New MiGs for Cuba

Press, 1 December 1978, Page 12

New MiGs for Cuba

From the “Economist,” London

What makes the Russians so heavy-handed? Consider their decision to put a group of new Mig combat aeroplanes into Cuba just when the strategic arms negotiations with the United States are at a critical point. On November 15 American officials acknowledged that some swing-wing Mig23s have been in Cuba since July, and that the United States is again sending its high-flying SR-71 Blackhawk photo aircraft in regular sweeps over the island to see what is going on. If the Migs in Cuba carried nuclear weapons, they would violate the agreement hammered out at the end of the 1962 Cuba missile crisis. This agreement. though never made public, L believed to have spcified that no •‘offensive” (read nuclear) weapons would be stationed in Cuba. “Pravda” says that the Migs are there only for defensive purposes. Maybe. But according to the American magazine “Aviation Week and Space Technology.” which usually gets such things right, at least two of the 12 aircraft so far sighted are the groundattack version of the Mig 2., known as th e This aircraft can carry a heftv bomb load and has the to-strike deep into the United States from Cuban J Fss Of Mig-235, and another of M, r^m e a n W k -lug r e e e h confirmed his r “ r °v and then President carte'r ordered the Blackh«wk manned reconnaissance aircraft ac a job oTphotoSty than can (He had stopped then _ regu lar flights in early 1977).

But although Blackhawks can tell the difference between Mig-23s and 275, there is no way for them to tell whether the 27s contain the black boxes which control and launch nuclear weapons.

What the photographic interpreters will be looking for is evidence of storage sites and handling equipment for nuclear weapons, which would almost certainly be controlled by Russians. The puzzle is whether the Russians would choose to take such a big risk at this time. The unanswered political questions are why the Russians sent the new Migs to Cuba in mid-1978, and why the Americans said nothing about it until November. The answer to the second question seems to be that the news did not leak into the American press until November. It was this leak which led to the Government’s implied admission that American officialdom had been covering up for the Russians since July. The Russians’ motive is

harder to understand. They may have intended the Migs to be a means of putting pressure on the United States to make concessions in the strategic arms limitat i o n negotions. Not likely. A few nuclear weapons on a few Migs would be nothing more than a small damp spot in the strategic nuclear bucket, and would serve mainly to draw attention to the many ways in which Russia might circumvent a treaty (thereby making it less likely that the senate will give the treaty now under negotiation its approval). Another possibility is that Russia chose to upgrade the Cuban air force in retaliation for . the Americans’ decision to send more F-111 nuclear bombers to Europe this year. But an equally likely explanation is that the Cubans’ old Migs (which include some creaky Mig-15s of Korean war vintage) were literally falling to pieces, and the Russian military bureaucracy just decided to send in replacements.