Midgetman in Wonderland

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The U.S. needs a new small missile with a single warhead. Or should it be bigger and have three warheads? A mobile missile, the Reagan Administration has said, will be less vulnerable to a first strike and thus produce a more stable arms-control situation. Or should mobile missiles, as the Administration has also said, be banned in any new arms agreement? "I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," said Alice to the Caterpillar in Wonderland. "Being so many sizes in a day is very confusing." Her lament & fits the debate over the proposed Midgetman missile.

The original goal was to build a missile that could survive a Soviet attack in sufficient numbers to pose a credible threat of retaliation. The big, three-warhead Minuteman is vulnerable to destruction in its silos. The ten- warhead MX is no answer. Though it was supposed to be mobile, the Pentagon could never come up with an acceptable basing mode. The 50 MX's that Congress has agreed to fund are to be parked in Minuteman silos, where they too could be sitting ducks.

Enter Midgetman, the one-warhead missile recommended in 1983 by a presidential commission headed by onetime National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. At 38,000 lbs., it would be small enough to be hauled around by a trucklike vehicle. The Soviets could never pinpoint its location, and to destroy the entire area over which 500 or so Midgetmen might roam would require launching nearly every warhead at the Kremlin's command. Congress and the Administration embraced Midgetman, and the Air Force produced a design. The fiscal 1987 budget proposes spending $1.4 billion, double this year's figure, for development.

But the Pentagon, upset at not getting the 100 big MX missiles that it originally requested, is bridling at the cost of Midgetman--perhaps $44 billion eventually. Defense officials and congressional allies contend that the expense could be cut in half by building 170 "Super-Midgetman" missiles, each weighing 90,000 lbs. and carrying three warheads, which would still be mobile. That would defeat the purpose, cry Midgetman boosters. Reducing the number of launchers, making them larger and therefore harder to move quickly, and putting more warheads on each would make the entire arsenal more vulnerable to surprise attack. A secret report to be presented this week or next to the Pentagon by a panel of experts headed by M.I.T. Dean John Deutch reportedly favors the one-warhead idea.

The Scowcroft commission thought that if both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. built small mobile missiles, neither side would feel tempted to launch (or feel threatened by) a first strike. But the Administration last fall suddenly proposed in Geneva that all mobile missiles be banned. Moscow is developing two types of mobile missiles that the Pentagon fears will add dangerously to Soviet striking power.

Further muddying the debate, is that some advocates of increasing the Midgetman's size actually do not want the missile but hope to divert funds to the MX. Amid the confused crossfire, Washington is in danger of losing sight of the basic strategic issue involved: a small mobile missile can help make America's land-based arsenal more secure while at the same time making the nuclear balance more stable.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington