by Peter Huessy, Senior Fellow, The National Institute for Deterrence Studies

Nuclear abolitionists on the left and strategic isolationists on the right both often rely on the same strange collection of half-baked ideas and false assumptions about nuclear deterrence. That brings them to advocating killing the new Sentinel ICBM program and even getting rid of the current Minuteman III force first deployed in 1970. 

Despite their efforts, the last full House vote was 309-118 in favor of the Sentinel ICBM force although a vote in the HASC to eliminate Sentinel failed on a near party line vote of 25-30 just this year. 

Such half-baked ideas include a perennial claim that in a crisis Moscow would preemptively launch an attack on the 400 Minuteman ICBM silos and the associated 45 launch control centers. To avoid such a Russian launch, the US could simply remove the targets. For some reason Russia would leave untouched the 2 American submarine or SSBN bases where 6 submarines and 120 D-5 missiles carrying some 600 warheads are undergoing a refit prior to going to sea. Or America’s three strategic bomber bases with 60 nuclear armed bombers carrying some 600-800 nuclear weapons. 

This apparently  is a new Russian suicide strategy or the “let’s be really dumb” nuclear posture. The submarines in port could be put to sea relatively soon in a crisis and the bombers could be sent aloft to await a command to strike targets in Russia, both of which would dramatically increase the retaliatory capability of the US nuclear deterrent force. Apparently, Moscow doesn’t realize the absurdity of nakedly attacking only a portion of the USA nuclear deterrent while setting themselves up for one thousand or more warheads coming back at Russia within 30 minutes. 

Where does such an idea come from? In 1975-6, the US deterrent was facing what Ronald Reagan described as a window of vulnerability. The Soviets with just a portion of their 3000 warheads on the “heavy” SS-18 missiles could take out all USA 1000 relatively accurate land based systems and still have thousands of warheads left to hold at risk America’s cities, as the SALT arms deals allowed Moscow to eventually deploy over 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons. . 

An American president could face a situation where our accurate ICBMs could be destroyed leaving the United States with the ability to only go after soft targets or cities. Destroying Soviet cities in a retaliatory strike would still leave USA cities in ruin following a further strike ordered by Moscow. Such a scenario was deemed so unsafe as to require a counter-balancing US deterrent modernization. 

As early as 1974, the USAF first proposed to Congress the 10-warhead highly accurate mobile MX missile. Two hundred of these missiles would be deployed in a mobile, highly survivable mode. The missile’s great accuracy could hold at risk the entirety of Soviet targets, ensuring a strong retaliatory deterrent force. 

But such a mobile missile ran into the “banana problem”….build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. Dozens of basing modes were examined but between the environmentalists, farmers and peaceniks, no acceptable basing mode could be found. As late as 1980, two senators from Utah and Nevada told the Senate they would be glad to host 100 MX missiles in their states if another state would step up and build the other planned 100 missiles. There were no takers.  

The abolitionists and anti-nuclear folks hate the whole idea of a window of vulnerability. They denied it existed then and all through the Cold War they condemned Reagan for in their view falsely raising the issue. One key reason? Their pet arms deal SALT I was revealed to allow the Soviets to build 3000 highly accurate SS-18 warheads plus some 7000 more warheads. And had left the US strategically vulnerable. A 1983 net assessment concluded that the Soviets by 1993 could built up to 24,000 strategic nuclear warheads under the SALT framework. 

Reagan had first spilled the beans in 1976 for which he could not be forgiven. This was the basis for the abolitionists universal description of Republicans being “against arms control” although Republican President’s signed SALT I, INF, START I, START II and the Moscow Treaty, which cumulatively cut warheads by some 10,000 warheads. What Republican President’s such as Reagan opposed was not arms control but “bad” arms control deals. Particularly given Russia violated all the treaties they ever signed! Which is why Reagan said “trust but verify.”

While the US could also build up to such SALT allowed warhead levels, US day to day alert levels were considerably lower than the Soviets. The US also had a predominant force of sea-based and bomber weapons which were much more stabilizing. On top of which, all through the 1970-80 period, the US repeatedly delayed its nuclear modernization effort, even alternatively killing the B1 and B2 bomber, delaying the Ohio class SSBN and associated missiles, as well as the MX ICBM.  While the Russians were proceeding like gangbusters. 

Arms control fared no better. In 1979 President Carter pulled the SALT II treaty from consideration by the Senate because the treaty continued to allow the Soviets to build a massive first strike force, further opening the window of vulnerability. 

The Reagan administration wrestled with the MX basing mode as well. In December 1982, the House voted to eliminate the closely spaced basing or dense pack idea —what was derided as “dunce pack” which the administration has hastily cobbled together at the direction of Congress. 

What then to do? The Reagan administration decided to form the Scowcroft Commission and better explain the administration’s plan for modernizing the USA nuclear deterrent with the MX or Peacekeeper missile included. The Commission was divided between Republicans and Democrats. The writer of the report was Commission member R. James Woolsey, previously Under Secretary of the Navy in the Carter administration and eventually negotiator for the Reagan administration on conventional force arms control with the Soviets. 

The Commission adopted a clever alternative. Woolsey borrowed the idea from Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming) who represented the state in which Peacekeeper would be deployed. Wallop said you can’t make an elephant (the 10 warhead big Peacekeeper missile) a rabbit (a lightweight missile able to be mobile) but you could deploy both a rabbit (a small mobile ICBM dubbed Midgetman) and an elephant (the Peacekeeper). Both would be built but in sequence. And the US would also push forward with the new D-5, the Ohio SSBN and secure in the sea-based leg the needed accuracy to complement the Peacekeeper and further strengthen deterrence, further closing the window of vulnerability. 

In addition, if arms reductions under the Reagan proposed START deals were successful, the window of vulnerability could be closed even more, and Reagan’s SDI or missile defense could be added to the mix to bring about even further strategic stability. 

In late Spring 1985, the Senate approved the deal 55-45 after six weeks of successive votes to unlock the Peacekeeper funding  which been fenced by the Congress in 1984. Although Peacekeeper research and development funding was initially approved in 1983 after the Scowcroft report was finalized, House opponents refused to support a defense budget the next year unless the Peacekeeper funds were fenced pending the outcome of the 1984 Presidential election. 

Reagan won 49 states in 1984 and since Mondale explicitly campaigned on killing both SDI and Peacekeeper, the Senate and House went with the Reagan winning campaign. Although the abolitionists at the time hated the Peacekeeper missile and tried 37 times to kill it in the House and Senate between 1981-87. 

In October 1986 the initial 50 Peacekeepers were built. The Senate insisted that the next fifty would be built but only in a rail mobile configuration, to be followed by the multi-hundred small mobile, single warhead missiles or SICBM. 

Ironically, in the post Scowcroft era, the progressives in the House such as Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Dellums (D-CA) both repeatedly tried to kill the small ICBM, arguing there was no need for mobility. They argued that the Scowcroft Commission was right. The strategy identified by the Scowcroft Commission was that the synergy of the Triad brought overall strategic survivability to the USA strategic deterrent even in the absence of a dedicated mobile ICBM force, especially if overall nuclear warhead levels were significantly reduced. 

And indeed, with the START agreements of 1991 and 1993 reducing nuclear warheads by half and then more, and then banning multi-warhead land based missiles, respectively, it was assumed the window of vulnerability was slammed shut. The coercive threat from multi warhead land based missiles would now largely disappear-- at least from Russia. With the 1991 collapse of the USSR the major impetus for conflict with the West was assumed to have also disappeared, hopefully making nuclear conflict fears a thing of the past. 

But for the abolitionists they continued trying to kill ICBMs. In 1994 as part of the nuclear posture review or NPR, they tried to kill all ICBMs, even single warhead stabilizing systems. The Senate got wind of the idea and it became clear no senior military officers had either signed off on the idea or been asked their opinion. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) of the SASC was holding a hearing on the subject of nuclear deterrence the very day the SASC learned of the Clinton administration proposal. Two top witnesses from Strategic Command and the USAF both gave an unqualified and emphatic “No” to the idea, informing the Committee they had not been consulted or appraised of such a plan. 

Eventually under the assumption START II would go into effect, the USA took down Peacekeeper and reduced warheads on the Minuteman III to one warhead, as it is today. As total warheads eventually came down to an official 1550 under the New START agreement, and with significantly fewer warheads on alert day to day threatening a potential preemptive strike, the Cold War bolt out of the blue fear receded and strategic stability appeared to be improving. 

For the abolitionists and nuclear freeze enthusiasts, they felt snookered by the Scowcroft Commission report. Reagan got his Peacekeeper missiles, the nuclear freeze was dead, arms reductions succeeded and the evil empire Soviet Union collapsed. And the US won the Cold War. Everything the abolitionists feared had come true. 

But all was not good. Although the START II agreement banned the Soviet multiwarhead SS-18 type missiles, the Russian Duma in 1979 eventually refused to ratify the agreement, claiming that deploying only single warhead land based missiles was too expensive. As a further smoke screen, the Duma added another requirement They would only sign off on the treaty if all missile defense work were confined to the laboratory. 

But in the post New START period, the opponents of ICBMs emerged again. While in their view the window of vulnerability didn’t exist when the Soviets had 10,000 strategic warheads and a 10/1 ratio of warheads to US land based missiles, suddenly with 1550 warheads the window of vulnerability remained even with a new ratio of no more than 3/1 Russian warheads to US missile silos. 

The anti-nuclear abolitionists have changed their minds and embraced their previous kill MX posture but this time it’s the single warhead, stabilizing Sentinel. Although the legacy system being replaced is still the Minuteman III, it will eventually go out of business and is slated to be fully taken down in 2050-2 as the Sentinel timeline for deployment has been extended. In short, killing Sentinel is also killing all ICBMs.

But say the abolitionists, the US need not worry. The US could trade Minuteman—a 55 year old missile soon to be obsolescent--- for the current three new Russian land based missiles to again achieve parity but at even lower levels of nuclear weapons. Apparently, the US could persuade Moscow to bargain away the backbone of the Russian nuclear force by America doing nothing--actually putting aside nuclear modernization. Sort of arms control success through disarmament. 

Of course, the Russians are not going to trade away the backbone of their strategic deterrent in which they have invested billions for a US deterrent that has to be taken down in the next two decades. All Russia needs to do is “nothing”-- to see the US without 400 Minuteman ICBMs, unilaterally watching the US take down 60% of the SNDVs allowed under New START. 

The result will be the US will lose 400-800 on alert warheads which Strategic Command needs to sustain deterrence. Furthermore, the US deterrent force without ICBMs would be reduced to less than 12 total nuclear assets vs the near 500 the US has today. A breakthrough in anti-submarine warfare would place in immediate jeopardy the entirety of the US nuclear force.  

With respect to deterrence, assuming a 50% alert rate for our submarines, to replace those lost warheads with SLBM warheads would require the acquisition of an additional 800-1600 SLBM warheads on some 8-16 new submarines, as the new Columbia class SSBN carries only 16 (not 20-24) missile tubes, each with a maximum of eight warheads. 

The cost of the additional submarines and D-5 missiles would easily approach over $200 billion, more than wiping out any imputed savings from killing Sentinel, on top of which the increasing cost of sustaining the legacy Minuteman III has to be part of the cost mix as well. 

In addition, given new submarines can only come into the force on the post 2042-3 period, the USA could be for a considerable period of time unable to meet its deterrent needs or to have a surge capability to deploy nuclear warheads beyond the current New Start level. Even if the current Ohio SSBN force were deployed with a maximum payload capability, the US would not be able to maintain a deterrent force greater then New START, which of course expires within the year. And once the Ohio SSBN is retired, the US maintained on-alert warhead levels day to day would be significantly lower than required. 

In short, killing Sentinel does four very bad things. It: (1) costs multiple hundreds of  billions and saves nothing; (2) undermines current and future deterrent requirements; (3) makes future arms control nearly impossible; and (4) ultimately reduces USA nuclear forces to less than a dozen assets which if destroyed puts the USA out of the nuclear deterrent business.