I’m not an expect on nuclear weapons or weapons delivery systems, but I am baffled by some of Mitt Romney’s complaints about the START treaty. Let’s start with this claim:
Astonishingly, while excusing tactical nukes from the treaty, the Obama administration bows to Russia’s insistence that conventional weapons mounted on ICBMs are counted under the treaty’s warhead and launcher limits.
Here’s the thing. No one mounts conventional weapons on ICBMs for a simple reason. An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile is designed to carry nuclear weapons and if you fire one, everyone will assume that you have just launched a nuclear attack. In fact, this limitation is so iron-clad that no one has ever actually fired an armed ICBM for testing purposes.
While the warheads of theater ballistic missiles are often conventional, ICBMs have been nearly inseparable from their connection with nuclear warheads. ‘Nuclear ICBM’ was seen as a redundant term. Strategic planning avoided the concept of a conventionally tipped ICBM, mainly because any ICBM launch threatens many countries and they are expected to react under a worst-case assumption that it is a nuclear attack. This threat of ICBMs to deliver such a lethal blow so rapidly to targets across the globe has resulted in the interesting fact that there has never been any end-to-end test of a nuclear-armed ICBM.
So, it seems to me that Romney is only exposing his own ignorance in complaining about conventionally-tipped ICBMs. We don’t have any and we wouldn’t use them if we did. Now, look at this claim:
As drafted, [the treaty] lets Russia escape the limit on its number of strategic nuclear warheads. Loopholes and lapses — presumably carefully crafted by Moscow — provide a path to entirely avoid the advertised warhead-reduction targets. For example, rail-based ICBMs and launchers are not mentioned. Similarly, multiple nuclear warheads that are mounted on bombers are effectively not counted. Unlike past treaty restrictions, ICBMs are not prohibited from bombers. This means that Russia is free to mount a nearly unlimited number of ICBMs on bombers — including MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) or multiple warheads — without tripping the treaty’s limits. These omissions would be consistent with Russia’s plans for a new heavy bomber and reports of growing interest in rail-mobile ICBMs.
I don’t know if it is true that rail-based ICBMs are not mentioned, but I wonder what Romney is talking about when he says that Russia could mount ICBMs on bombers. ICBMs can be launched from silos, heavy trucks, or submarines, but I have never heard that they be launched from the air. I’m not even sure a plane could remain in flight while firing an ICBM considering the level of boost involved. And, in any case, it would be hard to fire a missile into sub-orbital space from
the wing of an aircraft. Unless Romney means that ICBMs would be dropped like any other bomb, I really don’t have a clue what he is talking about.
Regardless, I take it as a very bad sign that Romney is coming out against the ratification of the START treaty.
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