The Cruise Missile: The End of Arms Control?

Alexander R. Vershbow

From Foreign Affairs, October 1976

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Summary:  The long-range cruise missile has touched off an arms control debate as controversial as the one seven years ago surrounding the MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle). Although it is by no means a "superweapon" which can give its possessor a credible first-strike threat, the new cruise missile's revolutionary characteristics-particularly its accuracy, near-undetectable size, and multiplicity of firing ranges and launch platforms-threaten to undermine the basic principles underlying successful U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements to date. Thus, the cruise missile-even more than the MIRV-puts the immediate future of SALT into jeopardy.

Alexander R. Vershbow, a graduate of the Columbia University School of International Affairs and the Russian Institute, is an editorial intern for Foreign Affairs.

The long-range cruise missile has touched off an arms control debate as controversial as the one seven years ago surrounding the MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle). Although it is by no means a "superweapon" which can give its possessor a credible first-strike threat, the new cruise missile's revolutionary characteristics-particularly its accuracy, near-undetectable size, and multiplicity of firing ranges and launch platforms-threaten to undermine the basic principles underlying successful U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements to date. Thus, the cruise missile-even more than the MIRV-puts the immediate future of SALT into jeopardy.

Distant prospects are even more bleak. The missile's capabilities obscure the already hazy distinctions between strategic and tactical missions, as well as between nuclear and conventional weaponry. Thus, looking beyond SALT, the cruise missile will complicate the process of finding a new framework for arms control. If arms control is to remain meaningful in the future, enforceable restraints on qualitative improvement of weapons systems must complement the the quantitative restrictions achieved at SALT. While the cruise missile is only one of many weapons in the qualitative arms race, halting its development would be a positive first step toward more comprehensive restrictions in this crucial area.

II

A cruise missile is basically a pilotless jet airplane. Unlike a rocket-driven ballistic missile, which leaves the atmosphere at supersonic speeds and sails to its target in a bullet-like, arched trajectory, a cruise missile is continuously propelled by air-breathing jet engines, and flies at subsonic speeds without leaving the atmosphere.

Cruise missiles are by no means new. They can be traced back to the World War II, German V-I "buzz-bomb." Other ancestors were deployed by the U.S. Navy on submarines, but abandoned because of their bulky size, short range, poor accuracy, and inability to be fired from underwater. The Soviet Navy still has many similarly primitive, short-range cruise missiles deployed on certain surface ships and submarines for use primarily in tactical anti-shipping roles. Both the U.S. and Soviet Air Forces likewise have some of the older, larger cruise missiles deployed for short-range attack purposes.

Until recently only ballistic missiles could achieve the long ranges generally classified as "strategic" (1,000-2,000 miles or more) and hit targets with a reasonable degree of accuracy while carrying warheads with a heavy payload. But today's advanced cruise missiles, as a result of rapid and simultaneous progress in several areas of technology (guidance, accuracy, engine propulsion-efficiency, fuel power and economy, warhead miniaturization), will be able to equal the performance of ballistic missiles in almost all respects-range, accuracy, kill-probability, penetrability-and at markedly lower unit costs. While slower than ballistic missiles, cruise missiles have the offsetting advantage of being less detectable.

The Air Force's new air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and the Navy's sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) are quite similar in terms of their performance; while they cannot easily be used interchangeably, they can be treated as one for purposes of discussion. Twenty feet long and only 21 inches in diameter, they can be launched from standard submarine torpedo tubes, SRAM (short-range ...

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