Shooting at Empty Silos

...Humanitarian considerations would, in any event, argue for keeping nuclear wars unthinkable, not “limiting” them to the point of plausibility...

...Since May, 1972, we have been busier than the Russians...

...How this former Rand analyst must have relished putting it together...

...With respect to the Soviet momentum Admiral Moorer perceived, it is true that since the SALT I accords large enough to hold these‘ missiles, however, and even according to Schlesinger, the Soviet MIRVs cannot be fitted onto existing missiles until sometime between 1981 and 1983...

...Of course, our current reasonably accurate weapons would be more than adequate for disposing of “soft” targets like submarine bases, so Schlesinger’s argument is couched in humanitarian terms-more accurate weapons would cause fewer civilian casualties...

...Second, it places the side seeking limitations on the number of missile launchers at a distinct disadvantage: if you decrease the number of launchers while the other side increases the yield or accuracy of remaining warheads your missiles are less secure than they would have been had their number not been restricted...

...It is our intention that this not be the only option and possibly not the principal option open to the National Command Authorities...

...In the former case, Soviet planners would have undertaken enormous rivks for meager returns since they would have fired the fust nuclear strike, inviting full-scale retaliation, without destroying our ability to fue back with sea-based missiles or strategic bombers...

...Unless we in the Congress stand firm, the Schlesinger scheme risks a new U. &-Soviet arms race...

...Yet meaningless numerical superiority accorded the Soviets in land and sea-based launchers became our excuse for galloping recklessly ahead...

...THREE WAYS TO INCREASE SECURITYAND SAVE MONEY TOO Shooting at Empty Silos by Pat Schroeder For years the Pentagon has successfully parlayed fears about Russia’s potential capability to launch a nuclear Pearl Harbor or a “first strike” into an awesome American strategic force, upon which we spend some $7.6 billion annually...

...Schlesinger began on January 10 by announcing a “change in the strategies of the United States with regard to the hypothetical employment of central strategic forces...

...This evidently does not satisfy either the President or his Defense Secretary, for they want to develop an entire new generation of more accurate missiles...

...Such considerations demand that nuclear war remain unthinkable, that the expenditures for deterrence level off and that the incentives for both sides to enter into more comprehensive arms control agreements remain intact...

...It is a theoretical concept, one of almost Jesuitan abstractlon...

...In other words, even assuming that we could act with restraint after suffering millions of casualties, there is no assurance that the residual Soviet missile force will be on the ground when our missiles arrive 30 minutes later...

...Less than a year ago, the Pentagon’s bureaucratic problems were becoming acute...

...As has been the case of quantum jumps in U. S. weapons expenditures under the traditional deterrence strategy, the concept of counterforce is now being justified by the Pentagon on the basis of grave new developments within the Soviet Union...

...It is, in sum, appropriate to wonder not only which side has the strategic “momentum” but which is chiefly responsible for the frightening pace of the arms race...

...Although time has dulled our awareness and allowed us to hear terms like “limited” nuclear war without blanching at the meaning behind them, it is worth recalling what costs any sort of nuclear war would inevitably involve...

...I Is this change necessary because our second-strike capacity (that is, our ability to annihilate the Soviet Union even after absorbing a surprise first strike ourselves) had become endan- . gered...

...As if to dispel the atmosphere of gloom, the symposium did offer this prophesy: “More grain would survive the postulated attacks than people to consume it...

...The psychological damage from such a catastrophe and the long-term suffering resulting from tumors, leukemia, and other afflictions are almost impossible to predict...

...But the presidential memorandum did not affect the approximately $250 million the Pentagan is seeking this year for research and development of its newest pet project-weapons with efficient ’ “counter force” capabilities...

...In conventional warfare, “counterforce” would mean blowing up the other side’s cannons and wetting his powder...

...The true danger of Pentagon thinking on the subject is apparent when one considers that even were we able to destroy all or part of Soviet ICBM forces on the ground, the Soviets would still have their entire sea-based nuclear fleet which would remain invulnerable to any counterforce option we might develop, just as our sea-based missiles remain invulnerable to Soviet counter force weaponry...

...What Schlesinger was outlining for us, then, is the notion of a retaliatory force that could do its work more clearly and efficiently...

...another 18 million would be injured, one third from fallout...

...Since the budget requests for counterforce remain the same, as they were before the presidential memo, it is fair to assume that Schlesinger’s January 10 remarks provide a more accurate picture of Pentagon nuclear strategy than the more cautious later statement...

...strategic build-up” that “could place the United States in a position of strategic inferiority in the years ahead...

...This would give them “a major counterforce option against the United States and we would lack a similar option...

...The Pentagon makes no claims for counterforce weapons in the event of a full-scale Soviet attack, and for very good reason...

...Here it is crucial to note that we are talking about accuracy improvements amounting to only a few hundred feet...

...Our current missiles cannot do this efficiently because they are not large or accurate enough So the Pentagon has requested $250 million in R&D funds this year, which will-unless Congress puts its foot down-be the first step toward the creation of new generations of missiles costing from $7 to $10 billion...

...We have : deployed more than three new mis.sile s a day, continued replacing Minuteman I missiles with multiple-warhead (MIRV) Minuteman 111, continued replacing Polaris missiles with larger, multiple-headed Poseidon missiles, continued development of the B-1 Intercontinental bomber, initiated work on a strategic crui.se m issile, begun research and development on a land-based missile that can be moved from place to place, begun a MARV (Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle) program...

...Increasing the Risks The counterforce concept strikes at the vitals of each of these goals...

...Our missiles now have a published accuracy of 1,500 feet, and it has been calculated that three of them taking aim at a hardened Soviet silo have an 80-percent probability of destroying the weapons inside...

...We can do that to some extent already...

...These include new missile warheads, improved guidance and re-entry sys*MIRV, which stands for multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle, means missiles that deliver several bombs, each of which may hit a different target...

...But it means little indeed in terms of saving a “soft” human being...

...shortly thereafter a National Security Defense Memorandum, signed by the President himself, “clarified” for intra-Administration purposes the U. S. position on nuclear flexibility in a manner that has led Schlesinger to be less forthcoming during subsequent public appearances, including those before the Congress...

...There are however target sets far more numerous than that and far more difficult to destroy selectively...

...If one is thinking only in terms of the ability to bash the cities of the other side, we have more than enough forces...

...The warning was echoed in later testimony before Congress by Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

...His statements that day reveal more about underlying Pentagon intentions than anything the Administration has since said or is likely to say in the future...

...Schlesinger has argued that we need a counterforce option to have the kind of limited nuclear exchange where we would swap, say a submarine base in Groton for a Soviet base near Vladivostok...

...If shotgun pellets could be armed and aimed separately, MIRV would be a nuclear shotgun...

...Onlv 25 of their silos are worth the additional costs...

...Like all bureaucrats with “turf’ to protect and expand, Pentagon planners are constantly searching for reasons to keep existing programs going and justifications for new ones...

...In all his statements and testimony on counterforce, Secretary Schlesinger has never yet argued the strategic value of pinpoint hits on empty Soviet missile silos...

...Still, readers who stay the course will, I hope, find this article worthwhile, for it describes a basic-and possibly dangerous-change in defense policy...

...What’s Wrong with Counterforce In essence, the new counterforce option is designed to give us the capability to zero in on the silos containing Soviet missiles and to give us the assurance that most of the missiles we fire will score strikes against their Soviet counterparts (if, that is, the Russian missiles are still there and haven’t already come shooting toward us...

...Counterforce also subverts the prospect of further arms limitation accords in three ways...

...Finally, the notion of counterforce encourages experimentation with new evasive techniques-mobile ICBMs and the like, a whole new field for defense expenditures...

...Unlike most of the other bureaucrats, the military strategists have the advantage of a special lingo that is full of words like “MIRV” and “SLBM’ and which may have been invented years ago for the express purpose of rendering all discussion of the topic both cryptic and intolerably boring...

...Moorer, who has had difficulty recognizing pilfered documents coming across his desk, had no problem noticing and becoming alarmed by an illusory “destabilizing momentum of the U.S.S.R...

...This may mean a great deal in terms of killing a hardened missile silo...

...Schlesinger’s own words almost suggest boredom with the whole idea of mutual assured destruction, a chang ing of the ground rules in order that those in our military think tanks can get back in earnest to their intercontinental chess games...

...In either case, counterforce weapons would be of little use because an enemy moved beyond reason to the point of having launched the first nuclear strike would almost certainly respond to our retaliatory launch by fdng their very ICBMs at which we were aiming...

...Previously “the American doctrinal position has been wrapped around something called ‘assured destruction’ which implies a tendency to target Soviet cities initially and massively...

...The submarine developments should cause no alarm here since they are intended to insure the invulnerability of the Soviet nuclear fleet, thus preserving deterrence, and the BACKFIRE threatens China more than ourselves...

...First, a counterforce strategy introduces elements-yield and accuracy-which are virtually impossible to monitor without actually getting into the other fellow’s silo, something the Soviets have never agreed to even in principle...

...To illustrate the fallacy underlying counterforce reasoning, let’s examine the utility of these new weapons in terms of a few (hopefully unthinkable) nuclear scenarios: a) All-out nuclear war...

...Yet, upon closer scrutiny, counterforce appears to be counterfarce...

...In some ways the remarks were too revealing...

...Humanitarian considerations, not to mention logic, strongly suggest leaving the yield and accuracy of our strategic weapons alone...

...Representative from Colorado...

...The Pentagon’s crowning achievement of recent years was using the SALT I agreement as an excuse for a continuation of the arms race by accelerating pet projects not expressly covered by the accord...

...Quite apart from the challenge of it all, Schlesinger said he would hope in the event of a nuclear exchange, “to minimize collateral damage and to avoid to as great an extent as possible bystander fatalities...

...It was losing credibility with the public at a pace close to that of the remainder of the Administration...

...Should such an occasion come to pass our new multi-billion dollar systems would be aimed at Soviet ICBMs already launched...

...Its old arguments about the danger of a Russian first-strike were being undone by a number of factors: our MIRVed* ICBM forces, our invulnerable fleet of Polaris-Poseidon submarines, our strategic bombers increasingly capable of striking targets inside the Soviet Union without even violating Soviet air space, the 7,000-plus “tactical” warheads based in Europe (many of which can reach Pat Schroeder is a US...

...In its name we will expend billions of dollars on a strategy which will yield only marginal returns and may bring closer the terrible risk of nuclear war...

...In the latter case, their risks would be even greater since some portion of our ICBM forces would remain intact...

...c) A nuclear “demonstration...

...The Soviets have also begun testing MIRV on their heaviest Enough?, “Having more would not be missiles...

...Without minimizing the significance of the above, it is instructive to compare U. S. activity in the area of strategic weapons during the same period...

...It could inflict a surgical strike on enemy missile silos and other military targets, using nuclear scalpels from two to eight times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima...

...b) Surprise “limited” attack on U. S. missiles...

...another 10 million would be fatally injured, half suffering the agonies of fallout disease...

...In addition, this year’s Pentagon budget recommends that work begin on a new missile submarine (Narwhaltype), an air-launched cruise missile program, and a new ICBM system...

...Thrown into the garbage heap are all budgetary guidelines, as the proposed research and development program ripens into total expenditures of $7 to $10 billion in the next five to seven years...

...Here it is assumed either that the Soviets launch large numbers of ICBMs against our ICBMs and then issue an ultimatum against U. S. responses with sea-based missiles, or that they attack some of our ICBMs with less than their total ICBM forces...

...It is necessary, first, to recognize that the new strategic concept does not simply mean retargeting our existing nuclear weapons...

...Before SALT we had stopped our )production of missiles below the strategic limits later allotted us by the agreement...

...We felt safe in doing so because-as Alain C. Entoven and K. Wayne Smith noted in How Much is I were signed the Soviets have, indeed, begun deploying longer-range submarinebased missiles, have made modifications in their Y-class submarines to carry the new missiles, and have continued development of a medium-range bomber known as BACKFIRE...

...At his January 10 press conference, Schlesinger said that with the “immense amount of throw-weight” (missile capacity) now available to the Soviets, they may eventually be able to “marry the technologies” by combining throw-weight with MIRV and other programs now in their technical infancy...

...Defense Secretary James Schlesinger came through with a whole new strategic concept during a question and answer session at the Overseas Writers Association luncheon on January 10...

...tems, and the like-all of them designed to destroy neatly the other side’s strategic weapons...

...the Soviet Union), and the SALT I agreements that prevented both sides from deploying ABM systems...

...Quite the contrary, said Schlesinger: “The main point that should be understood is that both sides now have, and will continue to have, invulnerable second-strike forces...

...The Pentagon needed something new to justify not only its regular incremental increases in defense appropriations, but also this year’s jump of over 8 per cent...

...A 1967 symposium on post-attack recovery from nuclear war sponsored jointly by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council concluded that: 10 million Americans would be killed outright in a “limited” nuclear exchange -“limited” to military targets...