Cooperative Monitoring Center Occasional Paper/9: De-Alerting Strategic Ballistic Missiles
This paper presents a framework for evaluating the technical merits of strategic ballistic missile de-alerting measures, and it uses the framework to evaluate a variety of possible measures for silo-based, land-mobile, and submarine-based missiles. De-alerting measures are defined for the purpose of this paper as reversible actions taken to increase the time or effort required to launch a strategic ballistic missile. The paper does not assess the desirability of pursuing a de-alerting program. Such an assessment is highly context dependent. The paper postulates that if de-alerting is desirable and is used as an arms control mechanism, de-alerting measures should satisfy specific cirteria relating to force security, practicality, effectiveness, significant delay, and verifiability. Silo-launched missiles lend themselves most readily to de-alerting verification, because communications necessary for monitoring do not increase the vulnerabilty of the weapons by a significant amount. Land-mobile missile de-alerting measures would be more challenging to verify, because monitoring measures that disclose the launcher's location would potentially increase their vulnerability. Submarine-launched missile de-alerting measures would be extremely challlenging if not impossible to monitor without increasing the submarine's vulnerability.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 6985
- Report Number(s):
- SAND98-0505/9; ON: DE00006985
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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