The Next Tough One

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency/Hugh Sidey

Ronald Reagan, triumphant but a bit weary from the tax-cut victory, is looking forward to a few days of wood chopping and thinking on his California ranch. Then, if current schedules hold, by Aug. 15 he will make up his mind and soon thereafter tell the world that he wants America's new MX missiles to be air launched, ultimately from new and sophisticated planes that could stay aloft for days.

Reagan faces no military issue more important, or more fraught with peril and charged with controversy. Already, the decision may be 90% made in the President's mind as events in the Dr. Strangelove world of nukes and launchers seem to be moving toward a final shape that has stunned the Pentagon, the industrial complex that builds the military's hardware and the defense experts of Congress. Subterranean shock waves came last week from the secret and cheerless Room 31074 in the Pentagon. There Richard D. DeLauer, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, revealed a new plan to the special committee, headed by Nobel Physicist Charles Townes, that is assigned to find a satisfactory MX launching system. The session was chaotic. Most of the committee's 14 members find the air-launch idea doubtful because of structural and guidance problems, as well as the cost, which could reach $125 billion. But because DeLauer spoke for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and because Weinberger and Reagan are such close friends, the belief is that the scheme has thus far received the President's blessing.

DeLauer proposed that the MX first be carried by C-5A Galaxy transports, redesigned and shielded against nuclear-attack radiation. But by 1990 they would be moved to radically new planes that would have structural materials and wing configurations permitting them to stay aloft for as long as a week. Until that airborne MX system is in place, DeLauer suggested, the U.S. could rely on antiballistic missiles to protect its aging Minutemen.

That would require abrogation of the Treaty on the Limitation of Antiballistic Missile Systems with the Soviets. In ten years, DeLauer said, the idea of mile-deep missile silos would be explored. At that depth a missile is totally protected from any explosion, though clearing surface debris for a launch after a nuclear blast (which can turn sand to stone) remains an unsolved technical problem. Supplementing the missiles would be a new B-1 bomber and existing cruise missiles. Ideas for putting MX missiles on new submarines or surface ships were brushed aside.

Lost in the planning turmoil was the original MX design, with its 4,600 shelters scattered across the deserts of Utah and Nevada. Three billion dollars has already been invested in that system, but it is opposed by powerful Republican Senators Jake Garn of Utah and Paul Laxalt of Nevada. There is little question that Reagan wants to avoid crossing his powerful political friends. White House Counsellor Ed Meese is believed to feel that the original MX system was devised to fit Jimmy Carter's failed hopes for a nuclear arms limitation treaty and, thus, the multiple-shelters idea is tainted and must be scrapped.

On this issue Reagan, who has slain the congressional dragons one after another, will face another kind of beast. The Air Force, which will run any new MX system, is dubious that the technical problems of an air-launch system can be solved in the time available. Texas Senator John Tower, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is expressing his concern around Washington that each air-launched missile could cost $1 billion. He favors a variant of the land-based plan, which actually was begun under Republican Gerald Ford.

Weinberger knows there is a fight ahead, but he is determined to make a firm decision, which the previous Administration was unable to do. What worries many people is that components of the proposed new strategic plan, such as air launch and ABMs, have been rejected earlier, and a major controversy might stall plans to modernize U.S. strategic forces. Meanwhile, Moscow drives on with its awesome arms buildup.

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