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Science 10 November 1989:
Vol. 246. no. 4931, pp. 765 - 770
DOI: 10.1126/science.246.4931.765
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Articles

Dispelling Myths About Verification of Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles

George N. Lewis 1, Sally K. Ride 2, and John S. Townsend 3

1 Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
2 University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093
3 Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711

It is widely believed that an arms control limit on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles would be nearly impossible to verify. Among the reasons usually given are: these weapons are small, built in nondistinctive industrial facilities, deployed on a variety of ships and submarines, and difficult to distinguish from their conventionally armed counterparts. In this article, it is argued that the covert production and deployment of nuclear-armed sealaunched cruise missiles would not be so straightforward. A specific arms control proposal is described, namely a total ban on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles. This proposal is used to illustrate how an effective verification scheme might be constructed.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Gamma-Ray Measurements of a Soviet Cruise-Missile Warhead.
S. Fetter, T. B. Cochran, L. Grodzins, H. L. Lynch, and M. S. Zucker (1990)
Science 248, 828-834
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