Missiles and Money

...can expect annual budgets for strategic forces of between $12 billion and $25 billion...

...to the efficacy of the system itself...

...A second item for the antiarms agenda must be arms control, without which "peace" can be as costly as war...

...A full-scale expansion, in an attempt to protect a major fraction of U.S...

...without an arms control policy, we will spend what we save—plus...

...sive), military costs fluctuated between 9-9.8 per cent of the gnp...

...to their improved abms?better second-generation abm components...

...Faced with this situation, the Soviet Union would have to strengthen its own forces...

...But they believe that it will lead naturally to a large-scale system...

...First, there are rising prices...

...Tens of billions were wasted—and will be wasted in the future if the civilian check on the military is not strengthened...

...In a truly prophetic essay in the recently published Agenda for the Nation, Schultze predicted, "There will be substantial pressure to expand the existing 'thin anti-Chinese' abm to cover other contingencies...

...Discussing the budget after Vietnam, Charles L. Schultze (prior to being named Secretary of Labor) forecast that the amount spent on military purposes would not fall...

...Should America decide to turn from the draft to a voluntary army, the costs would leap upward by many billions more than Schultze had projected...

...The purpose of the Sentinel is to protect our "retaliatory" force, to stand watch over the bases from which we would fire our massive deterrents after they failed to deter...

...to their new warheads able to smash our hardened Minutemen...

...A hard look at the figures reveals that the claim is exaggerated...

...By removing the Sentinels to two bases now and about a dozen later, Nixon has made the proposal more palatable...

...Nixon grants that a failure to shield the cities will—in the event of a massive enemy attack—cost more than 40 million lives...

...they were delivered too late...

...In turn, we would then have to hedge our revised intelligence estimates with a new 'greater than expected' threat estimate and a second round of improvements in U.S...

...Chinese"-oriented system...

...military housekeeping is like any other housekeeping...

...In the years from Korea to Vietnam (1956-63 incluThis is the fourth in a series of articles by Gus Tyler on the problems and prospects facing the Democratic party following last fall's Nixon victory...

...The 9 per cent for military spending in 1969 marks a relatively low point in our defense expenditures over the last generation...

...The chances of such an early total withdrawal, of course, are extremely poor...

...In 1953 (Korea), defense costs dropped to 13.8 per cent of the gnp...

...Thus, they will have to expand their defenses and their offensive potential, so that if they ever do strike first, we will not be able to strike second...

...Its objective is not to knock slbms, fobs or enemy mirvs out of the air and thereby protect the industry and cities of America but to protect our Minutemen bases...

...but to counter a 'greater than expected' threat...

...Polaris submarines are going to be jazzed up to carry Poseidon missiles at a cost of about $80 million per submarine for 31 subs—another couple of billion...

...The Joint Chiefs of Staff favor a thick defense...

...and Sentinel manager General Starbird, in which the Congressman turned attention to the Soviet, rather than Chinese, threat...

...But even with its first public appearance, the new missile seems to be putting on some fat...

...In 1964, before the big plunge into Asia, military spending stood at $50 billion, or 8.6 per cent of gnp...

...Indeed, in stating the three key objectives of the modified Sentinel system, he noted: "First...

...Update weaponry...

...The Sentinel [Johnson] system," as Nixon sees it, "called for a fixed deployment schedule...

...industry and population against a Soviet attack, would undoubtedly cost in the neighborhood of $40 billion," suggests Schultze...

...strategic forces...

...By 1969 prices, that would come to $60 billion...

...Nixon's worry about the Soviet Union goes back to the questions raised by Sikes—to the Soviet abm system around Moscow with a capability we will not have for four years...

...The Minuteman is being updated so the new member of the family, Minuteman III, can accommodate mirvs—the device whereby one missile carries multiple warheads that can be independently targeted and mixes up the enemy by throwing a lot of garbage in the air—at a cost of roughly $4.5 billion...

...Jerome Wiesner testified that he "heard high-ranking officers say that if they thought that the Sentinel system was all that the U.S...

...Originally, the Sentinel was to stand guard over the nation against the Chinese...

...In 1945, the war machine ate up 38.3 per cent of the gnp...

...His first article, "1970: Year of Decision" (NL, February 17), focused on the next crucial national election...

...The nation has placed a high priority on ending the war in Vietnam...

...A third item is a revolution in the military affairs committees of Congress that have traditionally passed upon the defense budgets with minimal scrutiny...

...A harder look at arms policy suggests that it may have no validity at all...

...Nixon admits that although his instincts motivate him "to provide the American people with complete protection against a major nuclear attack, it is not now within our power to do so...

...But the pressures for a thick abm system are not likely to lessen in the years ahead...

...Dig shelters...

...The Sentinel system, then, originally conceived as a shield against the Chinese, is now also—and mainly—a retort to the Soviets...

...Concern over Vietnam has obscured a clear view of America's military expenditures, resulting in a tendency to overstate the cost of the war and understate the perennial and mounting costs of our stand-by operations...

...The silent partner of the military-industrial complex will speak more loudly and, as an employer of millions of workers, will not go unheard...

...For instance, the Navy's drawing boards call for several nuclear-powered aircraft carriers at an estimated cost of $540 million each—which means a couple of billion...

...The largest new military costs, however, will stem from the country's efforts to keep weaponry up-to-date with tomorrow...

...ever intended to buy, they would be against it...

...Although it is popular sophomore rhetoric to talk about reallocating resources from war to peace while converting our military forces from conscript to volunteer, the cool count reveals that enticing the volunteer, especially in a period of full employment, might well cancel out most, if not all, of the savings from the end of the war in Vietnam...

...How long before cities that feared abm begin to fear enemy warheads even more and demand protection...

...Nobody really knows because the mandates are so many: Thicken the thin...

...And when he presented his "revised" Sentinel program, President Nixon made it immediately clear that this was no longer a purely...

...By the late 1970s, costs could be even higher...

...Some idea as to the cost magnitude may be gleaned from the estimate of George W. Rathjens in a study for the Carnegie Endowment: "If one considers only the programs now under way and under serious consideration, during the early 1970s, the U.S...

...they were overpriced...

...Nixon's revision of the skinny Sentinel looked like a money-saver, a scaled-down version of the Johnson proposal that would allow the new Administration to cut the defense budget by 2.5 billion in 1969...

...Some of those "other contingencies" were suggested in a colloquy before a congressional committee between Representative Robert Sikes (D.-Fla...

...The big job before the nation can only be funded through a redistribution of the wealth, a priority so high that it should not be obscured by any delusions about Vietnam or the abm...

...to "any talks . . . with regard to arms control...

...As a result, we have bought things we did not need...

...Schultze spelled out this diabolic dynamic: "The present build-up of strategic forces and technological capabilities by the U.S.....is designed not only to meet the highest likely Soviet threat...

...But if we scare the Russians enough, they may conclude that our strike-two power could be used for strike one...

...These all represent approved bits of martial (naval) hardware...

...Why will the military budget stay so high...

...Lacking the power to knock the Russians out of the air, he proposes to keep their missiles on the ground by the threat of retaliation...

...Of this, about $29 billion, or 3.5 per cent of the gnp, will go toward Vietnam...

...Nixon prefers an unfixed course that allows him to review the new "Safeguard system" on an annual basis, in response to "what our intelligence shows us with regard to the magnitude of the threat, whether from the Soviet Union or the Chinese...

...Sikes was worried about the Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile (slbm) and about fractional orbit ballistic systems (fobs...

...Consequently, they accepted the revised version: a slow start with a built-in escalator...

...The reduced military budget request for 1969 refers to the sum sought from Congress and not to actual spending in the new fiscal year starting July 1. The "revised" edition will run about $1 billion a year for six or seven years?that is, if it is kept down to its weight-watcher diet...

...This $40 billion, incidentally, should be added to the original estimate of $76 billion that Schultze reckoned we will be spending in 1974 under happy conditions —no troops in Vietnam, no speed-ed-up arms race...

...At the moment, though, national attention is focused on the skinny Sentinel, the thin abm system...

...Our second strike (to be safeguarded by the new Sentinel) is supposed to be powerful enough to scare the Soviets out of any first strike...

...Meanwhile, we are readying plans for several new nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, half a dozen new destroyers, several nuclear-powered escort ships, a modernized nuclear attack submarine, and a new Navy fighter to replace the F-lll...

...His second piece, "Puncturing the Liberal Illusion," (NL, March 3), dealt with the failure of liberals to take control in Washington...

...Consider the facts: Military expenditures for 1969 will be about $80 billion, which is 9 per cent of the Gross National Product...

...But by itself, that worthwhile accomplishment will not liberate the funds to deal with our domestic problems or to lighten the tax load for middle-income America...

...Buy a volunteer army...

...During the Vietnam years, the percentage fell under 9 per cent...

...And the biuions we save through peace would be eaten up by new military expenditures...

...The virtue (or vice) of the Nixon proposal is that it is flexible enough to allow for a reduction in the future (or an increase...

...The last article, "Uncovering the Riches" (NL, March 17), concerned the need for income redistribution...

...Protection of our land-based retaliatory forces against a direct attack by the Soviet Union...

...How much will all this come to...

...Second, there is increased pay for the men in uniform, who expect to keep up with the "affluent" society...

...The fact is that the Nixon revision will cost half a billion dollars more than the Sentinel system proposed by Johnson...

...It will cost between $6-$7 billion, provided it watches its weight...

...The grass-root opposition to the Johnson deployment came from cities where populations were fearful of nuclear accidents...

...Although the rationale for Nixon's revisions is stated in military terms, the real reason for the modifications may have been political...

...they did not work...

...Missiles and Money By Gus Tyler In the course of the intensely emotional Vietnam debate, it has been repeatedly asserted and more often implied that if the money thrown away in Southeast Asia were applied to domestic needs, this country could make giant strides toward solving its problems at home...

...Should the war end, the country would still be loaded with the bulk of its military spending burden...

...This was predicated on a cease-fire early in 1969 and the withdrawal of all American troops between July 1, 1969, and July 1, 1970...

...The name of the game becomes "Strike one, Strike two, Who's out...

...This means that present costs of our Vietnam involvement, translating the figures back into 1964 prices, come to approximately $20 billion—which is what the country spent on alcoholic beverages and tobacco that year...

...The prime worry was the Soviet Union...

...Consequently, Nixon is deploying his Safeguard immediately around two Minutemen bases, to be completed in 1973 while watching the world and testing the works...

...to the increase of their slbm and fob forces...

...In addition, there are pieces of weaponry still in the making: a replacement for the B-52, missiles in hardened silos, a vsx (antisubmarine plane), a sea-based antiballistic missile (abm), ship-based long-range missiles, a new land tank...

...Ironically, the end of the war in Vietnam will speed the race as the military tries to catch up on projects postponed during the war for want of funds, as legislators woo young voters with a promise of no draft, and as citizens demand protection not against little Saigon but big Peking and bigger Moscow...

...for 1974, $76 billion...

...How much would this thickened abm cost...

...In short, the big military expenditure is not Vietnam, whose total costs are roughly equal to what we spend annually on booze and the weed...

...For 1969, he estimated a cost of $78 billion...

...The Russian threat," he said, "is a much more substantial threat and would require an augmented system...

...If the Korean experience is indicative, a cease-fire or even peace does not mean the end of military presence...

...Yet we dare not assume that even ending the war and putting a rein on the arms race will provide the funds we need to solve our domestic problems...

...Hence, the Schultze estimate of future military costs is quite conservative...

...In other words, by building our own strategic forces on the assumption of a greater than expected threat, and in a way which sharply increases the uncertainties facing Soviet planners, we may well force them to construct that threat...

...Without the war, we would save several billions...

...Tyler is Assistant President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and a veteran political analyst whose most recent book is The Political Imperative (Macmillan...