By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — New details have emerged about the future composition of the U.S. land-based, nuclear missile force following a number of Bush administration policy changes (see GSN, May 25).
A combination of factors — including negotiated force ceilings, unilateral reductions and a growing role for missile defense — is likely to leave the United States with a 2,200-warhead arsenal that includes a small force of multiple-warhead ICBMs.
Along with nuclear weapons on submarines and bomber aircraft, the deployed U.S. arsenal by 2011 is likely to include 25 land-based missiles armed with three warheads apiece. Another 425 ICBMs would carry single warheads, according to defense officials and independent analysis. The deployment of even a limited number of multi-warhead ICBMs is causing consternation amongst some nuclear experts, who assert that the weapons are unnecessarily provocative and could stoke tensions with Russia and other nuclear powers. Until late 2005, the Defense Department was converting all its multiple-warhead ICBMs to become single-tipped, in compliance with the START II arms control treaty. The 1993 accord banned the United States and Russia from fielding multiple-warhead, or “MIRVed,” land-based strategic missiles. That provision stemmed from long-standing Washington concerns that the deployment of such powerful weapons could prove destabilizing in a crisis, because they are perhaps most useful in a pre-emptive knockout punch against an adversary’s ICBMs. While the Bush administration initially endorsed the plan to shift all the Minutemen to a single-warhead configuration, that policy appeared to change following the U.S. decision to build an ambitious missile defense system. In June 2002 — just one day after the United States withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty — Russia announced it no longer considered itself bound by START II. That shift effectively lifted the bilateral constraints on multiple-warhead ICBMs. Both the United States and Russia have since moved to retain some of these weapons in their respective arsenals. Officials from the two nations have cited a need to maintain multiple-warhead missiles as a hedge against actions taken by the other side. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, until recently the nation’s top strategic commander, told Congress last year he would keep an unspecified number of multiple-warhead Minuteman 3 ICBMs in the U.S. force. The Air Force would implement this new approach as it reduced its Minuteman 3 fleet from 500 to 450 missiles, a plan first proposed by the Pentagon’s 1994 Nuclear Posture Review and later embraced by the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. Now under way, the initiative would allow 50 missiles to be used in testing as modifications and improvements are developed, Cartwright told the Senate Armed Services panel on strategic forces in March 2006. As part of that process, the service would effectively redistribute 50 warheads from the deactivated missiles to those remaining operationally deployed. The measure would ultimately leave 500 warheads on 450 missiles, he said. “So there is not a reduction in warheads,” Cartwright told lawmakers last year. “This is a reduction in the number of launch vehicles.” The general in August became the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, the United States and Russia each agreed to cap the number of operationally deployed warheads at 2,200. However, the accord does not require either side to declare how many of the total warheads are loaded onto missiles or to submit to verification measures (see GSN, Oct. 30). As recently as April, some senior defense officials anticipated that a number of the remaining missiles in the Minuteman fleet would feature a two-warhead configuration. However, officials now expect that, within the next four years, each ICBM would carry either one or three warheads. “In [fiscal] 2011, there will be no systems with two warheads,” Masao Doi, an Air Force Space Command spokesman, said Oct. 24 by e-mail. “The remaining 450 systems will be configured with one or three warheads.” Noting that “specific numbers are classified,” Doi would not say how many missiles would carry three warheads. However, simple math dictates that the 50 available warheads provide 25 pairs that could be added to 25 of the remaining single-warhead missiles in the ICBM fleet to make 25 three-warhead platforms. Using new and previously available data, an independent nuclear weapons analyst last week speculated that the three-warhead missiles would reside at either Minot Air Force Base, N.D., or Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. The only Minuteman warhead capable of being loaded three per missile is the W-78, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project. Rather than sprinkle these 25 multiple-warhead missiles throughout the ICBM fleet — which could introduce undesirable logistical challenges and increased cost — the military would almost certainly assign all the three-warhead missiles to one of its three 50-missile squadrons at Minot or Malmstrom, the Washington-based analyst said. The other installation housing Minutemen — F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. — would be unlikely to host any three-warhead ICBMs because its version of the missile carries only W-87 warheads, which can be loaded up to just two per missile, according to Kristensen. U.S. military leaders appear intent on retaining a small fleet of multiple-warhead Minutemen to counterbalance the multiple-warhead missiles remaining in the Russian nuclear arsenal, he said. Russia currently has 76 SS-18 ICBMs with up to 10 warheads apiece and 123 SS-19 land-based missiles with up to six warheads each, according to the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an organization that tracks Moscow’s nuclear complex and strategic arsenal. Russian military leaders have stated that within the next few years they plan to shift more of the weapons in their Moscow Treaty-capped arsenal onto their multiple-warhead, land-based missile force. Initiatives include extending the MIRVed SS-18’s service life; deploying dozens more SS-19s, thereby adding hundreds more ICBM warheads; and beginning to load multiple warheads onto their newest ICBM, the SS-27 “Topol-M,” according to Kristensen. In his first year as defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld told an interviewer he had few concerns about seeing the Russians boost their multi-warhead ICBM force. Notionally, if Moscow either kept single warheads on 20 missiles or loaded five warheads onto just four missiles, “they'd still have 20 warheads and it would make no difference,” Rumsfeld said on PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” in August 2001. “What really counts is not whether or not a country MIRVs. What really counts is the total number of weapons and is it going to be reduced.” Not everyone shares that thinking. “Single [warhead] Minuteman is the right path to reducing nuclear tensions,” one defense expert, said recently on condition of anonymity. “In a de-MIRVed environment of single [warhead] Minuteman, there is absolutely no pressure to ‘use or lose.’” The phrase refers to a compulsion a U.S. or Russian leader might feel to launch nuclear missiles from land-based silos early in a crisis rather than await their elimination by an adversary’s pre-emptive attack. Nuclear arms experts widely believe that multiple-warhead ICBMs compound the risk of an itchy trigger finger on both sides of a conflict because they represent more valuable targets than their single-warhead counterparts. With a yield of roughly 1 megaton per missile, a Minuteman loaded with three W-78 warheads “would pack quite a punch,” Kristensen said. Each of the warheads has an explosive yield of 335 kilotons. By comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 was estimated at 15 kilotons. In an Oct. 18 interview with Global Security Newswire, Cartwright conceded that as the United States and Russia continue to reduce their nuclear arsenals, the possibility of a use-or-lose risk might grow because each missile has greater relative value. However, he said the emerging combination of U.S. nuclear and conventional offenses, missile defenses and a more robust military infrastructure could mitigate any such concerns (see GSN, Oct. 22). In other words, a growing U.S. defensive capability to absorb limited nuclear strikes from abroad — and perhaps even retaliate with strategic conventional weapons rather than nuclear missiles — might decrease the risk that a president would launch nuclear weapons early in a crisis. Still, lingering uncertainty over how the new U.S. offense-defense approach would play out in the dynamic international arena has spawned a hedge strategy, Kristensen said. Having opted to jettison the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in favor of developing a new defensive system, “we threw out a lot of things we have gained” through the START arms control process, he said. “Now we see this going in a direction with the Russians that we don’t like,” Kristensen said. “The intent had been to move in a direction where it was one missile, one warhead,” Cartwright acknowledged during last month’s interview. “But what I testified to [last year] was that I wanted to increase the flexibility [rather] than decrease the flexibility of that force,” the general said. “And the thought process there,” he continued, “was that if we had no MIRVing, then if we had misjudged the world or the world changed over the next 10 or 15 years and became a more threatening place — or more appropriate for additional nuclear weapons — that option would be retained without having to build or retain unnecessarily more delivery systems than we needed. And so that’s what this [approach] allowed us to do.” Cartwright said the U.S. decision was made to retain some multiple-warhead missiles only after the military had begun converting ICBMs to single warheads. Beginning in late 2005, “we kind of stopped in midstream” for selected missiles that would instead retain multiple warheads into the future, he told GSN. Meanwhile, “the Air Force continues to de-MIRV [other Minuteman] missiles in the ICBM force to reach specified configurations by October 2011,” said Navy Lt. Denver Applehans, a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb. In the effort to reduce the operationally deployed ICBM force to a total of 450, “15 missiles have been removed to date and all 50 missiles are scheduled to be removed from their launch facilities by next summer,” according to Doi, the Air Force Space Command spokesman.
North Korean officials have been “very cooperative” as experts from the United States oversee the disablement of facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, a U.S. State Department official said today (see GSN, Nov. 5). “I think we are off to a good start and will look forward to completing the task by the end of the year as planned,” team leader Sung Kim said after returning to Seoul from Yongbyon. Kim said disablement is under way at a plutonium-producing reactor, a nuclear fuel fabrication plant and a spent fuel reprocessing site, the Associated Press reported. “Our North Korean colleagues have actually done considerable preparatory work on all three facilities. So we were able to start at least some of the disablement activities this week,” he said. No less than 10 technical measures are to be used to disable the facilities, though details have not been released. The measures are intended to prevent North Korea from resuming operations at the facilities for at least one year (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press/Washington Post, Nov. 6). One Yongbyon site could be disabled this week, Kim said. The U.S. experts hope to carry out removal of spent fuel rods from the reactor, Reuters reported (Jon Herskovitz, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Nov. 6). “So far, so good,” top South Korean nuclear negotiator Chun Young-woo told Agence France-Presse. Chun said the anticipated full declaration of North Korea’s nuclear programs is “much more important” than the disablement effort. “In the declaration, there are many factors that should be clarified — for instance, the uranium enrichment program and the plutonium program too. The key is how precise and complete the declaration will be,” he said. Nations participating in the six-party talks hope that disablement will lead to denuclearization of North Korea, which in turn would receive energy assistance and diplomatic and security benefits. North Korea is seeking removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of this effort. The United States last week offered “concrete” terms for such a decision, the Yonhap News Agency reported. They included “not only implementing 11 concrete measures aimed at disabling the nuclear facilities by year-end but also clarifying the [uranium enrichment program] based on more convincing evidence,” a government official said (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 6).
The international community is considering a new organization that would support efforts to ensure nuclear materials do not fall into terrorists’ hands, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported today (see GSN, Sept. 28). Nonproliferation experts and nuclear energy firms would lead the new entity, which would develop security standards for nuclear reactor operators and associated businesses across the globe, sources told the newspaper. This would be the first organization of its kind. A U.S. research body proposed the new group, which might be called the World Nuclear Security Organization. Japan and the United States are both expected to play key roles in the new organization. Nuclear facilities around the world have enacted varying levels of antiterrorism security measures, Yomiuri reported. The new organization would develop plans that could be taken up internationally regarding security training for nuclear plant personnel, emergency response, information sharing and other issues. It could begin operations around 2010 at the end of a four-year International Atomic Energy Agency program on international nuclear security (Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 6).
Observers offered mixed thoughts this week on whether the instability gripping the nuclear-armed nation of Pakistan could help terrorists to acquire nuclear materials or even a nuclear weapon inside the country Saturday (see GSN, Aug. 21). “If you were to look around the world for where al-Qaeda is going to find its bomb, it’s right in their backyard,” Bruce Riedel, the National Security Council’s former senior South Asia director, told Newsweek (Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, Nov. 3). “You can never rule that out,” a U.S. official told the New York Daily News. “We view it as unlikely — at this point.” There is a “remote” chance that terrorists would acquire any military-controlled nuclear warheads should Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf — who declared a state of emergency Saturday after it appeared his recent election might be invalidated — be killed or forced from office, said former CIA Pakistan station chief Robert Grenier. “Is there a near-term worry? I would say no,” he said (James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News, Nov. 6). Kamran Bokhari of the private U.S. intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting Inc. said last week Pakistan has cultivated a broad network of military commanders to help protect its sensitive nuclear materials. “Contrary to popular belief, the Pakistani nukes are not about to fall in the hands of transnational jihadist nonstate actors or other rogue elements within the military. The army has developed a decent command-and-control infrastructure to protect its nuclear assets,” said Bokhari, the company’s director of Middle East analysis. “A three-star general heads the Strategic Plans Division which is the body responsible for managing the countries nuclear arsenal. Recently, Islamabad further institutionalized the issue by widening the circle of people with decision-making power regarding the nukes,” he said (Washington Post, Oct. 31). U.S. presidential contenders also this week addressed the danger that Pakistan’s instability poses to its nuclear security, Agence France-Presse reported. Republican candidate Fred Thompson said he would offer massive U.S. aid to Pakistan’s government to promote democracy. “We could face a real nightmare scenario by seeing these radical elements, or these terrorist sympathizers, take control of that government and have that nuclear capability,” Thompson said Sunday. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) expressed concern this weekend that terrorists could gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons by ousting Musharraf. "If they gain control, we are going to have big problems in Afghanistan and the area," he said. The Pakistan crisis means the United States should forgo any consideration of attacking Iran, which Western nations suspect is seeking nuclear weapons, said Democratic contender John Edwards. The situation increases complications for the United States as it deals with Iran and Iraq, said candidate Bill Richardson, Democratic governor of New Mexico (Stephen Collinson, Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 5).
Israel today accused International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei of failing to curb Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons effort, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 5). The U.N. nuclear watchdog this month is set to release a report on Iran’s nuclear program while the U.N. Security Council considers whether to impose a third round of sanctions. “Unfortunately there are foreign officials playing the Iranians’ game by contributing to the Iranian strategy of foot-dragging,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. “From this point of view the International (Atomic Energy) Agency and its leadership are guilty,” he said. “One could ask whether the agency agreed to fulfill the role the Iranians want it to play, to allow Tehran to implement its strategy,” Regev said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 6). Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that China and the United States both aim to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He spoke while U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Beijing for talks with Chinese leaders. “The goal of China and the United States on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons is identical. We both feel that Iran should not have nuclear weapons,” Liu said. China has so far opposed new U.N. sanctions against Iran. Gates and his Chinese counterpart Cao Gangchuan discussed Iran yesterday. The U.S. defense secretary said he did not raise the matter today with Chinese President Hu Jintao because “I didn’t feel the need to bring it up again.” Gates expressed hope that his discussion with Hu would spark “a longer-term dialogue about … the threat of nuclear proliferation.” (Lolita Baldor, Associated Press,” Nov. 6).
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