Difficulties in Eliminating C3I Facilities:
The Emergence of Dual-Use Systems in US Military Missions and Operations

In Section XI of the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, there is a subsection on "Command, Control, and Communications Facilities and Deployment Sites" that stipulates "Each State Party shall . . . destroy any facility, system or sub-system designed or used solely for the purpose of launching, targeting, directing, or detonating a nuclear weapon or its delivery vehicle, or for aiding or assisting in any of these purposes" [emphasis added]. To summarize this point, those systems with both direct and indirect functions in nuclear operations are to be eliminated or converted under the NWC.

The greatest conundrum concerns the indirect facets of the nuclear complex: the supply of early warning data; and the operation of communications systems. The US Department of Defense (DOD) is now spending billions of dollars to enhance and integrate these capabilities for both conventional and nuclear missions. The recent high-level strategy document Joint Vision 2010 has called for improved "dominant maneuver" and "precision engagement" of forces based on improved C3I systems. The US Navy has argued that:

To achieve information superiority over an adversary, the Warfighter must be able to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information. DOD and the Navy are deploying a global infosphere to achieve that superiority anywhere, anytime, and in the performance of any mission. . .The Defense Information Infrastructure (DII) delivers the infosphere’s communications networks, computers, software, databases, applications, and other capabilities [emphasis added].

To the extent that this doctrine is implemented, the goals of the above section of the NWC might be impossible to realize. For instance, as part of the overall "Defense Information Infrastructure," all strategic and attack submarines are now being equipped with faster and more flexible communications systems. Attack submarines (SSNs) in particular have both conventional and nuclear roles. Even if Tridents (SSBNs) are destroyed and SSNs are given purely conventional missions, these fleets will continue to require the communications systems now associated with nuclear operations.

Moreover, part of current and ongoing NORAD computer upgrades is the transition of nuclear-specific communications lines to this global, integrated network. Similarly, the early warning sensors that supply data to NORAD, and the computer programs that correlate and filter that same data for human consumption, are now utilized to warn of "theater missile events" such as SCUD missile attacks in the Middle East.

Perhaps most alarming, there is now concrete bureaucratic planning for converting the delivery systems and launch platforms themselves into conventional vehicles, which would also undermine the NWC’s attempt to eliminate those command systems with direct nuclear functions. Congress has funded plans for converting some Trident SSBNs for cruise missile launching in engagements with rogue states, while Minuteman ICBMs might soon carry conventional payloads for "precision strikes" against rogue-state WMD targets. These developments would jeopardize the elimination of navigational information (for ICBMs); delivery vehicles (for ICBMs); launch platforms (for ICBMs and Tridents); and command and control systems associated with these vehicles and platforms. Certainly, Strategic Command would itself have to retain all computer systems and databanks that allow target identification, battle management, targeting of weapons, tracking of delivery vehicles, and communications with these vehicles and platforms. The NWC would be reduced to the elimination of warheads and nuclear production facilities alone, with all other infrastructure essentially intact.

To guard against these developments, all dual-use strategies, doctrines, missions, and planning must be thoroughly investigated with the goals of the NWC in mind. Policymakers should be made aware of the consequences of systems integration now being undertaken by the military, lest it become a tangled web that can never be unwoven.

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