission probably would not have been convened." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.