Geriatric Giants

Fight over an aging missile

On-scene commander, the team went to the unit...

What unit are you talking about, sir?

Let's don't talk about that.

That's a Roger, sir.

The radio exchange would have been ludicrous had it not taken place between two members of an Air Force team searching frantically for a nine-megaton warhead, 450 times the yield of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The warhead was blown from the Titan II missile that exploded into flames near Damascus, Ark., two weeks ago. Despite pleas by nearby residents for reassurance that there was no danger of toxic fumes or radiation, the Air Force was determined to keep secret for a time the embarrassing fact that the warhead had been lost and then found a short time later, intact but slightly dented. As a result, the debate in Washington and Arkansas about the accident is as much over the on-site behavior of the Air Force as over the future of the 53 aging Titan II missiles that are still in their silos in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas.

The liquid-fuel Titans became part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in 1963 and were supposed to be replaced in 1971. They probably will not be phased out until the Air Force begins deploying the mobile MX missile, perhaps ten years from now. Air Force Secretary Hans Mark told the House Armed Services Committee last week that age was not a factor in the accident. Said he: "It could have happened on the first day of deployment." But Retired Air Force General Robert Richardson, an advocate of higher defense spending, disagrees. He told TIME: "The original specifications did not call for the Titans to last this long. Now we are dealing with geriatrics in the missile trade."

Mississippi Democrat John C. Stennis, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged that the U.S. "seriously explore" alternatives to the Titans. But Pentagon officials maintain that the U.S. cannot afford to do so. Although the Titans are not as accurate as the country's main land-based nuclear missiles, the 1,000 solid-fuel Minutemen, a Titan warhead is about 54 times as big as one of the three warheads on a Minuteman III. Titans make up one-third of the land-based U.S. megatonnage.

The Titans' targets are secret, but experts believe that they are aimed at Soviet nuclear missile command centers and perhaps other targets like submarine bases. Explained a defense analyst: "For example, you might know that a Soviet command and control center is in a Soviet mountain, but not exactly where. Titan II's large warhead could be used to dig up the mountain."

In Arkansas, the questions being raised about the Titan accident were much more parochial and intense. Cleburne County Judge Dan Verser asked at a hearing at Little Rock Air Force Base whether he should worry when warning lights flash and sirens howl at a Titan silo near his farm in Heber Springs, 25 miles east of Damascus. Colonel John Moser, commander of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing at Little Rock, replied that "99 times out of 100" the warnings are caused by equipment failure and "there is no need to evacuate until you're told to evacuate." Moser was quickly overruled by Lieut. General Lloyd R. Leavitt Jr., vice commander of the Strategic Air Command, who advised Verser that "a prudent thing to do would be to leave." Said State Senator Stanley Russ to Air Force officials: "People in my district don't believe one thing you say."

In fact, Sheriff Gus Anglin and some of his friends are so skeptical that they even suggest there was no missile in the huge container, marked DO NOT DROP, that was loaded aboard a flatbed truck and driven under heavy guard from the damaged missile site. Military officials, while not actually confirming that there was a warhead in the box--or that there ever had been one on the missile--indicated that the bomb was taken to Little Rock Air Force Base and shipped by air to an Amarillo, Texas, nuclear weapons plant for disassembly.

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