Finding Solutions to SLCM Arms Control Problems

Findding solutions to S L C M Arms Control Problems a bipartisan group of 52 U.S. senators sent a letter I I n spring of this year, to President Reagan with the message: "Do not ban or compromiseour conventional sea-launched and air-launched cruise missiles" in the START negotiations. Nuclear sealaunched cruise missiles (SLCMs) designed for land attack have become a major issue in the negotiations, and the senators were concerned that constraints on the nuclear variants would rule out future conventional applications . The dual-use nature of SLCMs, especially in combination with the differing interests and capabilities of the superpowers regarding them, constitutes one major area of problems in reaching an arms control agreement on SLCMs. These problems will be addressed in the first section of this article. Another major problem area-verification of compliance with an agreement-will be examined in section two. U.S. and Soviet SLCMs: Asymmetrical Threats and Capabilities The United States regards its SLCMs as weapons that reflect real military need, and has developed far more actual mission applications for them than has the Soviet Union. Moreover, U.S. force planners have gone to great lengths to ensure that reasonable strategy and tactics for employing the weapons underpin operational deployments. This effort is taking place against the backdrop of complex mission competition issues stemming from the decision to deploy multiple variants of TOMAHAWK-classSLCMs (one nuclear, three conventional) on general purpose naval platforms. From the perspective of many in the United States, therefore, an arms control agreement limiting nuclear SLCMs is undesirable because it would place constraints on a U.S. weapon system that has military value and it might constrain the conventional variants of the system as well. Rose E. Gottemoeller is a Research Associate with the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C., and the author of Land-attack Cruise Missiles, Adelphi Paper No. 226 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Winter 198718). 1. Senator Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), quoted in Aerospace Daily, May 2, 1988, p. 172. InfpmafionalSecurity, Winter 1988/89(Vol. 13,No.3) 0 1988by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 175 International Security 23:3 I 176 The Soviets have a very different perspective on the issue. The Soviet military and political leadership seem to view the current generation of landattack SLCMs as both an important proof of the nation’s technical prowess and an arms control bargaining chip; but they do not treat them as militarily useful weapons. In Soviet eyes, they are political weapons with an as yet undeveloped military potential. The Soviets have deployed antiship cruise missiles for thirty years, but they did not deploy a modem land-attack cruise missile until the 1980s. At that time, they were pursuing two new cruise missile programs. One, the SS-N-21, was very similar to the U.S. TOMAHAWK missile.2The other, the SS-NX-24, was more of a “Soviet-style” missile, large and fast. Although some antiship cruise missiles, such as the SS-N-3, have had limited landattack capability, overall deployment patterns made it clear that the Soviets were stressing antiship rather than land-attack missions. The SS-N-21 and SS-NX-24 were thus the first modern Soviet cruise missiles built expressly for land attack. The Sovietshave told us littleabout the advantages that they see in modern land-attack-in contrast to antishivruise missiles. Of the two, the SS-N21 subsonic cruise missile is just entering operational deployment, and the SS-NX-24supersonic cruise missile is not yet deployed, although Andropov announced the onset of Soviet SLCM deployments in 1984. This four-year hiatus illustrates the political, rather than military, motivation underlying modem Soviet sea-launched cruise missiles. The Soviets now seem to focus on the SLCM as a bargaining chip in arms controlnegotiations. They want to limit land-attacknuclear SLCMcapabilities to prevent the U.S.from escaping from the proposed 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear weapons under START.3The Soviets seem willing to ban 2. The SS-N-21 differed from the TOMAHAWK class in one major aspect: it was assessed to have only a nuclear warhead. However, because the Soviets...