Testing to Stand Still
HERMAN, GEORGE E.
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Testing to Stand Still By George E. Herman The new series of American nuclear tests in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean may answer a great many scientific and...
...Jerome Wiesner, never yielded in his opposition to the present test series...
...After the stopwatch session, there are long analyses of each war game at a more leisurely pace...
...There was nothing that even Moscow Radio could call hysteria, although an attempt has since been made to interpret the incident in this manner...
...But it is safe to say that the private discussion of accidental war among U.S...
...There was no "flap...
...But they are not likely to answer a single moral or political question for the American people and the Kennedy Administration...
...The President's own science adviser, Dr...
...How can we distinguish the radio interference from a solar storm from that of a Russian blast aimed at our communications...
...What additional precautions can be taken to keep such an incident from baffling us, if the enemy should try it...
...That question is simply: Who is in control, the men or the technology...
...The second team hurriedly sets to work against a ticking stopwatch, trying to figure out what has actually occurred...
...Teams are continually dividing up, one side trying to dream up the worst possible combination of hypothetical circumstances, the other trying to find a way to deal with that combination and make a realistic and accurate assessment of whether it is faced with an attack or an accident...
...The arguments of the two major nuclear powers sound uncomfortably circular...
...The Kennedy Administration has little sympathy with such dogmas...
...To a considerable extent, this belief was based on the complete lack of interest shown by Soviet negotiators at Geneva in picking up the pieces of the shattered test-ban talks...
...We have only gained a little more time to worry about it...
...maintains it cannot let the USSR catch up to or surpass it in nuclear technology...
...If nuclear knowledge spreads to other nations, and if tests are continued and new weapons developed by the present nuclear powers, these observers believe, the coming of war is a mathematical certainty...
...The field of accidental nuclear war is being studied intensively these days by the U.S...
...Since we must assume the Russians will conduct this future series, the U.S...
...starting a nuclear war accidentally: It is an excellent theme on which variations can be played for propaganda purposes...
...The problem of testing is disturbingly reminiscent of Alice Through the Looking Glass...
...Not every adviser considered even this immediate series essential to national security...
...SOVIET COMMENTATORS like to harp on the possibility of the U.S...
...The President was not summoned from his affairs of the moment...
...officials far exceeds that made public inside either hostile or friendly nations...
...says another test series inside the USSR a year or 18 months from now might seriously endanger its leadership and, therefore, world peace...
...Here the reasons are more complicated, apparently involving a mixture of fear, tail-twisting and irritation at being dependent on arms which are beyond either the purse or the technological ability of the particular country...
...The President himself had grave doubts, questioned and examined all his advisers closely, and eventually decided to buy time with a minimum series of the most important tests...
...A key factor seems to have been the strong conviction of many experts that the Soviet Union was going to test again in another yearand-a-half to two years regardless of what the United States did...
...What devices can be used to differentiate the accidental explosion of an American bomb from the purposeful explosion of a Soviet bomb...
...The U.S...
...Its object is to alert our retaliatory forces without necessarily putting them in the air, because if SAC bombers take to the air on a false alarm, many will be partly out of commission for the 48 hours it takes to check, refuel and ready them for the next alert...
...The Administration has simply agreed to try to maintain our position by testing again, while it tries to seek new ways for finally breaking the deadlock...
...radio communication could cripple our self-defense and counter-strike capabilities...
...military...
...Among our allies, too, accidental war is frequently the subject of public discussion...
...George E. Herman is the White House correspondent for CBS News...
...Both problems—accidental war and the weapons-testing cycle—are part of a bigger question which troubles the dreams of even the most pragmatic men in Washington...
...Those on the Presidential staff who did favor new American tests had numerous and highly persuasive arguments...
...And our own chief defense system is based on extended communications reaching across arctic wildernesses in a series of radio links...
...It is the subject of a never-ending series of intra-Pentagon war games...
...And President Kennedy is exercising great care in his actions and statements not to reopen the newly healed scars of controversy...
...it is probably approached only by similar discussion among Soviet officials...
...Testing to Stand Still By George E. Herman The new series of American nuclear tests in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean may answer a great many scientific and military questions...
...Premier Khrushchev says bluntly that if we test he will test again and again until he has equalled us—also in the interests of world peace...
...If it is reassuring to know that 50 per cent of our SAC bombers were on the runways, ready to take off in 12-and-a-half minutes, it is even more reassuring to know that the planes did not take off...
...A thorough knowledge of what might happen to our communications is necessary not only to avoid a new Pearl Harbor but also to avoid, or at least to lessen, the chances of an accidental nuclear war...
...Our missile bases did not start their count-downs...
...Clearly the Russians had tested the effects of a high-altitude nuclear blast on communications and electronic equipment during their series of blasts last fall...
...Under the "fail-safe" system, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) must receive new broadcast instructions in the air near the target before it can carry out its mission...
...defense command reacted to the incident last fall during the Berlin crisis, when we lost contact with our ballistic missile early warning system for four minutes, demonstrated the results of Washington's preoccupation with accidental war...
...The United States has entered another series of nuclear tests because there is nothing else it can do...
...It is doubtful whether any nation has ever been in full control of its destiny, but the perils of this nuclear age make the present times all the more uneasy...
...Through a completely improbable set of circumstances, its hydrogen bomb explodes knocking out the entire base and cutting off all communications...
...Many of them bowed to the weight of the evidence as evaluated by the President and reluctantly went along...
...Or was it an enemy attack designed to knock out our radar network so that Soviet bombers can approach undetected...
...One team might pose a set-up like this: An American bomber is forced to crash land at our base in Thule, Greenland...
...The calm and purposeful manner in which the U.S...
...For their part, the Soviets maintain they cannot allow us to keep the lead...
...The United States feels compelled to do a good deal of running merely to stand still in the nuclear arms race...
...Some observers, who are widely discussed in official Washington, claim that events are slipping out of the grasp of the world's leaders...
...must test now to keep ahead...
...We have not solved the basic issue...
...Is the American commander to assume that this is the beginning of an all-out missile attack, with the other missiles scheduled to land on U.S...
...The new test series has done nothing to crack this circle of illogic...
...A nuclear burst which blanked out U.S...
...But it has a good deal of sympathy for the concerns expressed, especially the unspoken fear that we are not in control of our own destiny...
...This aerial defense system depends on radar and broadcast instructions...
...The Air Force hastily sends a highspeed jet to find out what has happened, and the pilot radios back that the base is hidden by a mushroom cloud...
...And at present—to extend the metaphor to Alice's Caucus race—there does not seem to be any race course or finish line...
...soil in a matter of minutes...
...The U.S...
...The decision to go ahead with the tests has left a deep division among the President's advisers...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 9
