Tomahawk Cruise Missile TLAM-N
The Tomahawk long range, subsonic cruise missile can attack targets on land (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM)) and at sea (Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM)). The TLAM can be fitted with either conventional unitary warhead (TLAM\C), nuclear warhead (TLAM\N) or submunition dispenser (TLAM\D).
On 27 September 1991, President Bush announced a number of initiatives affecting the entire spectrum of US nuclear weapons. The United States removed all tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear cruise missiles, from its surface ships and attack submarines. The nuclear equiped UGM-109A TLAM-N Tomahawk was withdrawn from service in 1992, though conventional versions remain operational. They were finally retired by the Obama Nuclear Posture Review in 2010.
TLAM/N weapon system development began in 1972 as technology breakthrough and national interests came together to make the development feasible. The Harpoon antiship cruise missile work produced renewed interest in cruise missile systems (earlier abandoned when ballistic missiles showed distinct performance advantages over early cruise missile systems, such as the Navy's Regulus). Advanced research studies revealed three areas in which technology breakthrough made improved cruise missiles viable:
- Miniaturized turbofan engines with associated low specific fuel consumption, which could propel small airframes to a relatively long range.
- Small nuclear warheads, which could provide a small airframe with a high nuclear yield payload.
- Advanced microprocessor equipment, which permitted autonomous inflight inertial guidance system updates and resulted in very high accuracies dependent, not on the time of flight, but on the time since the last inertial platform update.
These technology advances made it feasible to develop a long-range, high-yiela, accurate cruise missile. Moreover, this cruise missile could be sized for launch from existing naval submarines and surface ships and, because of its size and corresponding low observables, have high penetrability against Soviet defensive systems.
The technical feasibility of TLAM/N development, however, sparked a vigorous debate at the national level regarding the desirability of acquiring such a system as part of the national strategic nuclear force. Some, among them Dr. Henry Kissinger, were interested in developing TLAM/N principally as a bargaining chip in SALT negotiations. Others claimed that since a whole family of Tomahawk missiles, both nuclear and conventionally armed, were being developed for employment against surface ships as well as against land targets, and since all Tomahawk missiles would use a commron airframe and launch systems, it would not be possible to verify which of these missiles was a TLAM/N, a fact which would make arms limitations agreements more difficult. Opponents of a continuing build-up in strategic weapons argued that the TLAM/N could contribute to third world proliferation.* Other TLAM/N opponents were concerned about the creation of a "fourth leg" of the TRIAD, pointing out that cruise missiles did not have the penetrability of the existing TRIAD systems.
By the late seventies, with SALT II negotiations underway and a desire at the national level to reduce strategic nuclear weapons, TLAM/N faded from interest as a strategic weapon. Ever as interest to include TLAM/N in the SIOP waned, however, the use of TLAM/N in selective release scenarios continued to be studied, and the use of TLAM/N in limited nuclear options, such as selected strikes or condign responses, received serious consideration.
It had a number of important advantages in this role. For one thing, the missile system had a unitary warhead vice MIRV, and the launch of a single cruise missile would therefore be less escalatory than the izunch of one ballistic missile. Secondly, the launch plattorm would not be stationed on U.S. soil, nor would it be subject to Allied basing constraints, and preparations for launch could be carried out covertly. The flexibility provided by these capabilities was of growing interest to the theater commanders and provided an impetus for the development of theater concepts.
However, though the use of TLAM/N in selective release options would provide expanded employment alternatives at the national level, the deployment of TLAM/N based upon this mission alone did not sufficiently justify the resource allocation required, and the concept was dropped. The interest in extended conflict and in expanding the Nuclear Reserve Force caused a reassessment of the role of TLAM/N at the national level.
The introduction of a fundamentally new weapon system into the arsenal of American nuclear weaponry inevitably created competing clairs to that system. The introduction of the Tomahawk Nuclear Land Attack Vissile (TLAM/N) in the mid-1980s is no exception to this rule. Its capabilitips and the concepts for its use raised basic questions about how it might best be used in the context tf the situation in which it might be called into use, especially in a post-SIOP world, with all the uncertainties that world encompasses.
Potential uses for this system were uses which TLAM/N operational capabilities and characteristics made attractive. These alternative employment concepts are defined in the following fashion:
- "Nuclear Reserve Force Concept," supported by some elements of OSO, JSTPS, and others whose focus was at the national level.
- "Theater Support Concept,' espoused by the theater comrarcers.
- "Naval Force Improvement Concept," formulated by the Navy staff and supported by Navy operational commanders around the world.
TLAV/N platform attrition was apt to be fairly low, with submarines having a relatively small but important advantage in this respect over surface ships. Submarines possess other inherent operational advantages over surface ships which permit them to employ TLAM/N in a hostile environment with less risk and a smaller force presence thar is possible with surface combatants. The vulnerability of TLAM/N stored ashore to nuclear attack during a homeland-to-homeland exchange argues strongly for those deployment and loadout alternatives which keep all available TLAM/N at sea in surface and subsurface combatants. Core NRF weapons should certainly be deployed afloat.
Historically, U.S. nuclear strategy was at first most concerned with the massive application of force and less with the subsequent uncertainties. Indeed, many of 'the classical U.S. nuclear strategists discounted the possibility of coherent military operations after an initial nuclear exchange (though it should be noted that the exchange--or, in the early days, unilateral attack --was expected to stretch over a prolonged period of days, if not weeks).
By the mid-1970s it was clear that Soviet forces were larger than required by deterrence as judged by the criterior of mutual assured destruction. The conclusion that Soviet planners believed that deterrence was best assured by the possession of war-fighting, war-surviving, and war-winning capabilities was inescapable.
A comprehensive reexamination of NUWEP-74 and its ramifications was initiated in 1977 in accordance with Presidential Directive 18 (PD-18). Commonly referred to as the Sloss Report (for its principal architect, Leon Sloss), the Nuclear Targeting Policy Review (NTPR) was completed in August 1978. The main body of its proposals was formally approved by the National Security Council (NSC) and the President in 1980, although the SECDEF had already directed selected implementation of some measures as early as January 1979.
Soviet concepts of protracted war focus especially on the continued pursuit of goals in the regional theaters of military operations after an initial nuclear exchange, using both nuclear and conventional forces. A strategy of deterrence based on denying the Soviets any reasonable prospect of military gain must therefore deal with the case in which theater conflicts would be a primary focus of Soviet strategic efforts in an extendec conflict after initial homeland attacks. For this purpose, the ability to apply U.S. nuclear forces of all kinds to theater campaigns in a way least likely to provoke Soviet retaliation against the U.S. homeland should be of particular signiTicance.
Few precise situations might be foreseen in sufficient detail to make a contingency tree planning approach feasible, and the only useful advance planning to deal with them is the acquisition of generic capabilities that might be helpful in a range of situations. This is more likely to yield the required capabilities in a situation of high uncertainty but much more demanding in terrms of forces and C3I.
The particular characteristics of TLAM/N, especially on nuclear-powered submarines, provided some important advantages. Endurance, invisibility, and capability for discriminate and accurate targeting were all be characteristics that enhanced the threat of restrained attacks, whether counter-societal or, in the post-war case, counter-military. Some of these same characteristics were also inherent in SLBMs. However, the lack of accuracy and the MIRVed nature of existing and prospective SLBMs mad them less suitable than TLAM/N for certain of the tasks implied by these two NRF roles. Beyond these roles, however, it becomes harder to generalize about the operational requirements for the NRF, and for TLAM/N as a part of it.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
