Scare Talk

And still no Rx for the MX

It was worrisome enough when President Reagan described the U.S. nuclear arsenal as unequivocally inferior to the Soviet Union's. Last week, during a dinner with reporters, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger went his boss one better with some nuclear scare talk that was even more worrisome. "Soviet missiles," Weinberger declared flatly, "are now more accurate than ours."

Weinberger's revelation was amended by a spokesman, Henry Catto. "Some of the Soviet missiles are more accurate," he ventured, "and some are not." Nevertheless, even if Weinberger were only half right, it would mean that the Soviet advantage in overall nuclear megatonnage was no longer counterbalanced by the superior guidance systems of U.S. warheads.

In the opinion of many strategic analysts, however, Weinberger was at least hyperbolic. They maintain that only the most advanced Soviet missiles approach the targeting precision of the 550 U.S. Minuteman IIIs.

Of greater concern is the uncertainty over how to deploy MX, the next generation of land-based nuclear missiles. The Ford and Carter Administrations had planned to shuttle 200 MXs among thousands of shelters over a vast tract of Western desert. Reagan scrapped the scheme, proposing to store the first 36 missiles temporarily in existing silos. Congress rejected that idea. Now congressional impatience has hardened to outrage. Last month the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee refused to appropriate funds for the initial allotment of nine missiles (at $160 million each) until a permanent decision is made on deployment.

The latest leading contender among basing schemes is "Dense Pack." The idea is to build, say, 200 underground silos on several 20-sq.-mi. parcels of military land. Since only 20 missiles would be allotted to each 200-silo cluster, scores of empty silos would harmlessly draw Soviet warheads. One of Dense Pack's entirely theoretical virtues is "fratricide": since Soviet bombs would arrive in exceptionally tight formation, the first to explode might destroy its "brother" warheads.

The other options under study are even more problematic. "Hard Tunnel" would bury the missiles 3,000 ft. down inside mountains; the "Big Bird" scheme calls for a fleet of mammoth airborne MX launchers. With the more far-fetched "Orbital Basing," MX warheads would be put into orbit only after a Soviet missile launching, and the U.S. warheads could then be directed at Soviet targets at the Government's discretion. The extra time to make momentous decisions would be valuable; the delay in deciding where to put the missiles is not.