14 03 07 Throwing Away Our Nukes
We were disheartened to read last weekend that the Pentagon has decided to retire the ACM (Advanced Cruise Missile), the most modern and deadly in our arsenal. A FAS analyst had noticed that funding appeared to have been removed for the ACM in the Pentagon's FY08 budget request and this was subsequently confirmed by the DOD - over 400 ACM's will be removed from service in order to comply with the 2002 SORT agreement (Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, aka the Moscow Treaty) signed by Bush and Putin. Observers from both the left and right see the treaty as flawed and it is surprising given the current slide in US/Russian relations we are continuing down this path. The SORT treaty will limit both sides to 2,200 operationally deployed warheads by 2012, but verification mechanisms are weak and there is no requirement that those warheads (and delivery systems) removed from service be disabled.But even ignoring the question of why we are in this treaty at all, this decision seems off base. Instead of keeping the ACM (AGM-129), the Pentagon will maintain its aging collection of ALCM's (AGM-86B) which have recently been through a life extension program (100,000 mile service? Full body MRI?) allowing for their use through 2013. Even so, the stock of about 1,300 will be cut back to - you guessed it - 400 over the next five years; many are said to have been converted for use with conventional warheads. Both the ACM and ALCM are integral to the bomber portion of our nuclear triad and both carry a W80-1 warhead of variable yield (5-150 kt). However the ACM is newer (the last rolled off the General Dynamics production line in 1993), has stealth radar evading technology, longer range and is hard kill capable. While we are not exactly throwing these missiles away (SORT only requires that warheads be detached), this seems a pointless degradation of our nuclear triad. Some speculate the ACM's will be converted to conventional use because of their stealth advantage, yet if the older ALCM's are not sufficient to bypass current air defenses in a conventional mode (either the 86C or 86D 'bunker penetrator' variants), why are we entrusting them for use as our last line of defense? Nuclear war may be unthinkable and highly unlikely but there is no reason to skimp here. Congressional hearings may prove interesting if the hawks object and take the Pentagon to task for these changes. We hope they do.
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