Flushed with its “victory” in putting over the surrender of the U.S. Canal to a small-time dictator, the Carter Administration is grinding up its team of lobbyists and propagandists to put over another treaty-surrender to a big-time dictator.
The Administration’s SALT negotiators have made more concessions to the Soviet Union in order to produce an agreement to limit each side to 2,250 missiles and bombers. In the Newspeak of the accommodation artists, this is called “arms control,” but it is really a cynical numbers game.
Because of public reaction to the humiliating inferiority of the 1972 SALT I agreement, under which the United States is permitted to have only two land-based and sea-launched intercontinental nuclear missile launchers for every three that the Soviets have, the Administration knows it has no chance of approval for any treaty unless it sounds equal.
So the proposed SALT II agreement will limit strategic delivery vehicles to an equal number for each side. The joker is that it will not limit the carrying capacity of either the individual vehicles or the total missile force.
According to the proposed agreement, both sides have agreed not to develop, test or deploy ICBMs with a launch-weight greater than the heaviest ICBM each has deployed on the date the treaty is signed. This agreement will limit the United States to a throw-weight of 8,000 pounds (the weight of the Titan missile, of which we have only 54), while the U.S.S.R. will be allowed a throw-weight of 16,000 pounds (the weight of the SS-18).
Most of our land-based missiles are the Minuteman ICBMs. Their throw-weight is classified, but is probably no more than 2,000 pounds. In any event, the Minuteman III, our latest and most powerful model, carries three MIRV warheads of only 170 kilotons each (a kiloton is 1/1,000th of a megaton).
Thus the SALT II “equality” is like saying that two transcontinental freight-moving firms are equal when each one has 2,250 “delivery vehicles,” but one firm has all 50-ton tractor-trailers operational, and the other has nothing larger than half-ton pickup trucks.
Just as the throw-weight of an individual missile is the measure of what it can do, the total throw-weight of a missile force is the measure of what the entire force can accomplish. If your missiles have sufficient throw-weight, such as the Soviets’ giant SS-18, you have the option of either delivering a single 50-megaton warhead (the equivalent of 50 million tons of conventional explosive power), OR delivering to separate targets eight MIRV warheads of more than three megatons each.
The SALT I numbers inferiority was put over on us in 1972 on the rationale that we didn’t need to worry about the Soviets! larger numbers of missile launchers, their far greater throw-weight, and their vastly greater megatonnage, because U.S. missiles were more accurate.
Aviation Week & Space Technology reported last month that the Soviets have tested ICBMs accurate enough “to impact less than 600 feet from target, providing a hard-target kill capability” against our Minuteman force.
Another joker in the proposed SALT II agreement is that the Soviets have silo-reload capability and we do not. We have only as many missile launchers as we have silos. The Soviets have an unknown number of reloads concealed near their silos, which they can use because of their cold-launch pop-up technique.
Do you wonder why our President does not reject Soviet SALT II demands or do anything to stop Soviet conquests of Afghanistan and much of Africa? With Soviet submarines prowling our long coastlines, with Soviet missiles on their gigantic unsinkable missile carrier named Cuba, with many more-powerful ICBMs in Russia well defended against our subsonic bombers and small Minuteman warheads, our President doesn’t dare.
