Committee Report Supports New Missile

WASHINGTON--The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee released a report yesterday supporting large new expenditures on the Midgetman nuclear missile, the first blow in what is expected to be a new Capitol Hill fight over administration budget increases for atomic weapons.

Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., said his analysis of the single-warhead missile showed Midgetman is "that rare kind of weapon that should garner support from liberals and conservatives alike."

Midgetman is the nickname given the missile intended to succeed the MX nuclear weapon, which itself has been the subject of bitter fights the past four years.

Midgetman is intended to join the land-based leg of America's nuclear triad, which includes bombers and missile-firing submarines.

For fiscal 1987, which begins Oct. 1, President Reagan last week asked Congress for more money for a variety of nuclear weapons.

Although Congress has limited the total MX deployment to 50, half of what Reagan originally asked, the Pentagon wants $1.8 billion next year for 21 more MX weapons for test purposes.

Also sought is $3.1 billion for the eighth Trident missile-firing sub, $1.4 billion for the first production of a new generation of more powerful warheads for the Trident missiles, and a classified amount for the radar-evading "stealth" bomber.

Spending on the Midgetman would double, from $700 million this year to $1.4 billion, under the Reagan budget. The money would go for research, and a decision on whether to go ahead with full-scale development is likely to be made later this year.

Aspin's analysis said conservatives should like Midgetman because it "provides real deterrence" since it would take a large number of Soviet warheads to knock it out.

"For liberals, the Midgetman is important because it cannot be a first-strike weapon; it can only be a retaliatory or a second-strike weapon," Aspin said.

Midgetman's chief support came from a 1983 presidential commission appointed by Reagan to come up with a basing plan for the 10-warhead MX.

While the commission said the MX should be deployed in stationary silos, it called for development of a mobile, single-warhead missile in the future.

The commission argued that in a crisis, the Midgetman would be a less tempting target for a Soviet first strike because it would take numerous attacking warheads to destroy a mobile missile and even then the attackers would only knock out one missile. That contrasts with the stationary MX and its 10 warheads.

The Air Force has pushed ahead with development of Midgetman and tentatively plans to begin deploying it as early as 1992.

The leading deployment plan apparently is to put the weapon aboard armored, wheeled launchers that could be driven around large military bases in the western United States, making them hard for the Soviets to target.

Aspin estimated that Midgetman would cost $44.5 billion during its 20-year life span. In that same period, the United States will spend $480 billion on other long-range nuclear weapons, meaning that Midgetman would take up about 5 percent of the strategic budget, he said.

A Pentagon advisory panel plans to recommend development of Midgetman later this month, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Reagan administration has generally supported Midgetman, although U.S. negotiators at the nuclear arms talks in Geneva proposed in October that mobile missiles should be banned.

If that position were accepted by the Soviets, it could mean an eventual ban on Midgetman even before the weapon is deployed.