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Ultimate Threat
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The Price of Power -- Ultimate Threat: [Fourth in a series on military spending] ABOARD THE USS WYOMING -- The Cold War ended a decade ago, but here, a few hundred feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, it's as if the Wall never came down. For six weeks, the Wyoming and its 157-man crew have silently roamed the Atlantic, the submarine's pipe joints cushioned with rubber washers to muffle telltale vibrations, its 24 nuclear-tipped Trident II missiles poised to launch. A missile fired from here, about 70 miles off the Florida coast, would need a little more than half an hour to reach Moscow. Despite the decade's extraordinary political transformations, the Wyoming's captain says his responsibilities haven't changed much at all. "My job is to protect the missiles and be ready to launch them if I'm told to," says Cmdr. John Pasko. Missile Technician Sr. Chief Kevin Crandell says it would take a few extra key strokes now to program new coordinates into his missiles, since the U.S. and Russia officially stopped targeting their weapons at each other six years ago. "It's a small step," he explains. "It wouldn't slow us down." In the twilight of the sonar room, Sonar Technician Israel Colon sits with headphones clasped to his ears, his eyes fixed on a glowing green monitor as he tracks sounds from an unknown vessel plying the waters above. Within minutes, the sonar team has it identified: a single four-blade propeller turning at 97 revolutions per minute. It's a merchant ship. The 24-year-old petty officer was trained by listening to tapes of Russian attack submarines, the Wyoming's natural predator, but in two years and four patrols, he has never heard the real thing. "I've never heard anything I'd classify as a threat," he says. Nor is he likely to. The cash-strapped Russian submarine force rarely ventures far from home. For many Americans, the idea of fighting a nuclear war has become unimaginable. But the Pentagon is still planning -- and paying -- for one. And this week's Senate vote rejecting a treaty that would have banned all nuclear testing shows that the Pentagon isn't alone in its commitment to a Cold War-style nuclear force. Indeed, with arms control stalled, the U.S. arsenal still contains about 7,000 long-range nuclear weapons, more than half its Cold War peak. President Bush took American nuclear bombers off alert in 1991, but the other two legs of the U.S. military's nuclear "triad" -- 18 massive submarines such as the Wyoming and about 500 buried missile silos -- remain on much the same 24-hour-a-day, launch-within-minutes alert they maintained throughout the Cold War. The cost of the Pentagon's nuclear arsenal has dropped more than 60% in real terms since the late 1980s, as the U.S. has given up building new multibillion-dollar weapons systems. Still, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. spent about $20 billion last year on supporting and maintaining its nuclear forces. (The Pentagon accounts for the spending somewhat differently and puts the total at several billion dollars less.) Unless the U.S. is willing to do away with all of its nuclear weapons, further savings will be limited. The Energy Department alone is spending more than $4 billion annually to ensure that the U.S. arsenal will work without testing for decades more to come. And the enormous infrastructure that supports America's nuclear forces is such a large part of the budget that cutting back to 1,000 longrange weapons would save, at most, $2.5 billion a year, the CBO estimates. And who is the target of this nuclear arsenal? In the post-Cold War world, the threats to American security range from Osama bin Laden to an erratic North Korea to an intransigent Iraq. But for the nation's nuclear planners, the primary threat remains Russia. "Russia's future is quite uncertain," says Edward Warner, assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction. "Russia itself maintains thousands of nuclear weapons. Russia's doctrine today is more reliant on nuclear weapons." The Russians themselves feel far less confident of their power. With their missiles aging and little money to modernize or replace them, some Russian officials have quietly proposed in recent weeks cutting back each side's arsenal to fewer than 1,000 long-range weapons. The U.S. is insisting it won't go below 2,000 to 2,500 warheads, a level Moscow will inevitably feel forced to match. Cold War suspicions of arms control in general and Russia in particular were behind Senate conservatives' decision to defy President Clinton and vote down the multilateral Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Like many in the Pentagon, they argued that new threats from China, North Korea and the like only bolster the case for a strong nuclear deterrent. Wherever the threats originate, the question remains whether the nuclear deterrent the U.S. now pays for is worth the price -- both in dollar terms and in other opportunities forgone. For instance, some defense experts argue that the U.S. needs to be investing more in technologies to counter the growing threat of biological or chemical attack. Others say the U.S. should invest in a new generation of conventional weaponry to maintain its military dominance into the 21st century. Still others argue that the real threats from Russia are nuclear theft or accidental launch and that more money needs to be spent helping the Russians dismantle their weapons and secure their arsenals. OF DOUBTFUL EFFECT It also isn't certain that a huge nuclear arsenal, and particularly one that the U.S. reserves the right to test, will deter a new generation of potential nuclear rivals: India and Pakistan, rogue states such as Iraq, or terrorists seeking out weapons of mass destruction. Retired Air Force Gen. George Lee Butler, the former top commander of American strategic nuclear forces, says that if anything, the U.S. is feeding their nuclear appetites. "When [we] have no palpable threat and still declare nuclear weapons the cornerstone of our national security . . . is it any wonder the president's" calls on other nations to denuclearize "are going to be ignored?" Gen. Butler asks. For now, the power, the price and the continuing vigilance of the American nuclear arsenal are all on display here on the Wyoming. The sheer scale of the sleek, black vessel is difficult to comprehend as it surfaces one morning to pick up a few visitors. At 560 feet, it is as long as the Washington Monument is tall. It is also four stories high. Inside the sub, nearly every inch is crammed with electronics, weaponry and more than enough food and supplies to get the crew through a normal 11-week patrol without ever seeing port or, if necessary, surfacing. Even then, it is still large enough for someone to jog around the forest of missile tubes -- 24 laps for a mile -- though everyone aboard seems to prefer the treadmills and exercise bicycles tucked in among the missiles. Its cost is just as monumental. Since the program began during the Nixon administration, the U.S. has spent $58.5 billion to design and build 18 Trident submarines and their missile systems. The Navy plans to spend an additional $5.25 billion over the next decade to put new, more-accurate missiles on four of the older Trident I subs-improving their "hard-target kill" capability against Russian missile silosand to refuel their nuclear reactors. The Navy estimates that it costs $92.5 million a year to maintain each of the Trident subs, their missiles, and the two full-time crews who trade off patrols to keep the sub in the water an average of 36 weeks a year. The Trident II's value is in its stunning destructive power. Each of its 24 missiles can carry as many as eight nuclear warheads, for a total of 192 per sub. Each warhead, with its independent guidance system, is designed to hit its target within 500 feet. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an arms-control and environmental advocacy group, estimates that an attack from a single Trident II sub on the Kozel'sk missile field 150 miles southwest of Moscow would leave 850,000 people dead from blast, fire and radiation. Here on the Wyoming, the missiles are never far from view. Their orange metal tubes form the walls of the enlisted men's 9-by-12-foot bunk rooms. Most crewmembers seem unaffected by their proximity to Armageddon. "The way I've always looked at it is if we have to do a launch, we'd just do what we have to do," says Machinists Mate 1st Class Mike Knichel, who has spent 19 years on subs. Every officer on board has access to the Wyoming's targeting plans, but only a few beyond the captain and the executive officer say they have actually chosen to look them up. Part of that reaction is training; part is the culture of this claustrophobic world where voices and emotions are always kept carefully in check. "Our job is to deter wars. If we do our job right, we'll never have to use the missiles," says the sub's captain, Cmdr. Pasko. Nearly everyone on board the Wyoming refers to their voyages as a "deterrence patrol." Like the general public, most members of the Wyoming's crew seem uncertain about who the enemy is these days. In the wardroom over lunch, the submarine's officers struggle with the question. "I can't put a face on any one enemy," says damage-control assistant Lt. j.g. Theron Davis. "But I know that we're helping maintain world peace." Assistant weapons officer Ensign Sanford Kallal says that the problem isn't too few enemies, but too many. "A lot of countries have nuclear weapons or a way to get them," he says. Navigation officer Lt. Cmdr. Scott Fever tries to sum it all up. "Maybe our job these days is to deter someone from becoming an enemy," he says. At the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb., which oversees all American nuclear forces, analysts actually seem invigorated by such questions. In a small, plush conference room, the command's intelligence analysts present what they call "The Hydra" briefing on today's manifold strategic threat. The first slide up includes a photo of Mr. bin Laden, the renegade Saudi terrorist. Most of the presentation is devoted to emerging dangers posed by China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and a host of "non-state" actors. Although Russia merits just one of the 13 slides, that slide also says that Russia poses the "only 'real threat' to U.S. survival." The U.S. war plan, the ultra-secret Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP, is still mainly directed against an estimated 2,000 targets in Russia. In recent years, the Strategic Command has added "options" for nuclear war with China and nuclear strikes against some rogue nations. The Clinton administration says it doesn't rule out using nuclear weapons to retaliate against all forms of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological attacks. While the dangers are real, many question whether a big nuclear arsenal is needed to deter enemies who count their weapons in the dozens, and moreover, whether traditional deterrence will even work against terrorists or rogue states that may be more interested in martyrdom. For now, what Mr. Warner, the assistant secretary of defense, calls "the hedge" strategy remains American policy. Indeed, even if the U.S. and Russia can agree on deep cuts in long-range weapons, the Pentagon is committed to keeping thousands more warheads in storage for years to come, ready to be remounted on missiles should Russia become the enemy again. SUBMARINES AS LYNCHPIN Trident submarines such as the Wyoming remain central to those plans. The submarines' ability to hide makes them the most survivable leg of the triad. Under the START II arms-control treaty, ratified by the U.S. but not yet by Russia, half of America's strategic nuclear forces -- up to 1,750 warheads -- would be based on submarines. The Pentagon has decided to keep 14 Tridents to carry those warheads. While the Pentagon argues that such an approach is strategically sound, it isn't the most cost-effective. In theory, to meet START II's warhead limit, the U.S. could cut the Trident force back to nine submarines from the current 18. Doing so would save about $38 million a year in operating costs for each sub cut. Further, reducing the force to nine submarines would save much of the $5.25 billion the Navy plans to spend over the next decade putting new Trident II missiles on four of the older Trident I subs and refueling their reactors. At the Strategic Command, planners warn that cutting the fleet that deeply would mean a loss of important patrol and targeting flexibility. The head of the Strategic Command, Adm. Richard Mies, says that at any one time, only two-thirds of the force is actually in the wa ter and "survivable" in the event of a nuclear attack. "On a day-to-day, peacetime basis," he says, "a significant portion of that accountable force is not available." Some critics suggest that the Navy still could save money with a 14-Trident fleet if it kept four of the older subs but didn't put new missiles on them. "You want to spend all that money to get 150 [meters] closer to your target?" asks Dale Bumpers, a former Arkansas Democratic senator who fought the Trident refit. But in the end, a Pentagon report carried the day by arguing that going to an all Trident II missile force -- with only one set of repair equipment and replacement stocks -- would actually cost $3 billion less than keeping the current two-missile force. That projection, however, is based on the assumption that the Tridents and their missiles will be in the water until 2025. Back on the Wyoming, the crew still has another five weeks left of its silent patrol. Their 18-hour days will be filled with constant drilling and testing and a small amount of free time for sleeping, reading, college courses and a favorite video game: 688I attack submarine. Chief of the Boat Joe Steadley, the senior enlisted man on the sub, says that a lot of the crew thinks that the attack subs, which go out looking for their enemies, "are a lot more exciting" than the Wyoming. AN ISOLATED LIFE Since the Wyoming's mission is to hide, no one will say where it is going from here. Cmdr. Pasko gets his orders from the Strategic Command on what portion of the Atlantic to patrol. But within that, he says, "we've got a lot of ocean to move around in." The sub is constantly on the move, searching for different water temperatures and different geography that "bends sound" to confound pursuers. For the crew, the isolation is near-total. With its premium on silence, the sub only rarely sends messages. There is no e-mail, no phone calls, and for each crew member, only 10 short "family grams" from home in 11 weeks. No replies are permitted. The restrictions are so great that before leaving port, the entire crew fills out a "Potential Family Problem Form" letting the base and Cmdr. Pasko know whether they even want to be notified of family crises when they occur. For Lt. j.g. Scott Eidem, that isolation is making him question how much longer he will stay in the Navy. He is proud of the job he's doing, but also tired of being away from his two-year-old son. "I'd like to hear an answer to that, too," jokes Cmdr. Pasko, who is clearly pushing the young man to stay in. While they may have doubts about their own future, though, few question that there will be Tridents for years to come. "There'll always be some enemy to deter," predicts Master Chief Steadley.
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