The move to deploy conventional warheads on Trident D5 missiles is gaining momentum. According to The New York Times, Pentagon is asking Congress to allocate $127 million to begin the work and promises to have the capability deployed in two years. The plan is to have conventional warheads on two missiles on each Trident submarine. Other 22 missiles are supposed to stay nuclear.
This is a classic example of weapons in search of a mission - desperate to find some kind of "useful" application for all those systems that were built during the cold war, the military are coming up with all kind of scenarios that seem to allow keeping them in business. And they don't care if these scenarios are entirely implausible or that the new missions might create quite dangerous situations.
The problem of course is that there is no way to tell if the missile is conventional or nuclear, which creates a huge window for all kind of misunderstandings should its launch be detected by the Russian early-warning system. Yes, one can argue the probability of Russia's misinterpreting a missile launch is quite small, but do we really want to take the risk?
The ways STARTCOM suggests to deal with this problem is quite disturbing - General Cartwright seems to believe that allowing foreign nations to monitor tests of the system would actually solve the problem:
"We are going to put a target area in the ocean so people can actually see what it looks like when it hits the earth and don't confuse this with a mushroom cloud"I'm wondering how exactly this is supposed to help in case of an actual operational launch? The logic of this proposal completely escapes me.
Of course, General Cartwright is generous enough to suggest that another thing to do "would be to notify Russia and other nations when the United States launched a conventional Trident II missile." Oh, really? I thought that this is not a matter of STRATCOM generosity - the Unites States is still a party to the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement of 1988, which requires it to report all ICBM and SLBM launches no less than 24 hours in advance. This wouldn't fit into the Global Strike scenarios in which STRATCOM plans it would take no more than an hour to plan and execute a strike. But what's a cold-war agreement between friends? The Bush administration used this line once to scrap one "cold-war agreement", the ABM Treaty, so why would it be deterred from using it to scrap another one?
In general, I have nothing against replacing nuclear warheads with conventional ones. The fewer nuclear warheads the better. But mixing conventional and nuclear together is a really bad idea and I really hope that cooler heads will prevail. At the very least, there is a chance that someone will notice that Russia is not particularly happy about the plan. Cold war or not, this may still play some role.
The book
Comments
"On May 26, 2006 one of the Project 667BDRM/Delta IV submarines of the Northern Fleet, K-84 "Ekaterinburg", successfully launched a Compass-2 satellite into space. The Shtil launcher that was used in the launch is a converted R-29RM ballistic missile."
Russia launches "convention" ballistic missiles all the time with little political fan-fair. Is the United States notified when an operational Delta IV submarine launches? I would certainly think so. I suspect such a "notification system" would suffice if the United States needed to launch a conventional missile strike in turn. Today's bomber force, whether TU-95's or B-52s, are capable of launching both nuclear and conventional cruise missiles, all done with little concern. I suspect the military future of both Russia and the United States will involve platforms capable of both conventional and nuclear strike. The days of dedicated submarines or land-based missiles for nuclear-only deterrent have come to an end. What targets the United States would want to strike with a conventional Trident or Russia with, say, a conventional mobile SS-27 are beyond me. But, times are changing.
Frank Shuler
USA
Yes, notification mechanism does seem to work - there is the 1988 agreement (START Treaty relies on it as well). But one of the reasons it works is that this agreement requires at least 24-hour notification. In the "global strike" scenarious notification will be more like a 24-minutes. This might work quite differently.
Isn't it logical to assume the 24 hour notification is arbitrary? Why 24 hours? Why not 48 hours? Or, 72 hours? Why not 20 minutes?
Frank Shuler
USA
Of course 24 hour is somewhat arbitrary. However, it gives enough time to make an assessment of the situation, ask additional questions if necessary, etc. 24 minutes may not leave enough time for that.
If military and politically, the governments of Russia and the United States can agree to a 24 hour launch notification framework, I bet they can develop a 24 minutes version.
General Cartwright (US STRATCOM) statement of arranging a "test" for telemetry verification would answer most questions. Notifying the Kremlin of an impending 24 minutes conventional Trident launch and having the single missile tracked by Russian sensors to verify the payload (telemetry) would provide the safeguards. You can bet when that Delta IV launches a missile with a multi-satellite payload, the United States just doesn't "assume" nuclear weapons aren't involved. The unique signature of the launch provides the safeguard.
Frank Shuler
USA
I'm not sure what exactly this test would be able to prove.
As for Delta IV launches, of course nobody assumes they are nuclear - the U.S. gets a notification at least 24 hours in advance.
When calculating the trajectory of a missile launch, it is easy to distinguish the launch of a Russian satellite versus that of a Trident ICBM headed toward Iran or North Korea. The satellite launch doesn't over-fly the U.S. or reenter near its territory. On the other hand, an ICBM headed toward one of above "axis of evil" members would impact dangerously close to Russia--and if the missile were to go off course? I agree with Pavel, far too dangerous.
James, I won't argue in the least the sensibility of conventional launched Trident ballistic missiles. I do think the pre-launch verification is an issue that can be resolved. Without notification, I suspect a 2000-mile shot taken from a Trident submarine in the Indian Ocean at a mountain redoubt on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border might even be missed by Russian sensors. That's when the entire notion of using a Trident submarine to deliver a "conventional" missile gets scary.
Frank Shuler
USA
I agree