Talking an issue to death is one of the easiest ways to kill any proposal. The mission can be accomplished without logic or arguments or the majority, and sometimes even without the adversary knowing what happened. That is how the opponents of the MX mobile missile are killing a weapon which is essential to the survival of both the United States and our NATO allies.
The proposal to build the MX missile is bogged down in endless discussions about what the basing mode should be. Should it be the “racetrack” scheme or the “loading dock” scheme? Let’s compare costs! Let’s argue the politics of the locations! Meanwhile the urgent need to build the MX is almost forgotten.
Defense Secretary Harold Brown, in his annual Department report for fiscal 1981, said, “We must assume that the ICBM leg of our Triad could be destroyed within a very short time as one result of a Soviet surprise attack.” The MX mobile missile is the one weapon which can prevent that catastrophic event, but no progress is being made in building it.
What Brown calls “the ICBM leg of our Triad” is 1,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles called Minuteman missiles, located in our northern and western states. When they were built in the 1960s and until recently, they were safe from enemy attack because they are buried in the ground in hardened concrete silos, built thick enough to withstand the tremendous blast of a nuclear attack unless the enemy missile scored a direct hit, which was considered unlikely.
However, missile accuracy is improving very rapidly. The day is fast approaching when Russian missiles will be accurate enough to target our Minuteman missiles and hit them head on. All their locations are a matter of public information.
If the Russian missiles score direct hits, even the hardened silos will be destroyed. That is what Brown now admits is possible, but the months drag on while he talks about the MX missile rather than builds it.
Mobile missiles are the solution to the problem of the “vulnerability” of our Minuteman missile force. Mobile missiles can be moved around and therefore avoid being targeted by the Soviets with their increasingly accurate heavy missiles.
One of the fundamental problems with U.S. strategic planning is that our new weapons are discussed only within the constraints of how they will serve the goals of arms control and disarmament, rather than how they will help the United States develop military forces able to win a war if we get into one. This peculiarity is particularly true of MX missile discussions.
Prove this for yourself. Try reading any of the arguments or the literature about the MX. You will find no discussion of how the weapon can be built to maximize its effectiveness in defeating or outmaneuvering an enemy, or defending the population and territory of the United States. All the literature is concerned with how it can be built to conform to the SALT II Treaty which we never even ratified, and which advantages the Soviets in almost every section.
What we are witnessing is truly an incredible situation. The Defense Department admits we are in danger of having the backbone of our defense system wiped out in a surprise attack, but is designing weapons to conform to the unratified SALT II Treaty instead of building weapons to win a possible war.
The Soviet view of the world is very different from ours for nearly 20 years, the Soviets have planned for war and built for war. They believe that war is “thinkable, is probably inevitable, and is definitely winnable. And they intend to win it.
The American people must understand and learn the meaning of some very simple propositions if our nation is to survive in an unfriendly and uncertain world. Weapons that cannot win will not deter an enemy. Our military weapons must be designed to win. We can lose. We cannot afford to lose. We can win. We can afford to win.
An old adage warns us that those who warm their feet at the gates of Hell will never go there. If we build the weapons to win a nuclear war, we will never have to use them.
