Folks,
This issue including Arclight has and is being discussed in USNI Proceeding which is a famous quasi-US Navy publication that has been around since the late 1800s. It is the largest naval publication in the Americas and 99.999% of the US Navy officers and many in the Pentagon read. Various factions of the US Navy want to convert old US SLBM to the conventional strike role and have wrote article on scenarios of strikes against Iran in which there are no US causalities and and all the identified and suspected Iranian nuclear faculties and long range ballistic missile faculties are destroyed. There are always letters and articles, including a very large one about three months ago with drawings and illustrations, which leads to letters from very senior and ex-Pentagon officials to the discussion section about what they say are the real dangers of sparking an accidental or for real nuclear reaction. And in some of those articles they have pointed out how touche the Russians are on this subject.
The problem is that the ballistic missiles with the range and trajectory (which could be launched from ships) that would not set off nuclear alarm bells were prohibited under that treaty during the Reagan presidency, in which the US destroyed its stock of Pershing II ballistic missiles. In fact there was a development of a Pershing II missile for a conventional strike against a harden command, airfield runways, etc. But by treaty they are prohibited. Other countries — ie China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — have ballistic missiles in this range category though: including Iran.
Jack E. Hammond
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