Confusions in the Defense Debate
BURDEN, WILLIAM Jr.
CONFUSIONS IN THE DEFENSE DEBATE The character of U.S. strategic nuclear warfare today By William Burden Jr. THE CONFUSIONS generated by the national defense debate have by now obscured its...
...For this country to initiate nuclear war is unthinkable, for it to threaten to do so not credible...
...Spokesmen for the Air Force stress the dangers of total war, those for the Army and Navy the likelihood of limited war...
...Merely producing more missiles would not affect what is acknowledged to be our primary strategic problem, the vulnerability of our strategic force to destruction by surprise attack...
...What information has been published indicates a low ratio of crews to aircraft and tends to support the Secretary of Defense's conclusion that "you can have an air alert tomorrow morning...
...You cannot have it for too long or you will wear out your capability...
...The nature of these problems, however, indicates why a Soviet missile superiority of the range now anticipated cannot, by itself, be considered decisive...
...General Thomas S. Power, chief of the Strategic Air Command, has said with characteristic frankness that this country would face continued erosion of the free world if it lost the ability to start a war...
...To "blunt" or reduce the force of a Soviet surprise attack seems to this group impractical in view of the secrecy and speed with which such an attack would be launched...
...Here a clear difference of military opinion exists on the level and character of strategic-nuclear power adequate for the United States...
...works as a research assistant with the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research...
...mony also indicates there are areas of considerable doubt in our knowledge of Soviet missile programs...
...A great deal of this criticism has focused on the National Intelligence Estimates, whose derivation cannot be made public but whose validity cannot be judged unless it is...
...Should war come at some stage of the race, the hundreds of U.S...
...for reasons both diverse and divergent, its members advocate a limited, specifically retaliatory, but highly protected deterrent force...
...On this basis a debate on the precise level of the estimates (or reassurances on the missile threat) seems time badly spent...
...For this reason the great debate might well turn from the forms of military power to the purposes for which it is accumulated...
...They lead to alternate and conflicting standards of adequacy for strategic power and therefore to variant priorities for other military capabilities and even for individual weapons...
...A second and related assumption is that U.S...
...technology will simplify others by increasing the performance and flexibility of long-range missiles...
...into an intense and in all probability fruitless arms race with the Soviet Union...
...The Air Force Chief of Staff said, "I don't think anyone is sure what the Russians are doing to start with...
...The counterforce standard, the identification of an adequate deterrent with the ability to destroy an adversary's strategic power, has been advanced by leading spokesmen for the Air Force and is shared by many of those most alarmed about the missile gap...
...retaliatory power can be given such protection against surprise attack as to make credible the risk of such damage...
...Against use of the counterforce concept as a standard of adequacy has been posed an increasing weight of argument by those who believe limited war is not only the most likely form of Soviet aggression but, if not dealt with promptly and at lower levels of military force, a more probable cause of all-out war than a deliberate surprise attack...
...Several of these problems are clearly less serious obstacles to a dictatorship than to a democracy...
...they have also been exaggerated by over-simplifying the attacker's problems...
...For political reasons it is unlikely that a large missile force could be deployed on allied territory: mobile-based missiles do not as yet promise the accuracy and destructive power desirable for certain counterforce targets...
...The contradictions between these two concepts underlie many of the current defense controversies...
...The Administration speaks most often of "over-all" military power, rather than of having that power likely to be both available and decisive in future contingencies...
...The first of these standards is called counterforce or first-strike capability, the second a "finite" or limited deterrent...
...Various proposals have been made to close the anticipated gap, or at least to reduce its dangers, by a continuous patrol of from 50 to several hundred nuclear-armed bombers kept airborne to avoid destruction...
...He later told a Senate group that we have not "the least idea" where Soviet combat ICBM sites are located, or whether there are any at all...
...A basic premise of the finite deterrent group is that the United States is unlikely to be offered, much less take, the opportunity to destroy significant portions of the Soviet missile force on the ground...
...For this reason, and because it now seems too late to alter the 1960-62 missile disparity, the more significant aspects of the missile debate may lie in the standards advanced by its participants...
...For each missile built by the Soviets, one or more must be built to destroy it...
...Tactical or radar warning of the attack, permitting the victim to launch significant portions of his retaliatory force, is expected to add to these problems...
...General Maxwell Taylor, who advocates a limited strategic force and a greater emphasis on conventional arms, has written that a state of mutual deterrence already exists in which both powers are increasingly restrained from the deliberate initiation of all-out war...
...While missile production might be doubled in the course of a few months, construction of protected missile bases takes in the neighborhood of two years, and no practical scheme for shortening this leadtime has yet been made public...
...Several key assumptions, made by the advocates of a limited strategic force, divide this group from the proponents of counterforce power...
...Long-range missiles may of course be deployed on overseas territory, or on ships and aircraft...
...Limiting our capability to the destruction of enemy cities, he warned, would deny us the ability to react to strategic warning of attack and impair both our ability to minimize damage to the United States and to aid an ally...
...Adding to this confusion has been the isolation of the "missile gap" controversy and the levels on which this problem is discussed...
...Fired on these trajectories, the arguments pass each other in mid-air...
...Accurate and timely knowledge of the victim's strategic force, the warning time available to him, and his speed of reaction is also needed...
...THE CONFUSIONS generated by the national defense debate have by now obscured its purpose...
...The Secretary of Defense recently testified, "We don't know what the Soviets are doing with their ICBMs because we have never seen a site...
...A favorable missile-to-target ratio is a prerequisite for surprise attack but does not guarantee its success...
...This group includes leading spokesmen for the Army and Navy...
...Its political critics dwell on the missile gap, an area of future deficiency, without close regard to its import...
...A finite deterrent force might need only those weapons to destroy some 100 civilian centers, a destructive level considered sufficiently "unacceptable" to deter a Soviet attack...
...The Chief of Naval Operations told a House committee we have no evidence that Russia is building ICBMs in large numbers, and no knowledge that she is not...
...Although neither goal may in fact be achieveable, the alternatives are a strategic force able to destroy Soviet nuclear power in the initial exchanges of an all-out war, and one appropriate to the destruction of that nation's civilian economy in retaliation for aggression...
...The risks presented by a Soviet missile lead have been glossed over by reassurances on our existing strategic power...
...The Air Force Chief of Staff, however, has said that it was little more than "unsupportable hopefulness" to believe a stable balance could be achieved between even key elements of the opposing military systems— "Tactics of offense and defense, scientific breakthrough, weapon development, passive defense measures, all play upon one another in offering new ways to upset this balance, this stability...
...To reduce the danger of retaliation, the attacker would also need a high degree of assurance that his missiles would launch and impact at the programmed times and that critically dangerous portions of the victim's retaliatory force would in fact be destroyed...
...Published "estimates of the estimates" indicate that the Soviets are expected to hold a numerical lead in ICBMs of from two- to four-to-one until 1963, but published testiWILLIAM BURDEN JR...
...Use of the term "missile gap" is also misleading in implying that our requirement for numbers of missiles is essentially the same as that of the Soviets, and that a relatively easy solution, accelerating our production of missiles, lies open to us...
...Strategic forces appropriate to these standards could vary greatly in their size, composition and influence on the policies of both adversaries...
...The victim may receive strategic warning of the attack, particularly if the attacker's civil and air defenses are alerted in advance of the blow...
...From an initial focus on the 1961 budget and the adequacy of its military programs, attention has been diverted to a score of lesser disputes on matters ill-adapted to public debate...
...If "over-all" power has a certain evasive connotation, much of the missile gap criticism has been equally misleading...
...Without detailed and no doubt classified knowledge of the present and achieve-able ratios of SAC crews to aircraft, the number of bombers that could mechanically be kept airborne and the ability of this force to penetrate Soviet air defense, public debate on these proposals has been necessarily abortive...
...The counterforce standard, this group argues, drags the U.S...
...One is that there are calculable and durable limits to the amount of damage an aggressor would willingly risk, limits independent of an aggressor's military power and incentives to attack...
...The piling up of offensive weapons is criticized not only for diverting attention from the problem of protecting our retaliatory force, but also for diverting resources from adequate limited war preparations...
...Our requirements may be substantially greater or markedly less than those of the Soviets, depending on our military strategy and the performance of our weapons...
...A third such assumption is that an effective nuclear stalemate, or stand-off on the strategic level, is both achievable and desirable...
...The Air Force Chief of Staff, testifying this year, called destruction of an enemy's ability to fight the first objective in modern warfare...
...missile bases would serve only to draw the most severe atomic fire to this continent...
...A counterforce strike would call for the delivery of large numbers of weapons against protected enemy missile sites and defense centers with a high order of accuracy...
Vol. 43 • April 1960 • No. 16
