[Seth]

By Ann Scott Tyson
(c) 2006, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon, seeking a faster way to thwart threats
from hostile states or terrorist groups, is asking Congress for $500
million to create a new force of conventionally armed, long-range
missiles capable of striking anywhere in the world within an hour
after an order is given, a senior defense official said Tuesday.

The initiative would convert 24 Trident missiles armed with nuclear
warheads into rockets carrying conventional warheads and begin
fielding them by 2008. The missiles would be launched from submarines
and could hit targets 5,000 to 6,000 miles away within 10 yards, the
official said.

A primary advantage, defense officials say, is that it would offer
U.S. leaders a conventional alternative to nuclear weapons in a
distant crisis where speed is essential. They acknowledge a major risk
is that other nations could conceivably misinterpret a conventional
missile attack as a nuclear strike.

“Will it be interpreted as having a nuclear warhead and elicit ...
a nuclear response?” asked the senior defense official, acknowledging
the potential “ambiguity” of the weapon if detected by early-warning
systems. Such systems may not be able to determine if an incoming
warhead is conventional or nuclear.

The worrisome scenario, he said, “is that they do see it, then
they misinterpret it,” he told a meeting of defense reporters. The
officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not yet
briefed Congress.

The senior defense official said the Pentagon seeks to open a
debate on the benefits and risks of the proposed conventional
ballistic missiles and publicize them as a potential deterrent.
“We’ve done the testing” and developed one of two conventional
warheads planned, he said.

Nuclear experts said they share concerns acknowledged Tuesday by
the senior official, saying the possibility for confusion would be
high because U.S. submarines capable of launching the missiles could
be armed with conventional and nuclear varieties.

“If we did end up in a crisis where things were really tense, this
decision about what is coming at you could be essential,” said Hans
Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the
Federation of American Scientists, an arms-control think tank.

The proposed capability, called “prompt global strike,” is needed
to address threats — such as terrorist groups and underground weapons
stocks and military facilities — that have proliferated and for which
nuclear weapons are “not appropriate” because they are too powerful
and inflict high civilian casualties, the official said.

He said the conventional ballistic missiles could penetrate the
ground deeper than other conventional weapons, making it a possible
alternative to another proposal for building a “bunker buster”
nuclear weapon designed to go three or four yards into the earth and
propagate a shock wave.

With estimated flight times of 12 to 24 minutes, the conventionally
armed missiles could be used quickly against a remote and fleeting
“terrorist stronghold” or against a nation threatening a neighbor
with a missile attack — targets that could take many hours, days, or
weeks to reach with cruise missiles, bombers or ground forces, he
said.

AP-NY-03-07-06 2119EST
_______________________________



-Seth