90. Memorandum From the Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters (Nitze) to Secretary of State Shultz1
SUBJECT
- Midgetman Briefing
Brigadier General Edward Barry, Program Manager for Midgetman, and Greg Hulcher, his principal analyst came in to brief us on the current status of his program. He first briefed us on the missile; it would weigh from 30–37 thousand pounds and carry a payload of 1,000 to 1,300 pounds, to a range of 6,000–7,700 nautical miles. The Congress has specified a maximum weight of 30,000 pounds but probably would approve 37,000 pounds. The higher weight would permit not only a high precision guidance system for a single re-entry vehicle but also throw-weight adequate for the addition of penaids or a MARV. Baseline deployment would be on Department of Defense/Energy (DoD/DoE) land in Southwestern United States. It would involve a mobile transporter/erector/launcher (TEL) vehicle capable of speeds up to 50 mph and whose hardness would be 7 PSI when in motion; its hardness would be 30 PSI when the TEL was in “protect” position. In peacetime the TELs would be located randomly on DoD/DoE installations on a road network covering 5,500 square miles. With 6–9 minutes of tactical warning, they could be deployed over an area of 11,000 square miles by moving at least a mile in or a mile out from that road network. With strategic warning of 23–32 minutes they could be dispersed over a wider area of at least 22,000 square miles.
The attached chart2 summarizes General Barry’s analysis. The costs are stated in terms of acquisition and annual operating costs and are in 1982 dollars; costs would be approximately 20% higher in terms of 1986 dollars. Related to these dollar costs are estimates in personnel required to operate the system. The analysis considers various assumptions as to size of the deployment area, warning time, concurrent Soviet allocation of SLBMs to attack, CEP’s, etc.; it analyzes the cost to the Soviets to achieve 90% damage expectancy in terms of SS–18 equivalents; each SS–18 is assumed to be capable of carrying 14 RVs.
[Page 301]You will note that the baseline case, assuming a 10 to 30-minute warning time (which we should receive from a large scale SLBM plus ICBM attack), would cost the Soviet Union 560 SS–18 equivalents plus 8 submarines fully loaded with depressed trajectory SLBMs—700 SS–18 equivalents without submarines. Thus, the Soviet requirement would be 7,800 high performance ICBM RVs plus some 1,600 SLBM RVs. Under any of the reduction proposals put forward by either side, this would be an impossible requirement for the Soviets to fulfill. The other alternatives in this analysis, either for basing the Midgetman or the MX, did not perform as well. Super hardened silos for a small missile are too expensive for the large numbers involved. A “carry-hard” deployment mode for 500 small missiles, dispersed among 3,000 holes can be defeated by increased accuracy, optimum fractionation and by imperfections in the deceptive basing involved. The alternative basing modes for 50 Peacekeepers can also be defeated with a smaller Soviet allocation of SS–18 equivalents, but the combination of dense-pack and MPS would demand an attack spread over from 3 to 7 hours for the Soviets to place two RVs on each silo timed to avoid fratricide. There are several 20-minute gaps in these time periods during which our missiles might be able to launch while Soviet attacking missiles couldn’t get through the ejected debris which had not yet come down. In all cases, the risk of pin-down needs to be considered.
Our briefers thought the best option for the basing of 50 Peacekeepers was in the revised “shallow tunnel” scheme. The tunnel would be twice as deep as that considered and rejected during the Carter Administration.
Barry’s analysis indicates that the baseline Midgetman deployment could impose a requirement for 20 times as many offensive RVs dedicated to the attack as the number of the defender’s RVs it could expect to destroy. An analysis based on throw-weight used and destroyed produces comparable results.
The next day I discussed these issues with John Stenbit of TRW. TRW holds the systems engineering contract for MX, but also works on the Midgetman program.
Stenbit put more emphasis on the political and cost problems associated with General Barry’s baseline case. He emphasized that it calls for four separate deployment areas. He doubted whether four states would support such a deployment; the defection of one or two would significantly weaken the scheme. He also emphasized that the mobile missiles must be kept on virtually continuous alert. Their deployment would be comparable to aircraft alert, not silo alert. The Air Force wouldn’t be happy with tying down 14,000 to 17,000 competent drivers and technically trained people on this type of task and, over time, would skimp on maintaining readiness. He preferred the carry-hard scheme because it required only one to two thousand square miles and degraded gently to delays in moving missiles from one silo to another.
[Page 302]He also argued that it was, in principle, difficult to defeat a highly MIRVed system with a single RV system. The single RV system would be preferable to a MIRVed system if both sides got rid of their MIRVs, but, if the Soviets refused to give up their MIRVs, it would cost us twice as much per survivable RV for a single RV system than for a protected MX deployment mode. He did not present a detailed analysis to support that analysis.
He made the additional point that a carry-hard MPS deployment mode could get a twenty-to-one multiplier effect from preferential terminal defenses. The mobile deployment mode is vulnerable primarily to a barrage attack which degrades only on a one-to-one basis as terminal interceptors are added.
We will check further to refine this analysis. I would appreciate questions which you would wish us to clarify.