Our New Euromissiles and Theirs

...What about the one third in Asia that can be transported to sites in the West...

...and the USSR find themselves near war, American strategists have over the past few years put selected, isolated military targets into the Defense Department's Single Integrated Operations Plan...

...Before the diplomats can agree on the provisions of their limited treaties, the weapons designers leapfrog ahead with new generations of nuclear delivery systems that are ever more ingenious, powerful, and difficult to detect...

...The number of countries involved, not to mention the different types of missiles, has further discouraged any efforts to expand the scope of the arms reduction talks...

...France and England have their own nuclear forces, and the British government has agreed to buy the new American Trident missies...

...And considering the size of the cruise missiles, which allows them to be placed in trucks, railway cars and buildings, how does one verify their number...

...half of them would land within roughly 400 yards of their objectives...

...The land-based cruise, launched from trucks that look something like gasoline bulk transporters, is barred from use under SALT II until 1983 (assuming the treaty is honored by both sides pending ratification...

...American analysts estimate that a total of 300 are planned...

...At least 64 of these MIRVed rockets, together carrying a minimum of 512 warheads, are to be placed on four new ballistic missile submarines...

...For example, developing "look down" radar that can spot a relatively small cruise hugging the ground, relay the information to interceptor missiles, and then guide those missiles to thousands of moving targets will be an imposing task for Soviet weapons designers, who do not enjoy their American counterparts' advanced electronic engineering and computer technology...

...The new missile carries three MIRVs (multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles), each packing an explosive force of at least 150 kilotons of dynamite...

...Since the trucks can be moved at random on highways or dirt roads, they are difficult to keep under surveillance and almost invulnerable to enemy attack...

...Beyond the issues associated with the updated Euromissles, there are other equally perplexing matters to be dealt with as well...

...Should the SS-20s in the Urals be part of the count for the purposes of limitations...

...The Kremlin is deploying the Backfire bomber, an impressive craft that can reach the U.S...

...What makes this ominous is the tendency of some strategists to regard as "tactical" weapons that can hit almost on target-In other words, as available for surgical strikes in regional or low-level wars that do not call into play the long range Soviet or American central force strategic arsenals...

...By next year, an airborne version of the cruise will be fitted to B-52 bombers...

...It is particularly suited for devastating strikes against command centers, airfields, and military concentrations...

...The French have just put their fifth nuclear submarine into service, armed with 16 one megaton nuclear missiles...

...BAFFLING THE ARMS CONTROLLERS Our New Euromissiles and Theirs By Mark Hopkins Washington The Soviet Union is now completing emplacement of a new missile system, the SS-20, with a potential for delivering 1,200 nuclear warheads on military and industrial targets in Western Europe within 10 minutes of launching...

...Whatever control salt n might exert over the nuclear arms race'' observed the respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "is being undermined by the European developments...

...Is each launcher assumed to have one, two or three missiles...

...The United States still maintains F- 111 bombers that carry a dozen or more small, highly accurate nuclear bombs...

...How will they "count" the SS-20, for instance...

...is planning to deploy in West Germany, Italy and England will be accompanied by 108 new Pershing ballistic rockets...

...another third, "swing" units capable of aiming at targets in either Western Europe or Asia, are located in the Urals...

...experts believe the Soviets will have at least two missiles for each launcher...

...The 1,000 mile flight from West Germany to Moscow would take the Pershing II only six minutes...

...Its new radar-equipped vidio guidance system, similar to that of the cruise, surveys the land area as it re-enters the atmosphere, and that picture is compared with a digital likeness of the target stored in the computer memory...

...The SS-20 is meant to modernize the Soviet Euromissile arsenal...

...The very intent of the Pershing II missile is to demonstrate to Soviet planners that should they initiate a European war, the nato reponse would be a nuclear assault on Soviet territory at a level below that of an all-out attack involv-ing the American arsenal of Minute-men ICBMs...

...If ultimately 200 are pointed at Western Europe, a total of 1,200 Soviet nuclear warheads would be trained on military and industrial centers vital to NATO defense...

...The 20-foot long subsonic cruise compares the terrain beneath it with a digital map of the course programmed into its small computer...

...Reasoning that it is no longer necessary or credible to threaten a full-scale nuclear confrontation should the U.S...

...Consequently, the United States and its nato allies are planning to field their own force of Euro-missiles in the hope of again tipping the power balance toward the West...

...After all, if the Americans and the Russians dealing with each other one-on-one have produced such meager results in reducing strategic weapons, how could a larger negotiating table with more participants get anywhere...

...the remainder are in the Novosibirsk and Chita regions in Siberia...

...In any event, even assuming Secretary Muskie was right when he said the talks due to get under way later this month show that Washington and Moscow "agree on the importance of arms control negotiations," few doubt the new generation of Soviet and American Euromissiles will be installed before the diplomats can reach any agreement...

...Yet despite their awesome power they have largely escaped the arms control net because Soviet and American negotiators were caught up in bargaining over strategic weapons...

...Though every bit as "strategic" when seen from London, Paris or Bonn as is a Soviet intercontinental missile viewed from Washington, the SS-20 is not covered by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (salt II...

...Air Force Secretary Hans Mark estimates that the $4 billion to be spent on cruise missiles during the next several years will force the Soviets to spend 10 times that amount to create an adequate defense system...

...They are dismantling some sites, but moving the missiles to others that are being left intact...

...The 464 cruise missiles the U.S...

...This presents the USSR with the specter of a saturation attack by low-flying, virtually undetectable 200 kiloton bombs...

...Some 160 launchers and support and fire control facilities for the mobile SS-20s are completed, and about 80 more are being built...

...In the meantime, the prospect for the European theater is that the missile designers will get further and further ahead of the arms controllers...

...The generation-old planes will then become "weapons platforms," capable of unleashing up to 20 missies each within 1,500 miles of a Soviet target...

...and once on its way the missile is difficult, perhaps impossible, to stop...

...from bases in the USSR, but is intended to strike naval and merchant shipping in the European theatre...

...For the past generation that has consisted of SS-4 and SS-5 nuclear rockets-big-bang, but not very accurate weapons targeted on cities and industrial conMark Hopkins, a past contributor to The New Leader, is a specialist in Soviet and Eastern European affairs...

...The SS-20s combine a maximum range of 3,000 miles with impressive accuracy...

...As Secretary of Defense Harold Brown explained in his most recent annual report, this will give the United States "options to attack targets that comprise the Soviet military force structure and political force structure, and to hold back a significant reserve...

...A third of the complexes are deployed west of Kiev and in the Baltic area...

...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a one megaton warhead striking New York City can be expected to kill 1.7 million people outright, injure 2.8 million more, and cause untold casualties from radiation and lack of medical care...

...The centerpiece of the nato response is the pilotless bomber of extraordinary accuracy known as the "cruise missile," described by one defense expert here as "a general's dream and an arms controller's nightmare...

...Most of these weapons are replacing systems that were introduced in Europe in the 1960s...

...Moreover, at $1-1.5 million per cruise-cheap by today's weapons costs-thousands can be fielded...

...In addition to taking a quantitative and qualitative leap forward in the effectiveness of their nuclear strike force, the Soviets seem to be deliberately delaying the retirement of the SS-4s and SS-5s...

...For "the general's dream" is a marvel of technological innovation and precision, incorporating a nose-cone guidance system that virtually assures its 200 kiloton warhead will land within 30-100 yards of a target no less than half the time...

...Pentagon forecasts are that by the mid-1980s anywhere from 50-450 of the older medium-range weapons will still be operational, prompting the suspicion that the Kremlin will offer to trade them off for the new American missiles...

...This suggests that we could be on the threshold of a radical revision of military strategy, for in the new nuclear missile age it may often be cheaper to build offensive weapons than the defense systems needed to counteract them...

...Again, the approach merely matches the advances in weapons technology...

...Whether any strategy based on a limited nuclear exchange is at all feasible-and the highly respected British International Institute for Strategic Studies remains sceptical-one can only hope never to find out...

...arms controllers...

...centrations...

...It is a melancholy fact that, for the foreseeable future, the only real arms control will remain the balance of terror...

...The arms control negotiations, meanwhile, are confronted by a thornier set of problems than those that challenged them for so long during salt n meetings...

...Arms control specialists and military and civilian Soviet affairs analysts all agree that the Kremlin is genuinely worried about the military threat posed by the Pershing II and cruise missiles-a threat that will require awesomely complicated and expensive defense systems...

...The assessment underlines one of the most perplexing aspects of the broader Soviet-American nuclear competition-namely, that the best efforts of arms controllers are continually undermined by advances in military technology...

...Such generosity would hardly be taken seriously by U.S...

...But American specialists caution that any eventual negotiations could drag on longer than the seven years it took to achieve salt n. For one thing, they note, the Soviets have already constructed most of their system...

...The same thinking was reflected in President Carter's recent Presidential Directive 59, which for the first time envisaged the possible limited use of nuclear weapons...

...Thus the haggling will be over limiting nato missiles not yet deployed as against Soviet missiles that are virtually in place, further complicating an already complicated situation...

...This is expected to be the primary topic at the Geneva meeting opening October 13 that was arranged last month in New York by Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko...

...S. L. Zeiberg, the Pentaon's deputy undersecretary for research and engineering of strategic and space systems, says "Our tests of these cruise missies lead me to believe that they make the Soviet air defense obsolete...

...In the case of the new Euromissiles, no framework for discussions has even been established...

...An unimposing-looking weapon that travels at supersonic speed, the Pershing II is a vast improvement over the extant versions...

...These older missiles are to the SS-20s what mechanical adding machines are to the latest electronic calculators...

...According to the U.S...

...Over a distance of 1,800 miles and at altitudes no higher than a 20-story building (nullifying electronic detection), the guidance system moves the missle up, down or sideways to avoid obstacles yet follows its map exactly...

...The system also can alter the missile's final course, either to confuse enemy defenses or to make corrections enabling the 10-20 kiloton warhead to strike within 50 yards of the target...

...Because they can be reloaded, U.S...