Bury the MX

The Reagan Administration is mounting a full-scale campaign to save the MX missile program from the congressional guillotine in two key votes expected in late March. As in the past, however, there is more muddle than logic in the Administration’s case.

The MX missile was designed to offset the big Soviet advantage in huge, multiple-warhead missiles that could be used, at least in theory, to deal a knockout blow to the land-based Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles that are the heart of this country’s nuclear deterrent.

However, the big missile has suffered from an incurable flaw: Nobody has come up with a basing plan that is politically acceptable and yet would enable the MX to survive an all-out Soviet attack.

As modified to embrace the recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission two years ago, President Reagan’s proposal is to build 100 of the 10-warhead missiles and deploy them in existing fixed Minuteman silos. Since the vulnerability of these silos was used to justify the MX in the first place, that doesn’t make much military sense.

The last Congress voted the necessary funds for the construction of the first 21 MXs, and approved the building of a second increment of 21 missiles--but placed an embargo on the actual expenditure of the money pending the outcome of the two special votes this month.

The President is asking Congress to lift that embargo and to approve an additional 48 MXs. The response should be a flat no on both counts.

The main justification being offered for the MX now is diplomatic rather than military; Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other Administration luminaries argue that the MX is needed as a bargaining chip. They say that the Soviets will not agree to reduce their threatening force of superheavy ICBMs unless the American side has leverage.

This argument would have more force if the Administration were plainly willing to trade off the MX for Soviet concessions, but this isn’t clear at all. Going forward with an enormously expensive weapon system that is not cost-effective in military terms--and is of questionable value on the bargaining table--is of dubious wisdom anyway, especially in this era of severe budget squeezes.

The United States can make do with the existing fleet of Minuteman missiles, bolstered by missile-firing submarines and strategic bombers armed with cruise missiles, until the highly accurate, sea-launched D-5 missiles are ready. The small, single-warhead Midgetman ICBM, still in the development stage, will be both more survivable than the MX and more consistent with arms-control goals when it comes along in the 1990s.

Congress should vote no on the MX.