Launched from a B-52, the proposed X-51 hypersonic cruise missile could travel 600 miles in 10 minutes to strike elusive, fleeting targets. (Illustration by Render Room)
A tip sets the plan in motion — a whispered warning of a North Korean nuclear launch, or of a shipment of biotoxins bound for a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon. Word races through the American intelligence network until it reaches U.S. Strategic Command headquarters, the Pentagon and, eventually, the White House. In the Pacific, a nuclear-powered Ohio class submarine surfaces, ready for the president's command to launch.
When the order comes, the sub shoots a 65-ton Trident II ballistic missile into the sky. Within 2 minutes, the missile is traveling at more than 20,000 ft. per second. Up and over the oceans and out of the atmosphere it soars for thousands of miles. At the top of its parabola, hanging in space, the Trident's four warheads separate and begin their screaming descent down toward the planet. Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.
If Pentagon strategists get their way, there will be no place on the planet to hide from such an assault. The plan is part of a program — in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles — called Prompt Global Strike. It will begin with modified Tridents. But eventually, Prompt Global Strike could encompass new generations of aircraft and armaments five times faster than anything in the current American arsenal. One candidate: the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, which is designed to hit Mach 5 — roughly 3600 mph. The goal, according to the U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, is "to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."
The question is whether such an attack can be deployed without triggering World War III: Those tungsten-armed Tridents look, and fly, exactly like the deadliest weapons in the American nuclear arsenal.
QUICK HITThe military is convinced that in the coming years it will need to act with this kind of speed against threats — terrorist leaders, smuggled nuclear or chemical arms — that emerge and disappear in a flash. There may be only hours, or minutes, to respond. "We know how to strike precisely. We know how to strike at long distances," says Kehler, whose office is in charge of the Defense Department's Global Strike mission. "What's different now is this sense of time."
Sneak Attack
Click to enlarge
The leading candidates to deliver Prompt Global Strike's swift knockout punch are the sub-launched Trident II missile and the X-51, a cruise missile launched from a B-52 and boosted to supersonic speed by a rocket. A scramjet takes it hypersonic.
Every strategist remembers Aug. 20, 1998, when the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, stationed in the Arabian Sea, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan, hoping to take out Osama Bin Laden. With a top speed of 550 mph, the Tomahawks made the 1100-mile trip in 2 hours. By then, Bin Laden was gone — missed by less than an hour, according to Richard A. Clarke, former head of U.S. counterterrorism.
The American military already has weapons that can destroy just about anything in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. That terrifying capability was designed to contain Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War recedes into memory, U.S. strategists worry that our nuclear threat is no longer credible — that we are too muscle-bound for our own good. Are we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? The answer is no.
Paradoxically, the weaker our enemies have grown, the less ominous our arsenal has become. Military theorists call it self-deterrence. "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons — or not," says Capt. Terry J. Benedict, who runs the Navy's conventional Trident program from a nondescript office a few miles from the Pentagon. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step-to take the action required, without crossing to the one."
In 2001, Defense Department planners began searching for something that could hit a foe almost instantly without risking a nuclear holocaust. Most of the solutions — unmanned bombers, faster cruise missiles, hypersonic "glide vehicles" coasting in from space — required a decade or more of development. The Navy, however, had been testing conventionally armed Trident II missiles since 1993. With a few hundred million dollars, strategists said, the first Prompt Global Strike submarines could be ready to go in just two years.
The $60 million conventional missile needs to be far more accurate than the nuclear version. But the multiple warheads can lock onto GPS coordinates while streaking through space. Upon entering the atmosphere, the warheads use flaps to steer to a target. With the Trident II's range of 6000 nautical miles, subs armed with the missiles could threaten a whole continent's worth of enemy positions. "Now," says Benedict, who leads the Trident conversion effort, "we've got the capability to hold all of these targets in all these hot spots at risk at one time."
Military & Law Enforcement 
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