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Non-Nuclear Warhead Urged for Trident Missile
A National Research Council blue-ribbon panel of defense experts is recommending development and testing of a conventional warhead for submarine-launched intercontinental Trident missiles to give the president an alternative to using nuclear weapons for a prompt strike anywhere in the world. In critical situations, such an immediate global strike weapon "would eliminate the dilemma of having to choose between responding to a sudden threat either by using nuclear weapons or by not responding at all," the panel said in a final report requested by Congress in early 2007 and released yesterday.One major congressional concern was that to other countries, such as Russia or China, the launch of a conventional Trident missile could not be distinguished from a nuclear one and could be mistaken for the start of a nuclear war. The panel recognized that problem and suggested several ways to mitigate it, but in the end it concluded that the benefits outweighed the risks. The panel said that before any deployment takes place, there should be diplomatic discussions, particularly with partner countries. The panel also said that few countries, other than Russia and perhaps China, would be able to detect a sub-launched missile "in the next five years," and that because of the few warheads that would be involved, "the risk of the observing nation's launching a nuclear retaliatory attack is very low." The panel also adopted the Defense Department's idea that the goal of having one-hour capability for execution of a strike anywhere in the world is "sensible." It noted that in the 1990s, several attempts to kill Osama bin Laden or other al-Qaeda leaders failed because weapons systems available then, such as sub-launched cruise missiles, were not fast enough. The panel was chaired by Albert Carnesale, former chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles and former provost at Harvard who served as a negotiator on the SALT I arms-control treaty. The panel also included John S. Foster Jr., a former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Defense Department director of research and development and chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger; Richard L. Garwin, IBM fellow emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center who from 1993 to 2001 chaired the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board of the State Department; and retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, former head of Strategic Command. Posted by: Pappy 2008-08-16 |
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