US Advanced Conventional Systems and Conventional Prompt Global Strike Ambitions:

ABSTRACT

The dangers and risks of employing a Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) capability greatly exceed the benefits. More suitable, if less prompt, alternatives exist to deal with fleeting targets. Even a niche CPGS capability—consisting of approximately twenty systems—carries risks, to say nothing of proposals to develop hundreds or more. Most dangerously, CPGS could stir the pre-emption pot, particularly vis-à-vis states that correctly perceive to be within the gunsights of US CPGS weapons; other states, too, may feel emboldened to emulate this US precedent and undertake their own form of prompt, long-range strike capability. Compressed circumstances surrounding such a scenario could foster unwanted erratic behavior, including the misperception that the threatening missile carries a nuclear weapon. But the true Achilles's heel of the CPGS concept is the unprecedented demands it places on the intelligence community to provide decision makers with “exquisite” intelligence within an hour timeframe. Such compressed conditions leave decision makers with virtually no time to appraise the direct—and potentially unintended—consequences of their actions.

KEYWORDS:

• United States
• Russia
• China
• prompt global strike
• missiles
• strategic stability
• conventional weapons
• arms control

Notes

1. This paper updates an earlier version that appeared in the German journal for peace research and security policy. See Dennis M. Gormley, “Sixty Minutes to Strike: Assessing the Risks, Benefits, And Arms Control Implications of Conventional Prompt Global Strike,” Sicherheit und Frieden [Security and Peace], No. 1 (2014), pp. 36–46.

2. See Amy F. Woolf, “Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, R-41464 (May 5, 2014); Joshua Pollack, “Evaluating Conventional Prompt Global Strike,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 65 (January/February 2009); James M. Acton, Silver Bullet? Asking the Right Questions About Conventional Prompt Global Strike (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013); and Gormley, “Sixty Minutes to Strike.”

3. The formal requirement for CPGS weapons was established in May 2003. At that time, a quick-fix solution for the requirement for such a prompt weapon involved converting a portion of nuclear-armed, submarine-launched ballistic missiles carried on Trident submarines into conventionally armed missiles. The Congress balked at such a course of action because of undesirable ambiguity over whether the missile might not be armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead. The Barack Obama administration instead emphasized much more advanced solutions under a Department of Defense (DoD) program called “Defense-Wide Conventional Prompt Global Strike,” encompassing three programs: the Air Force's Conventional Strike Missile employing boost-glide technologies; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DAPRA) Hypersonic Test Vehicle No. 2; and the Army's Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. An additional program sits outside of the DoD program under DARPA's direction—the X-51 Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, a scramjet-driven cruise missile.

4. In September of 1972, I joined Harry Diamond Laboratories where many of these revolutionary new developments were significantly advanced. I subsequently worked off and on with Albert Wohlstetter until his death in 1997 on projects that foresaw how many of these advanced conventional weapon concepts would eventually develop.

5. US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, “New Technology for NATO: Implementing Follow-On Forces Attack,” OTA-ISC-309 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1987).

6. Paul H. Nitze, “Is It Time to Junk Our Nukes?” Washington Post, January 16, 1994, p. C1.

7. Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 1996), <www.dodccrp.org/files/Ullman_Shock.pdf>.

8. Ibid., pp. 128, 131.

9. National Defense Panel, “Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21^st Century,” Report of the National Defense Panel, December 1997, <http://fas.org/man/docs/ndp/toc.htm>.

10. The Bush NPR remains classified today. However, portions were of the report were leaked around the time of its announcement. See “Nuclear Posture Review [Excerpts],” at <www.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/2.6/NPR2001leaked.pdf>.

11. The conventional component was to consist of air- and ship-launched cruise missiles and regional-based attack aircraft. Still, nuclear options were seen as needed to deal with targets such as deeply buried strategic facilities housing weapons of mass destruction. Ibid., p. 7. Shortly after the release of the Bush NPR, the US Air Force Space Command established a requirement for a prompt global strike capability that could strike anywhere globally and defeat, via conventional means, such difficult targets as hard and deeply buried facilities and strategic relocatable targets, presumably nuclear-armed mobile missiles. See Dennis M. Gormley, “Conventional Force Integration in Global Strike,” in James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey Larsen, eds., Nuclear Transformation: The New U.S. Nuclear Doctrine (New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 53–68.

12. See endnote 3.

13. My thanks to Miles A. Pomper of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies for this information.

14. “Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability,” Letter Report of the National Research Council's Committee on Conventional Prompt Global Strike Capability, May 11, 2007, <www.nap.edu/catalog/11951.html>.

15. Ibid.

16. Barry D. Watts, Long-Range Strike: Imperatives, Urgency, and Options (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2005), <www.csbaonline.org/publications/2005/04/long-range-strike-imperatives-urgency-and-options/>. Watts served as director of program analysis and evaluation in the Pentagon from May 2001 to July 2002.

17. Ibid., p. i. Emphasis added.

18. Ibid., p. ii.

19. It is worth noting that the last MX/Peacekeeper missile was retired in October 2005. Though the missiles are in storage, they are no longer readily available for this mission as launch vehicles.

20. Ibid., p. iv.

21. Woolf, Summary.

22. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

23. Ibid., p. 20.

24. Ibid.

25. J. Dana Stuster, “The Obama administration just can't seem to pivot to Asia,” Foreign Policy blog, <http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/07/the_obama_administration_just_cant_seem_to_get_its_asia_pivot_right>.

26. Woolf, p. 13.

27. Elaine M. Grossman, “Pentagon Unveils New Plan for Conventional Submarine-Based Ballistic Missiles,” National Journal, May 29, 2013, <www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/pentagon-unveils-new-plan-for-conventional-submarine-based-ballistic-missiles-20120127>.

28. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report (Washington, DC: April 2010), p. 25 <www.defense.gov/npr/>.

29. “Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms,” April 8, 2010, p. 2, <www.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf>.

30. Ibid., p. 4.

31. Tom Z. Collina, “U.S. Alters Non-Nuclear Prompt-Strike Plan,” Arms Control Today, April 11, 2011, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_04/PromptStrike>.

32. Acton, Silver Bullet: Asking the Right Questions About Conventional, p. xiv.

33. John F. Kerry, ed., “Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today,” A Report to Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., November 30, 2009, <www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT53709/html/CPRT-111SPRT53709.htm>.

34. The Pentagon's Defense Science Board outlined five representative cases, including responding to a US satellite being shot down by a near-peer competitor; destroying nuclear materials that a terrorist organization had located temporarily in a neutral country; a small weapon of mass destruction located temporarily in a neutral country; a fleeting terrorist group gathered temporarily in a neutral country; and a rogue state threatening to use a nuclear weapon against an allied nation. Cited in Woolf, p. 5.

35. These developments are discussed in Dennis M. Gormley, Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), pp. 125–33, 136–45.

36. This is not the first time Japan has entertained developing a ballistic missile for pre-emptive purposes. In October 2004, the Japanese Defense Agency stipulated interest in studying the need for such a capability, then focused on enemy missile launch facilities. However, the plan was dropped soon after its acknowledgement due to coalition political pressure, and Japanese interest in such a strike capability turned to cruise missiles instead. On current Japanese long-range strike ambitions, see “U.S. worried by aggressive military posture,” Japan Times, August 7, 2013, <www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/07/national/u-s-fretting-over-japans-desire-to-militarily-strike-enemy-bases/> and J. Michael Cole, “Japan Mulls a Preemptive Strike Capability,” Diplomat, June 4, 2013, <http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/04/japan-mulls-a-preemptive-strike-capability/>. On the earlier effort in 2004, see Gormley, Missile Contagion, p. 10.

37. Elaine M. Grossman, “A Former Nuclear Commander Not Wild About Nukes,” Global Security Newswire, May 28, 2008, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/a-former-nuclear-commander-not-wild-about-nukes/>.

38. US Government Accountability Office, “Military Transformation: DOD Needs to Strengthen Implementation of Its Global Strike Concept and Provide a Comprehensive Investment Approach for Acquiring Needed Capabilities,” GAO-08–325, (April 2008), <www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08–325>. Asked to comment on the GAO report, the DoD concurred with each of the GAO's findings. In my experience as an advisor to several DARPA office directors during the 1990s, I found that technology considerations rather than conceptual ones virtually always dictated decision making.

39. US Government Accountability Office, “Military Transformation,” p. 7.

40. On enduring intelligence weaknesses, see Dennis M. Gormley, “The Limits of Intelligence: Iraq's Lessons,” Survival 46 (Autumn 2004), pp. 7–28.

41. Cited in Woolf, p. 4.

42. Ibid

43. Mark Landler and Choe Sang-Hun, “In Kim's Undetected Death, Sign of Nation's Opacity,” New York Times, December 19, 2011, <www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/asia/in-detecting-kim-jong-il-death-a-gobal-intelligence-failure.html>.

44. Janne E. Nolan, Tyranny of Consensus: Discourse and Dissent in American National Security Policy (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2013), p. 1.

45. Take, for example, the William J. Clinton administration's clumsy handling of a prompt response to al Qaeda's brazen attacks in Africa on two US embassies in August 1998. Cruise missiles were fired, without notable consequence, against six al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan as well as on the al Shifa pharmaceutical complex in Khartoum, Sudan, thought to be producing chemical weapons, but without full proof. The controversy over the 1998 attack—occurring during the Monica Lewinsky scandal—notably diminished the public's appreciation of the magnitude of the al Qaeda threat.

46. Traditionally, the US strategic nuclear triad referred to a triad of delivery systems: ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and penetrating bombers. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review envisioned a “new triad:” offensive strike systems (the aforementioned delivery systems, along with conventional delivery systems), defensive systems (namely missile defense), and a “revitalized defence infrastructure that would be more responsive to developing new capabilities (nuclear and non-nuclear) if required.” David S. McDonough, Nuclear Superiority: The ‘new triad’ and the evolution of nuclear strategy, Adelphi Paper 383, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006, p. 8.

47. Woolf, p. 41.

48. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programs judged that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, a moratorium that lasted at least several years. National Intelligence Council, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” November 2007, <www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf>.

49. States seeking such a hair-trigger capability would require a solid-fuel delivery system, which, over the next decade, seems unlikely for North Korea to acquire. Iran, on the other hand, has tested a solid propellant 2,200 km-range ballistic missile, the Sajjil-2, which is far less vulnerable to pre-emptive US attacks and which also provides Iran, in the future, with the capacity to conduct pre-emptive attacks of its own due to their short readiness times compared with liquid-fuel missiles. See Iran's Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A Net Assessment (London: IISS, 2010).

50. Nitze, p. C1.

51. Nina Tannenwald, “Stigmatizing the Bomb,” International Security 29 (Spring 2005), p. 30.

52. See Colin Powell with Joseph E. Perisco, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 323–24, 485–86, and 540–41, and George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 463.

53. Watts, p. iii.

54. See Naval Air Systems Command, “Aircraft and Weapons: Tomahawk,” <www.navair.navy.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.display&key=F4E98B0F-33F5–413B-9FAE-8B8F7C5F0766>.

55. Steven Russell, “Stick with Tomahawk, Forget LRASM,” Breaking Defense, July 12, 2013, <http://breakingdefense.com/2013/07/12/stick-with-the-tomahawk-forget-lrasm/>.

56. See Eugene Miasnikov, “The Air-Space Threat to Russia,” in Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin, eds., Missile Defense: Confrontation and Cooperation (Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 2013), <http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Missile_Defense_book_eng_fin2013.pdf>; and Eugene Miasnikov, “Counterforce Capabilities of Conventional Strategic Arms,” Presentation at ISODARCO XXVI Winter Course “New Military Technologies: Implications for Strategy and Arms Control,” January 6–13, 2013, <www.armscontrol.ru/pubs/en/Miasnikov-PGM-130110.pdf>.

57. Ibid., p. 16. For a contrasting analysis of US counterforce conventional strikes on Chinese nuclear forces, which reaches a different conclusion, see Tong Zhao, “Limiting Damage or Damaging Stability: Assessing Conventional Counterforce Strikes against Theater Nuclear Forces,” in Stephanie Spies and Mark Jansson, eds., Project on Nuclear Issues: A Collection of Papers from the 2011 Conference Series (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2012), pp. 140–55, <http://csis.org/files/publication/120809_Spies_ProjectNuclearIssues_web.pdf>.

58. On Russian countermeasures, see “Russia to Get New ICBM Later This Year,” RIA Novosti, July 24, 2013, <http://en.rian.ru/military_news/20130418/180717057.html>.

59. An unknown portion of Tactical Tomahawk inventory is slated to be equipped with this so-called “penetrator variant,” designed to deal with hardened and underground targets. Shaped charge warheads focus their explosive capacity narrowly to penetrate armor, while blast fragmentation weapons generally are used to attack soft targets in the open or within lightly protected structures. See Andreas Parsch, “Raytheon (General Dynamics) AGM/BGM/RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk,” Director of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles, u.d., <www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-109.html>. The US Navy is also working on a multi-effects warhead system that would combine a blast fragmentation capability with a tandem penetrator, meaning all Block 4 Tomahawks could eventually be outfitted with duel-mode warheads. Still, several missiles would likely be needed to obtain the required damage effects against a missile silo, no less to deal with preferential silo defenses.

60. For technical details of the S-400, see Carlo Kopp, “Almaz-Antey 40R6/S-400 Triumf Self Propelled Air Defence System/SA-21,” Technical Report APA-TR-2009-0503, May 2009, <www.ausairpower.net/APA-S-400-Triumf.html>.

61. Woolf, p. 39.

62. Cited in ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. James M. Acton, “Russia and Strategic, Conventional Weapons: Concerns and Responses,” Nonproliferation Review 22 (June 2015), pp. 141–154.

65. Under Article V of the treaty, the United States reserves the right to develop and test such a weapon.

66. Recalling the provenance of CPGS, Russia surely must assume that a future US administration might be prone to go down a more robust path than perhaps the current administration is willing to entertain.

67. Dennis M. Gormley, “The Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions: Dealing with American Conventional Superiority,” Proliferation Papers, No. 29, Fall 2009, pp. 43–44.

68. Some analysts have argued that, in light of China's conventional missile buildup and the consequent threat to US and allied forces in the region, it would serve US interests to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Recent developments in Russia also suggest a most uncertain future for the INF Treaty's longevity. Still, on balance, there are compelling reasons to believe that a US land-based intermediate-range ballistic missile force deployed against China would not offer much value over existing and more varied US strike options. For one assessment reaching such a conclusion, see David W. Kearn, Jr., Facing the Missile Challenge: U.S. Strategy and the Future of the INF Treaty (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012).