© 1983: Peter C. Newman1________________________________________________________________________________
Plans for testing the cruise missile over northern Alberta has focused attention on Canada's role in the defence of the West. In his new book--TRUE NORTH: Not Strong and Free, published by McClelland and Stewart--author Peter C. Newman1 documents the case against these controversial weapons. Much of the data on which this article is based was not previously available.
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By PETER C. NEWMAN1
Few of the technicalities about the cruise are understood by the general public. But Canadians have a way of smelling a rat.
Canadian public opinion, after apparently sleeping through two decades of having nuclear-weapons-carrying aircraft (the Genie used by our NORAD--North American Aerospace Defence Command--fighters) on its soil, has suddenly woken up and decided to oppose the testing of the American cruise missile--even though they have been assured that no warheads, conventional or nuclear, are to be used.
From the beginning, the Trudeau government has maintained that this particular test of this specific missile over that special stretch of northern Alberta was required to meet our commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and that is overflights could be used as a bargaining lever in prompting the Soviets to take disarmament more seriously.
Not one of these arguments is true.
This is not the weapon that will be deployed in Europe (that will be a ground, not air, launched weapon). The territory which the cruise missiles will traverse in their flight to predetermined Soviet targets will be over industrialized eastern Europe and not over land comparable to northern Alberta. These cruise missiles have no connection with the weapons under discussion at the Geneva disarmament talks.
The missile we have agreed to test is a second-generation, strategic weapon, which will be launched by U.S. Strategic Air Command bombers directly across the North Pole at Russian cities. They will be under American, not NATO command, and will belong to the U.S. retaliatory arsenal, rather than being part of any alliance to which we belong.
On top of all that it remains highly dubious whether the weapon needs testing at all. It is already classified as operational by the U.S. Air Force; the Boeing Aircraft Corp. has been turning out cruise missiles at the rate of 40 per month since October, 1982.
At the same time, the Second World War battleships reactivated by President Ronald Reagan are being equipped with 32 cruise missiles each, and many successful tests of this weapon (called the Tomahawk) have already been flown from the USS New Jersey. According to a recent issue of the authoritative Aviation Week and Space Technology, 103 tests had been completed by June, 1983. (The magazine story cited 75 of the tests as having been successful.)
Testing the unarmed vehicle over Canada is required only to fine tune their guidance system. Refusing the United States permission to test will not make an iota of practical difference to the deployment and manufacture of the cruise; whit it will do is put a serious dent in North American solidarity and make disarmament negotiations that much more difficult.
The cruise is so controversial because it is a qualitively different kind of weapon.
"Cruise," strictly speaking, is an adjective, not a noun, so that to discuss "the cruise" is as meaningless as to talk about "the ballistic." "Cruise" describes the missile's locomotion through space: It lifts with wings like an airplane, as opposed to the trajectory of ballistic flight which more closely resembles the curve of a ball thrown to a catcher over the horizon.
Essentially an unmanned airplane, the cruise is hardly a new weapon. Nazi Germany built and fired many V-1 flying bombs during the Second World War, as well as V-2s, which were early ballistic missiles. Both superpowers have developed several cruise models, although up to now the Soviet version is larger and more cumbersome than the American. Recent developments in microelectronics have allowed American engineers to pack the advanced guidance system (the LN-35, made by Litton Systems Canada Ltd.) into a small space, while compact jet engines give the weapon its long range.
This guidance system makes the weapon accurate enough to be aimed between the goal posts of a football field up to 1,550 miles away. The funds being allocated to the cruise by the U.S. ($25.2 billion plus $3.3 billion for research) mark this as one of the Pentagon's major new weapons systems. The fact that nearly 12,000 of the missiles are on order--each due to be armed with a nuclear warhead with a potency of up to 200 kilotons--documents their deadly nature.
Because of their relatively low unit costs, their versatility, and their ability to be used with existing ships and aircraft, the cruise missile system is much favored by American military planners.
The Soviet Union has equipped its forces with cruise missiles for more than a decade. In fact, it was a Soviet anti-ship cruise missile (classified as the SSN2-Styx) fired by the Egyptians which sank the Israeli destroyer Elath during the 1967 war. The large, nuclear-powered, Russian Oscar-class submarines carry 24 anti-ship cruise missiles, as do the Kirov-class cruisers.
Dangerous as it undoubtedly is, the cruise is not, as many of its opponents claim, a first-strike weapon. A first-strike weapon is defined as a strategic ballistic missile that can be launched without warning and can reach its target so swiftly that it inflicts major damage before the enemy can react. The maximum range of a cruise missile is about 1,500 miles. Its maximum speed of 500 miles per hour makes it slower than some commercial jets, and much slower than most fighters and bombers. Since the Soviet Union already possesses the technology to shoot down such jets, the cruise hardly ranks a first-strike. (If one of the European-based cruise missiles were to be fired near Frankfurt, it would take 2½ hours to reach Moscow. If one of the Soviet triple-warhead SS-20 missiles based near Moscow were to be fired at Frankfurt, it would get there in eight minutes.)
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's argument that we must proceed with the tests or leave NATO is a blatant untruth. Norway refused to test the cruise; Denmark and Holland have unofficially notified the alliance that they will not consent to having the weapons installed on their soil; Iceland has no weapons of any kind--yet all of these countries are considered to be members in good standing of NATO.
"The real reason for Ottawa's decision on the cruise," wrote historian Desmond Morton, "is that it is a cheap counter to the Canada-bashers who cluster in Washington these days. With memories of Ken Taylor and the Teheran Caper2 long since vanished, testing the cruise is a trade-off for action on acid rain, gas sales, freeing the kidnapped Sid Jaffe and a host of other, cross-border irritants."
Professor Morton is right, but he doesn't go far enough. The Trudeau government also considers the cruise as a trade-off in another direction: By agreeing to test the weapon, the Trudeau administration is convinced it can get the NATO allies, now pressuring Canada to spend some real money on conventional defence, off its back. The tests, the Liberals hope, will take the place of some of the meaningful steps essential to strengthening our defence potential.
Still, with the cruise controversy having been blown up to its current proportions, Canada cannot ethically refuse the test without proposing some equally significant compensating act.
What's required is a clear unequivocal declaration that Canada intends to double our expenditures on conventional weapons in the next five years.
In return for that firm undertaking, we would expect NATO to relieve us of whatever commitments exist to test the cruise.
Dramatic as it sounds, such a leap in defence spending would take us only to the same level (three per cent of gross national product) as most of the other NATO nations, including such decidedly unwarlike countries as Holland, Denmark and Norway.
By offering this proposal Ottawa would be offering NATO (which has been strenuously advocating an increased defence effort by Canada) and the anti-cruise demonstrators a course of action that would satisfy the demands of both.
© 1983: Peter C. Newman1(article accompanied by [UPI] photograph of a cruise missile, captioned:
Cruise missile drops from U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber. Canadian tests will fine-tune its navigation system.)
(text of October 25, 1983 The Province article)
1-I MET CANADA'S RENOWNED AUTHOR/HISTORIAN WHEN I MADE A SUBMISSION ABOUT MY "INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC WORK...ON A DIRECT BASIS" FOR THE WORLD'S CHILDREN IN 1982 TO THE COUNTRY'S EQUIVALENT TO TIME OR NEWSWEEK: McLEAN'S MAGAZINE, OF WHICH HE WAS THEN EDITOR.
HE CHOSE NEITHER TO PUBLISH ANY EXCERPT FROM WHAT I GAVE HIM NOR RESPOND TO ME ABOUT THOSE CONTENTS.
2-THERE ARE A NUMBER OF TERMS OF REFERENCE ABOUT "KEN TAYLOR AND THE TEHERAN CAPER" IMMEDIATELY APPARENT IN WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
MAY I ONLY SUGGEST HERE THAT YOU NOTE HOW LONG IT TOOK BEFORE THE TRUTH WAS DISCLOSED TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT HOW THE FIRST 6 INNOCENT AMERICAN DIPLOMATS SAFELY ESCAPED FROM IRAN AFTER THE STUDENTS STORMED THE EMBASSY IN TEHERAN IN 1979?
PLEASE CONSIDER WHAT IS EXPLAINED ABOUT HACKING IN THE PREFACE OF WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
THAT UNDERSTOOD, I CAUTION VISITORS TO MY AWARD-WINNING WEBSITE THAT THERE MAY BE ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS OF THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ERA LEGACY OF A LIKE NATURE AT THE WEBSITE.
SHOULD ANYONE FINDS ANY, IF THEY E-MAIL ME TO SAY WHERE IT IS OR THEY ARE, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THEREAFTER I WILL RE-ESTABLISH VALID LINKS TO THE PARTICULAR TERM(S) OF REFERENCE SO THAT "ALL OF US" CAN AGAIN WEIGH IN ON THAT THOMAS JEFFERSON "PRINCIPLE" IN ACTION FOR THOSE WHO LEAD US THAT IS QUOTED IN WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.