Dispelling Myths about Verification of Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles

It is widely believed that an arms control limit on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles would be nearly impossible to verify. Among the reasons usually given are: these weapons are small, built in nondistinctive industrial facilities, deployed on a variety of ships and submarines, and difficult to distinguish from their conventionally armed counterparts. In this article, it is argued that the covert production and deployment of nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles would not be so straightforward. A specific arms control proposal is described, namely a total ban on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles. This proposal is used to illustrate how an effective verification scheme might be constructed.