Dense pack Q & A:
Powers, Thomas
DENSE PACK Q & A SHOULD IT REALLY GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD? BACK IN 1967 the Institute for Defense Analysis produced a multi-volume study generally re-ferred to as Strut X - for "strategic...
...And yet the B-52s are still effective, like the Poseidon sub-marines and the Minuteman itself...
...Now we are doing the same thing, with even less justification...
...8. How long will it last...
...This is what scientists refer to as an order of magnitude...
...If you think the situation is scary now, wait till you start breaking into a cold sweat every time you read in the paper about a new sunspot cycle...
...What is dense pack for...
...But since it's not easy to follow the debate over dense pack without having the details firmly in mind, here goes again: The idea is to base 100 MX missiles - now renamed "Peacekeeper" - in a "segmented column arrangement" or "array," covering an area 1.5 miles wide and 14 miles long...
...Some would even call it insur-mountable...
...The terms of SALT II, which both the United States and the Soviet Union are pledged to honor, provide for new mobile missile systems to be built by both sides...
...Federal law will require the Air Force to issue an environmental impact statement for the proposed dense pack basing area at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming, but past practice suggests they will make no mention of the possible environmental results of an attack...
...A full-scale attack on dense pack would involve two hundred warheads with a total megatonnage of 200-1000, the equivalent of up to one billion tons of TNT...
...The Pentagon is talking of silos protected with so much steel and concrete they could withstand blast pressures of up to 100,000 pounds per square inch (psi...
...5.If fratricide works with "closely spaced basing," the Pentagon's phrase for dense pack, why won't it work with Minuteman...
...There were lots of other ideas in Strat X, but they all had something large and obvious wrong with them...
...The Pentagon, which may be presumed to present its case in its rosiest light, con-cedes that by the "mid to late 1990s, the Soviets may seek technological break-throughs, which may allow them to de-ploy low-yield, highly accurate, earthpenetrating weapons that could threaten the hard CSB capsules and avoid frat-ricide...
...Reagan was elected following a cam-paign in which he said the United States had "unilaterally disarmed" during the 1970s...
...Strat X proposed a number of ideas...
...Following are ten questions which the Senate ought to ask before agreeing to let the administration take its plan back to the drawing board...
...if the Pentagon hasn't really decided on which array, it hasn't got a plan...
...BACK IN 1967 the Institute for Defense Analysis produced a multi-volume study generally re-ferred to as Strut X - for "strategic experimental...
...Thus, the system's main defen-der admits it may be good for only ten years...
...They ought to be required to explain why...
...Not long, it seems...
...Each of the mis-siles would be in a hardened silo - there is a bit of sleight of hand on this point, as we shall see - about 1800 feet from its neighbors...
...The rationale is twofold: (a) if we get the system the Russians will be deterred and there won't be an attack, and (b) if there is an attack we won't be worrying about the environment...
...3.Does the Department of Defense really know which array will work best...
...6.Is ' 'superhardening'' really possible...
...The answer is that the Pentagon really wants the "greatly enhanced hard-target kill capability" promised by Peacekeeper...
...If the Pentagon can't guarantee the Russians won't adopt a launch-on-warning policy - and how could they possibly guaran-tee such a thing...
...When a president really wants something he can find many ways to keep it alive until Congress is willing to give it to him...
...So what is the real reason the Reagan administration wants to build it...
...The whole concept of frat-ricide was worked up in the mid-1970s by the Air Force, which argued that the Soviets could not really threaten Min-uteman...
...One was for a missile to be buried deep beneath the southern slopes of mountains - but over the years it was learned that most of the major mountains in the U.S...
...We can imagine the anguished howls of protest from Paul Nitze and Richard Perle if the Russians engaged in similar wordplay...
...The president's new plan received a crushing rebuff when the House voted against the program some weeks ago, but no one should conclude that the MX and dense pack are dead...
...Peacekeeper is not mobile at all...
...Peacekeepers would be so close together the missiles attacking one of them would destroy others attacking a neighbor...
...One major reason MX has been pushed so re-lentlessly is that it fulfills an unwritten promise to give the next big weapons sys-tem to the Air Force...
...The addition of a sec-ond 100 Peacekeepers - 200 is the number the Air Force has been planning since the very beginning - will double the price...
...Not only that, but new Trident D-5 missiles will offer just as much "hard-target kill capability" as Peacekeeper...
...This is a short-sighted approach...
...But even if it works to begin with, which many experts doubt, how long will it take for the Soviets to find a way to destroy it...
...Minuteman is estimated at 2000 psi...
...THOMAS POWERS...
...Another idea called for put-ting a new generation of missiles in air-craft - but that would run up zillions of dollars in fuel costs, the missiles would not be accurate, and from time to time one of the planes would crash, alarming the public...
...But the Trident submarines already give us that, and will probably go on doing so long after Peacekeeper is hostage to new methods of Soviet attack...
...Eventually Minuteman would be obsolete, or threatened by Soviet missiles, or both, and something would be needed to take its place...
...2.What will be the environmental impact of a full-scale nuclear attack on dense pack...
...Thus a vote for'dense pack is in effect a vote against SALT II, a kind of backdoor refusal to ratify...
...Why not superharden Minuteman silos and put them close together...
...That means it could destroy Russian missiles in their silos, a prospect which we find so alarming where Minuteman is concerned that we're planning to build dense pack...
...The dangers posed by LOW are real, and would all but guarantee an all-out city-busting spasm war in which both sides would try to exterminate the other...
...Not so long.ago it was only wildmen who spoke of Russian missiles hardened to 10,000 psi...
...That means alternating rows of three silos and two silos down the length of the basing area...
...The cheapest response to such a threat is to prepare to fire your own missiles as soon as you learn they are under attack...
...Over the years President Reagan has poked much fun at our "aging B-52s," which, he says, are often older than the men who fly them...
...His plan for a new missile system has got more readily apparent flaws than just about any other major pro-posal put forward in our lifetimes, how-ever old we may be...
...In-deed, that's one of the reasons they want it...
...It is a rule of thumb that when the DoD admits an open question, it is only because it has found itself totally unable to make up its mind...
...Weapons are made to be used, and we ought to think about the possible results...
...then the United States ought to start giving the Russians our latest computer technology...
...Dense pack will be expensive, it will invite expansion, it will not last long, and it will do things which other systems are already doing just as well...
...But the Reagan administration, after much floundering, has finally come up with a new idea for protecting a land-based missile system - "dense pack" - and by now most of us have been exposed to at least one explanation of its essential elements...
...Much debris would enter the troposphere, with possible effects on the weather...
...At the very least this would lift many thousands of tons of debris into the atmosphere, creat-ing a massive fallout plume downwind of the target area...
...The former-MX is a big, threatening missile - 7000-mile range, 10 MIRVs carrying warheads with a yield of 350 kilotons, accurate enough to come within a tenth of a nautical mile of the target half the time...
...Now, suddenly, we are talking of a hundred thousand, ten times the wildest previous estimates...
...The Pentagon admits Peacekeeper will have a "greatly enhanced hard-target kill capability...
...In the present instance the array is the plan...
...Does it make sense to spend billions on a weapons system which may not last even a decade...
...But Reagan has based his policy on national defense on the promise we are going to do something...
...Whence comes this amazing breakthrough...
...Such a system could fail mechanically...
...This smacks of legalistic sleight of hand...
...When the Russians took advantage of an ambiguity in SALT I - a limitation to increasing missile size to "fifteen percent," which Moscow inter-preted to mean fifteen percent in height and width, giving a total volume increase much greater than fifteen percent - critics in this country raised the roof...
...It will be based in a fixed silo so immobile nothing but a direct hit could budge it...
...The justification claimed for dense pack is that it will give us a reliable means to retaliate in the event of a Soviet attack...
...4.Is this only the tip of the iceberg...
...The idea is that the missiles would be protected by an effect called fratricide - the destruction of brother missiles by ones that have already detonated...
...The "initial operating capability" (IOC) for dense pack will be 1986, the year which Air Force planners have had in mind for years...
...To destroy Peacekeeper, Soviet missiles would have to be right on target with a big warhead...
...They invite disbelief...
...Minuteman was, after all, the Air Force's principal asset...
...The system's major justification is that it will be survivable, more or less invulner-able to Soviet attack...
...The DoD statement describing dense pack says "different array shapes will create different fratricide problems for the Soviets" and recommends "a column or segmented column arrangement...
...9.Is the Pentagon trying to say Trident submarines will be vulnerable by the mid-1990s...
...7.Is dense pack playing games with SALT...
...The United States had recently completed its deployment of 1000 Minuteman missiles and was ask-ing itself what came next...
...THOMAS POWERS not to conclude he wants to build dense pack for only one reason: because he said he would...
...are in ranges running north and south, which means the slopes are east and west, thus failing to offer protection from Soviet missiles coming down over the North Pole...
...Finding a way to pro-tect a missile from an accurate nuclear weapon presents an extremely difficult problem...
...Frankly, these figures come as something of a shock...
...This leads to the final question...
...The next test for dense pack will come in the Senate, where Re-publicans are in a majority, and where the president will doubtless follow a cautious, minimal strategy to keep the project alive...
...Many critics say five...
...A third idea proposed a new missile system on submarine tractors which would crawl over the beds of the Great Lakes, and a fourth idea suggested a kind of shell game - hiding the missile among many possible shelters...
...There has been much talk of accidental war in the years since 1945, but most of it has been off the wall...
...Since an ICBM takes only twenty-five minutes to reach its target, the response to a warning has got to be pretty much automatic...
...It's hard not to conclude he wants to build dense pack for only one reason: because he said he would...
...Jimmy Carter thought he killed the B-1 bomber once and for all back in 1977, just as President Kennedy had when he decided against an earlier version...
...1. Will the Soviets respond by adopting a policy of launch on warning (LOW) for their land-based missiles...
...The administration has been saying it falls within the SALT II provisions because it will be con-tained in its own removable capsule, and adds that they might be moved from time to time...
...Peacekeepers will be in superhard silos, meaning the Soviets would have to deto-nate their warheads on or under the ground in order to destroy the target...
...The Pentagon estimates that 70 Peacekeepers would survive an attack, providing more than enough warheads - 700 - for a devastating retaliatory blow against the Soviet Union...
...This is taken as a basic fact of life in Washington...
...It has been years since we have heard much about "cost-effectiveness" from the Defense Department, but the truth is some things cost more than they're worth...
...Is there an earthquake fault zone near Cheyenne, Wyoming...
...The cost estimate for dense pack is $26 billion, but most experts think some sort of anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) System will not be far behind, pushing the cost to $40 billion...
...He has claimed that the Soviets are "ahead" in strategic weaponry, that American systems are decrepit and primi-tive by current standards, that the Soviets will never negotiate seriously until they see we mean to threaten them with new systems, and that all three legs of the strategic "Triad" - bombers, missiles, and submarines - are in urgent need of modernization...
...The old MX plans all called for something truly mobile or at least plausibly mobile...
...The target area itself would be long and thin, like the stab wound of a knife in the surface of the earth...
Vol. 110 • January 1983 • No. 1
