The New York Times

October 8, 1981

First Strike

By Herbert Scoville

McLEAN, Va. - President Reagan's decision on the MX missile signals t hat the United States is now firmly and publicly embarked on a first-strike strategic nuclear policy. This is a prescription for nuclear catastrophe, a disaster unparalleled in the history of mankind.

The decision to cancel Jimmy Carter's MX ''shell game'' - that is, shuttling MX's among shelters in the Western deserts - and instead to procure about 100 MX's and deploy some of them in existing Titan and Minuteman silos has dominated public discussion. However, it is the emergence of this dangerous first-strike strategy that should be the main focus of public attention.

The White House's sole military justification for pressing ahead with the MX-missile program was to be able to launch a ''prompt counter-ICBM'' attack. But the MX's can only destroy Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles if they are used in a first strike; otherwise, they hit only empty silos.

In the event of war, the Soviet Union will have emptied some of its silos in its first strike and certainly will launch every missile it can get off the ground as soon as its warning radar and satellites tell it that the United States' retaliatory strike is under way.

A second-strike ''counter-ICBM'' would only ensure that every Soviet missile would be launched at every target that the Russians could find in the United States. To be effective, our ''counter-ICBM's'' would have to be so ''prompt'' that they would have to be launched in a first strike.

There is also another aspect of the Reagan plan that suggests a United States intention to use the MX in a first strike - the lack of survivability of the MX in its superhardened silos. In the past, the most important criterion for the MX system was its capability of surviving a Soviet attack. President Reagan quite correctly abandoned all the multiple-protective-shelter schemes because they would not provide this survivability. Yet while still claiming a ''window of vulnerability'' for our strategic forces in the 1980's, he proposed to base this provocative MX missile in existing Titan and Minuteman silos. But it was the vulnerability of these very silos that prompted the MX program in the first place, and that was used earlier by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger as an explanation of ''the window of vulnerability.'' In defense of this obvious inconsistency, Mr. Weinberger now states that by making these silos more blast-resistant, he can buy time until other methods of improving their survivability can be devised. He claims that this superhardening would force the Soviet Union to develop even more accurate missiles than it now has and might well keep it from achieving a high-confidence counter-MX capability until the late 1980's.

Only two days before the President's announcement of the MX decision, Mr. Weinberger issued with much fanfare a glossy brochure on Soviet military power. Now we must ask: Has the Secretary even read his own propaganda?

In that report, he states that some of the 308 large Soviet SS-18 missiles are now deployed with single warheads, which ''with their large destructive power and accuracy are capable of destroying any (the emphasis is mine) known fixed target with high probability.'' Thus, by his own admission the MX missiles in their silos would be vulnerable today no matter how much concrete and steel he proposes to add. These SS-18 warheads are estimated to have an explosive yield of 10 to 20 megatons, which will produce a crater more than 1,000 feet in radius and will throw masses of dirt into a lip more than twice that radius. Even with less-accurate guidance than they have today, and allowing for biases from such affects as gravitational anomalies, the Soviet Union could be confident of knocking out the provocative MX missiles. Since the President proposes to put only 36 or, at the most, 100 MX missiles in these silos, the Russians would have to expend only a small fraction of their stockpile to wipe out the entire force.

Deploying the ''counter-ICBM'' MX in silos known to be vulnerable can only signal to the Russians that we plan to launch them in a first strike before their own attack could wipe them out. After their attack, we could not rely on having any missiles with which to retaliate. Thus, with this MX program we are giving the Soviet Union strong incentives to launch a pre-emptive strike in a time of crisis.

The entire MX program should be canceled now, and President Reagan should listen to his closest Senate advisers, Paul Laxalt of Nevada and Jake Garn of Utah, who urged in June early negotiation of a ''strategic nuclear offensive arms reduction agreement - particularly in those weapons which constitute first-strike counterforce systems.''

Herbert Scoville Jr., who is president of the Arms Control Association and author of ''MX: Prescription For Disaster,'' was assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.