Climbing the Ladder: Explaining the Vertical Proliferation of Cruise Missiles

• Author: Nolan Fahrenkopf,Bryan Robert Early,James Igoe Walsh,Michael C. Horowitz
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027221079399
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(6) 955–982

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221079399

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Climbing the Ladder:

Explaining the Vertical

Proliferation of Cruise

Missiles

Bryan Robert Early

1

, Nolan Fahrenkopf

2

,

Michael C. Horowitz

3

, and James Igoe Walsh

4



Abstract

Why do some states possess more advanced military technologies than others? Our

study explores the vertical proliferation of land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), seeking

to understand which demand- and supply-side factors best explain why some countries

acquire more sophisticated LACMs. We theorize that states’security environments,

regime types, possession of related strategic technologies, and membership in the

Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) inf‌luence the possession of more so-

phisticated cruise missiles. Our analysis employs a unique new global dataset with

granular data on every LACM national militaries have deployed. We use this dataset to

evaluate the proliferation of LACMs across the international system from 1991–2015.

Using a selection model that f‌irst controls for the horizontal proliferation of LACMs,

we f‌ind that insecurity, scientif‌ic and technical expertise from related technologies, the

possession of highly authoritarian and highly democratic regimes, and MTCR mem-

bership all have positive effects on the sophistication of LACM-possessors’arsenals.

1

Political Science, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, Albany, NY, USA

2

Center for Policy Research, Albany, NY, USA

3

Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

4

Political Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bryan Robert Early, Political Science, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, Milne Hall, Rm 300A,

Albany, NY 12222, USA.

Email: bearly@albany.edu

Keywords

proliferation, missiles, technology, international regimes, military power

Introduction

What explains why some countries f‌ield more sophisticated military technologies than

others?

1

Much of the literature on proliferation focuses on the horizontal proliferation

of military capabilities, such as the spread of nuclear weapons or uninhabited aerial

vehicles (e.g., Singh and Way 2004;Gartzke and Jo 2007;Fuhrmann and Horowitz

2017), as opposed to the vertical proliferation of military technologies, understood as

the development of more sophisticated arsenals of a particular technology. While

scholars have explored the number of nuclear delivery platforms states (Gartzke,

Kaplow, and Mehta 2014;Terry and Cone 2020) and countries’aircraft capabilities

(Saunders and Souva 2020a), much remains to be understood about what drives states

to pursue more advanced military technologies.

This study explores why some countries have made more advancements in the

sophistication of their land-attack cruise missile (LACMs) weapons systems. Cruise

missiles have evolved from the slow, inaccurate, and largely ineffective versions used

by Nazi Germany in World War II to become precise, lethal, supersonic weapons that

project power for both tactical and strategic purposes. We advance the literature on the

proliferation of military technology by explaining not only which countries obtain

cruise missiles but also the factors that determine how sophisticated their LACM

arsenals grow to become.

The proliferationof cruise missiles represents a salientissue for international security

scholarship. Cruise missiles are an important element of short- and long-range con-

ventional strike, giving countries the capacity to strike far beyond their national borders

and the weapons platforms that launch them (i.e., planes and ships). Cruise missiles can

also help states defend themselves, because being targeted by cruise missiles can

complicate adversaries’efforts to project power (such as threatening aircraft carriers),

making them potential weapons that inf‌luence the relative ability of major powers to

succeed in executingcoercion. Cruise missiles also havetactical utility on the battlef‌ield,

whether as precision strike weapons in offensive attacks or barrages in broader con-

ventional campaigns.Finally, some cruise missiles havethe capacity to deliver weapons

of mass destruction (WMD). Technological sophistication accentuates the military ca-

pacity of cruise missiles. More sophisticatedcruise missiles can travel farther, hittargets

more precisely, and better avoid detection and countermeasures. States that invest in

acquiring advanced cruise missile capabilities thus gain security advantages vis-`

a-vis

other states, improving their performance in military operations and in enabling them to

strike targetsat a distance without having to f‌irst defeattheir adversaries on the battlef‌ield.

Some U.S. policymakershave argued, for example, thatrecent advances made by Russia

and China in developing hypersonic cruise missiles signif‌icantly imperil U.S. military

forces and threaten strategic stability (Barnesand Sanger 2019). Cruise missiles are thus

956 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(6)