HOW THE SOVIETS EMASCULATED AMERICA'S DETERRENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00004R000300040031-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2011
• Sequence Number: 31
• Content Type: MISC

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HOW THE SOVIETS
EMASCULATED
AMERICAs DETERRENT
ROBERT JASTROW
AND
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HOW THE SOVIETS
EMASCULATED
AMERICA'S DETERRENT
ROBERT _JASTROW AND .JAMES FRELK
GEORGE MARSHALL INSTITUTE
11 Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 506
Washington, D.C. 20036
[phone]
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ROBERT JASTROW is President of the George C. Marshall
Institute and founder and past Director of the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies. JAMES FRELK is Executive Director
of the George C. Marshall Institute and former National
Security Affairs Analyst for the U.S. House of Representatives.
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n 1956, when Khrushchev threatened to intervene in the
Suez crisis with nuclear rockets, NATO Commander Gruen-
ther replied, "Moscow will be destroyed as night follows day,"
and Khrushchev backed away. In 1973, as Soviet troops pre-
pared to enter the Yom Kippur War, Nixon and Kissinger
faced Brezhnev down with the threat of a nuclear attack.
In 1979, when Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan,
Carter held a meeting with his advisers, considered a nuclear
alert, and decided to withdraw from the Olympics.
What had changed between 1973 and 1979? What was the
Carter Administration afraid of? Figures on the growth of
the Soviet nuclear arsenal suggest the answer. In 1973, the
Soviets had no militarily effective nuclear warheads - the ac-
curate kind that can land within a few hundred yards of a
hardened missile silo or communications center and destroy
it. Accurate warheads are the key to the use of a nuclear arsenal
for intimidation, because if used in sufficiently large numbers
in a first strike, they can cripple the other side's nuclear forces,
and prevent him from effective retaliation. The United States
had more than 1,000 accurate warheads in 1973. The yield
of these warheads was not very large, but the Soviet targets
were not very well protected either. As a consequence, we
could cripple the Soviet nuclear forces, but they could not
cripple ours.
But in 1974, the Soviets started deploying accurate war-
heads, and in 1977 - a critical year of transition - they
reached parity with the United States in this important cate-
gory of strategic weapons. By 1979, they had 3,450 accurate
weapons capable of a first strike - more than twice as many
as the U.S.
The result, according to then Secretary of Defense Harold
Brown, was that by 1979 the Soviet Union could destroy 95
percent of our Minuteman ICBMs in their silos. They could
also, Secretary Brown reported, "destroy our bombers by a
barrage attack ... so that even if the bombers got off the
ground, they may not escape."
When Nixon and Brezhnev signed the ABM Treaty in
1972, the Americans thought they had obtained a promise
from the USSR that it would not menace the survivability
of our retaliatory forces in this way. The essence of MAD
and the ABM Treaty, after all, was the guaranteed ability to
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devastate the adversary's homeland if he attacked. In fact, the
Americans felt so strongly about this point that they added
a "unilateral understanding" to the ABM treaty, in which
they said a prime purpose of the negotiation was to "reduce
threats to the survivability of our respective retaliatory forces."
Failure to reach an agreement on that point, the American
negotiators said, "would constitute a basis for withdrawal from
the ABM treaty."
But the ink was hardly dry on the ABM Treaty when the
Soviets began to slide into their silos the first of a new genera-
tion of Soviet ICBMs, more accurate than previous Soviet
ICBMs, and good enough to take out our missile silos, com-
mand and control centers and other top-priority military
targets. The Soviets kept on building these accurate, first-strike
weapons until, in 1979, as Secretary Brown noted, they had
enough of them to place at risk a large fraction of our nuclear
deterrent.
And the Soviet arsenal continued to grow. By 1981, the
number of accurate Soviet warheads had reached nearly 5,000,
leading Secretary Brown to comment, in his annual report
to Congress, on "the degree of emphasis in Soviet military
doctrine on a war-winning nuclear capability." In one of the
great understatements of all time, Dr. Brown called this devel-
opment "troublesome."
The biggest of the new Soviet missiles, and the biggest
ICBM in existence, is the SS-18. The SS-18 is twice as large
as an MX, weighs 200 tons, is as high as a 10-story building,
can carry at least 10 warheads - each with destructive power
exceeding half a million tons of TNT - and has sufficient
fuel in reserve to "cross-target" the entire United States. SS-18
warheads are very accurate - better than the Mark 12A war-
heads which have been the mainstay of the U.S. ICBM arsenal
for years. The SS-18 is certainly the most fearsome weapon
of mass destruction ever devised by man.
At last report, the Soviets had 308 SS-18s in the field, car-
rying more than 3,000 warheads. They also had 360 SS-19s
and 150 SS-17s, with warheads of comparable accuracy. The
number of accurate warheads known to us in this arsenal totals
nearly 6,000. The destructive power residing in the deployed
SS-18s alone is greater than the destructive power of the en-
tire U.S. missile force.
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And the Soviet ICBM buildup continues, apparently with-
out letup. The USSR is now deploying the first of its new
fifth-generation missiles, the SS-25, and is about to deploy the
10-warhead SS-24. Both missiles are mobile. The SS-24, which
is the size of an MX, is designed to be carried around the coun-
try on a railroad flatcar. The SS-25, about the size of a Minute-
man, can be carried on the back of a truck.
The mobility of the new Soviet missiles makes a mockery
of offers by Soviet leaders to reduce their nuclear forces. We
will never be able to tell how many SS-24s and SS-25s the
Soviets have because, as James Hackett, former Acting Direc-
tor of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, points
out, the SS-24s and the SS-25s, and SS-20s as well, "can be
in bunkers, hangars, factories, tunnels, garages - U.S. satellites
can't see or count them."
A few months ago the USSR successfully tested a follow-
on to the SS-18, apparently even larger than the SS-18, and
with even more accurate warheads. There are also reports of
follow-ons to the SS-19 and SS-20 (which is accepted by the
U.S. as a European and Asian "theatre" missile, but can target
the United States if one or two of its three warheads are left
off). Finally, the Department of Defense has reported signs
of a sixth generation of ICBMs - follow-ons to the SS-24 and
SS-25, and also mobile.
The CIA estimates that by the mid-1990s these new missiles
can increase the size of the Soviet ICBM arsenal from around
6,000 warheads, its "official" value today, to between 10,000
and 12,000 warheads - all accurate, fast, first-strike weapons
capable of destroying U.S. military targets. Around 1995, with
this combination of accuracy, prompt delivery and great num-
bers of warheads, the Soviets will have a first-strike force of
terrifying potential.
What security needs in the Soviet Union require this enor-
mous number of ICBM warheads? The Soviet arsenal has long
since passed the limits of any reasonable nuclear force aimed
solely at deterrence of an American attack. If deterring a nucle-
ar attack were the main goal of Soviet military planners, they
would have created a relatively small force of ICBMs, as the
U.S. did, and placed the bulk of their resources in second-
strike weapons - submarines and bombers. Most (80 percent)
of the U.S. arsenal consists of second-strike weapons, either
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? too inaccurate (on submarines) or too slow (on bombers and
cruise missiles) to use in a first strike.
With the Soviets, it was the other way around. Most (75
percent) of their warheads are on ICBMs - fast, accurate, and
usable in a first strike.
The critical asymmetry between the U.S. and the USSR
in numbers of first-strike warheads is masked by figures pub-
lished now and then for the total numbers of warheads in
the two arsenals. The U.S. strategic arsenal has a total of about
11,000 strategic nuclear weapons, in the form of ballistic mis-
sile warheads, bombs, and cruise missiles. The Soviet arsenal
has a total of about 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons. But the
USSR has a first-strike arsenal; the U.S. does not. The dif-
ference can mean curtains for America.
But is the Soviet arsenal really big enough for a first strike?
In building a first-strike capability, large numbers of warheads
are as important as accuracy and prompt delivery; a small num-
ber of warheads, even if accurately placed, will only irritate
an adversary without greatly diminishing his power to retali-
ate. How many accurate warheads are required by the USSR
to mount a crippling attack on the nuclear forces of the United
States?
American capability for nuclear retaliation is concentrated
in some 3,000 key military sites in the U.S. The USSR, target-
ing two warheads on each site for a higher probability of de-
The mobility of the new Soviet
missiles makes a mockery of
offers by Soviet leaders to reduce
their nuclear forces.
struction, would need 6,000 accurate ICBM warheads to crip-
rle our retaliatory power. The Soviet nuclear arsenal projected
or the mid-1990s will have sufficient numbers of accurate war-
heads to do that. After the first strike, the USSR will still
have thousands of warheads left for a punishing attack on
American cities - if we should be so rash as to attempt to
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retaliate with the remnant of our nuclear forces surviving the
first strike.
Does the U.S. have a first-strike force? The Soviet target
list is about the same length as our own - a few thousand
key sites. The American ICBM arsenal contains 900 warheads
with an accuracy and a destructive power comparable to that
of the 6,000 first-class Soviet ICBM warheads (although none
comes close to the lethality of the SS-18). When the planned
force of 50 MXs is deployed, it will add another 500 accurate
warheads to the U.S. arsenal for a total of 1,400. The remainder
of the U.S. arsenal is too inaccurate to be useful against well-
protected Soviet targets.
Assigning two warheads to a target, this relatively modest
U.S. arsenal of 1,400 accurate weapons can take out 700 targets
in the USSR - a minor dent in the Soviet target list. The
U.S. arsenal has the accuracy, but not the necessary numbers,
to cripple the nuclear forces of the Soviet Union. Mounting
a first strike against the Soviet Union with that arsenal would
be a suicidal act.
The U.S. plans to deploy larger numbers of accurate war-
heads in the 1990s, on the Midgetman ICBM and also on a
radically new type of submarine-launched missile called the
D-5. The D-5 compensates for the inaccuracies of a launch
from a submarine by taking a navigational fix on a star or
an overhead satellite after it has been launched and correct-
ing its course in midflight. The course corrections are sup-
posed to make the.D-5 nearly as accurate as the best ICBMs.
The Midgetman ICBM will not have much effect on the
strategic balance because Midgetman warheads are very ex-
pensive ($80 to $100 million per warhead compared to $20
million per warhead for the MX) and the Defense Depart-
ment only plans to buy 500. But the D-5 is another story.
Thousands of D-5 warheads are slated for deployment in the
1990s. If they work out as expected, they should be very ef-
fective against an SS-18 silo or any other immovable target.
But therein hangs a sad tale for U.S. defense planners, for
the USSR has already taken steps to negate the effectiveness
of the D-5 - as well as the MX and the Midgetman - by
putting its newest ICBMs on mobile platforms - trucks and
flatcars. Unfortunately, while the extraordinary precision of
a D-5 or an MX makes it a deadly weapon against an SS-18
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in a fixed silo; it is almost valueless against a target that can
quickly be moved a few thousand yards down the road.
And the USSR has also gone to great lengths to protect
a second set of highly valued targets - its own leaders - from
the newest U.S. weapons. More than 1,500 hardened fuhrer-
bunkers have been built for 175,000 key Party and govern-
ment officials - the entire top stratum of Soviet leadership.
Some of the older bunkers are close to the surface and vul-
nerable, but the newest ones are deeply buried and probably
safe from the most accurate of the new U.S. warheads. The
one under the Kremlin is reported to be a mile underground.
The U.S., on the other hand, continues to keep its com-
mand structure - both facilities and people - in relatively
soft, fixed locations at or near the surface, and vulnerable to
the SS-18 and the new fifth-generation Soviet ICBMs. The
vulnerability of the U.S. command structure is likely to con-
tinue. Imagine the outcry if President Reagan built a bomb
shelter a mile under the White House.
So, thanks to Soviet foresight, even the highly accurate
MX, Midgetman, and D-5 will not change the strategic pic-
ture very much. The Soviets will be able to place our impor-
tant assets at risk in the 1990s, but we will not be able to place
theirs at risk, because by the time the new American weapons
are deployed, all the Soviet targets of prime value will be either
readily movable or deeply buried.
Are Submarines Vulnerable?
At this point, the thoughtful observer will object that the
menace of the Soviet nuclear arsenal has been exaggerated.
After all, we still have our bombers and ballistic missile sub-
marines.
It is true that the effectiveness of the U.S. bomber force
has been compromised by the Soviet ICBM buildup, as former
Secretary of Defense Brown noted; in fact considerably less
than a third of our bombers are likely to escape the first wave
of Soviet ICBMs, and of those that escape, a still smaller frac-
tion will penetrate the massive Soviet air defenses, which now
include 10,000 surface-to-air missiles and 12,000 air defense
radars.
But the ballistic missile submarines are more effective, and
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make a better case. One Trident submarine carries enough
warheads to attack every large city in the Soviet Union. Fur-
thermore, the newest U.S. submarines are very quiet and hard
to find, so the Soviets cannot count on eliminating them in
the first wave of their attack, as they can with our land-based
missiles. At the present time, ballistic missile submarines are
nearly invulnerable.
Navy sources maintain that this invulnerability will per-
sist into the indefinite future, but other defense planners are
less optimistic. Promising lines of research have developed
for the detection of submerged submarines by other methods
than tracking the sounds they emit. In principle, these methods
work no matter how quiet the submarine is.
For example, a submerged submarine creates a wake - a
disturbed pattern of waves and wavelets that trails behind it
on the ocean surface. There is evidence that the wake can be
seen from space, using satellites equipped with a new type
of "synthetic aperture" radar. Radar images of this kind ob-
tained from SEASAT, the NASA ocean satellite, are reported
to have revealed wakes of unknown origin, that could have
been produced by submerged submarines.
The problem of submarine vulnerability is compounded
by the fact that the USSR now has more than 200 attack sub-
marines, but only 10 to 12 U.S. Trident submarines will ac-
tually be at sea at any one time in the 1990s. (Submarines in
port would be a relatively easy mark for Soviet first-strike
warheads.) With that ratio, Soviets can assign five or even 10
attack submarines to each Trident to trail it from the time
it leaves port, keeping it in a box from which it cannot readi-
ly escape.
Finally, analysts of Soviet missile capabilities note that the
Soviet intercepting missiles, the SA-12s, are small enough to
be placed on ships. If armed with nuclear weapons, they may
be very effective in destroying our submarine-launched ballistic
missiles while these are still in their boost phase. Nuclear-
tipped SA-12s promise to be a deadly weapon against U.S.
submarine-launched missiles, and one to which the United
States appears to have no response at present.
Taking all these factors into account, the Scowcroft Com-
mission on Strategic Forces concluded, "Over the long run,
it would be unwise to rely so heavily ors submarines as our
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only [survivable] ballistic missile force." And in a rare dis-
play of frankness, a senior Pentagon official said two years
ago, "It is a matter of time before our confidence in the in-
vulnerability of the submarine is degraded." Informed opin-
ion agrees that while submarines are safe today, and may re-
main so for a few years to come, they will not be able to hide
in the oceans forever. Exactly when the submarine loses its
cloak of invisibility is anyone's guess. However, it is not a
question of whether, but when.
Soviet ABM Breakout
Anxiety over the extent of Soviet preparations for a first
strike has been intensified by the discovery that the USSR
also seems to be preparing a nationwide ABM defense. This
discovery confronts defense planners with the frightening
prospect of a Soviet first-strike force that can diminish con-
siderably the American capacity for retaliation, and a Soviet
ABM defense that could block whatever counterattack we
might manage to get off the ground afterward with our crippl-
ed forces. The banning of this nightmarish possibility was,
of course - for the Americans, at least - the driving force
behind the ABM Treaty.
The ABM Treaty notwithstanding, technical reports re-
ceived from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA in-
dicate that the USSR has acquired nearly all the elements need-
ed for a defense against the ballistic missiles that would con-
stitute the main instrument of American retaliation. The
Soviet Union appears to be poised for a breakout from the
Treaty.
Some experts say there is no cause for U.S. concern, because
the Soviet ABM defense is not very effective. It is by no means
as good as the defenses the SDI is designing for the 1990s;
it is certainly not good enough to stop a massive U.S. first
strike - if we were to launch one.
But the American arsenal being what it is, a first strike
by the United States is of vanishingly low probability.
American defense planners are not worrying about how well
Soviet ABM defenses might block a U.S. first strike; they are
focused on deterring a Soviet first strike - a possibility that
the Soviet ICBM buildup brings to the forefront of their at-
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tention. For that purpose, the American planners rely on the
threat of massive destruction of the Soviet Union in a retalia-
tory second strike. And against a U.S. retaliatory second strike,
with weakened and diminished forces surviving a Soviet first
strike, the Soviet missile defense could be exceedingly effective.
At present, the Soviet ABM defenses are deployed only
around Moscow, in accordance with the restrictions of the
ABM Treaty. However, the CIA has confirmed existence of
production lines for turning out the components of the Mos-
cow ABM system - intercepting missiles, radars and so on
- in large quantities.
Right now, the output of those production lines is only
going into the defenses around Moscow, as far as we know,
but new sites can be put into operation in a matter of months.
By the early 1990s - four or five years from now - these
components can be deployed across the USSR, defending every
key Soviet target against U.S. ballistic missiles.
Concern over the intensity of Soviet ABM preparations
was heightened last year by the discovery of three huge "battle
management" radars - each the size of a football field - in
the western USSR near Poland. These radars close the last
major gap in a network of similar radars rinsing the USSR.
Six were already known; the last three to be discovered make
a total of nine. Each of the nine has the range and precision
needed to pick up oncoming U.S. warheads as they approach
the USSR, determine which target each warhead is headed
for, and alert individual ABM sites in that warhead's path so
that they can send up a missile to- intercept it.
The battle management radars are the long pole in the
Soviet ABM tent, because they take many years to design and
construct. But the Soviets started working on these radars a
long time ago. In fact, they must have started designing them
while they were still negotiating the ABM Treaty. The three
just discovered near Poland are probably the last in the net-
work. They should be finished around 1991.
The famous Krasnoyarsk radar is one of the radars in the
Soviet ABM network. It looks across 2,000 miles of the USSR
from central Siberia to the northeast, and covers the approach
corridor for U.S. ICBMs from the missile fields in the western
states. It also covers the launch of missiles from U.S. sub-
marines in the Bering Sea. The Soviets say the Krasnoyarsk
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radar is for tracking space objects, but its design makes it
almost useless for that purpose. The CIA says the Soviet claim
is "preposterous."
The network of nine battle management radars, combined
with the facilities for mass production of ABM components,
will give the Soviet Union the means for setting up a nation-
wide ABM defense in short order, whenever it judges the mo-
ment to be propitious for an overt breakout from the ABM
Treaty. According to intelligence reports, that could be in
the early 1990s.
Any single one of these Soviet ABM activities would be
a cause for concern to the U.S., which is still attempting to
honor the ABM Treaty. But the ensemble of Soviet ABM pro-
grams is more menacing than the individual items; Robert
Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA, calls it "significant and
ominous."
The overall pattern of Soviet activities in recent years -
the ICBM buildup and the burgeoning ABM capability - sug-
gests the the USSR is intent on positioning itself for a first
strike. As a consequence of the resultant threat to the effec-
tiveness of our retaliatory forces, the theory of deterrence by
Mutual Assured Destruction is collapsing like a house of cards.
If the Soviets have a sufficient number of accurate missiles
to wipe out the bulk of U.S. nuclear forces in a surprise at-
tack, and they have a missile defense and an air defense ade-
quate to handle the ragged second aftermath of that attack,
they will not be deterred by the fear of retaliation, because
we will not be able to retaliate.
The Unexpected Attack
Dramatic advances in the accuracy of warheads in recent
years have contributed further to U.S. fears of a Soviet first
strike. Zbigniew Brzezinski has explained why these technical
developments increase the chance of a missile attack on the
United States.
That story starts in World War II. When the Germans were
raining V-2s on Britain, they were pleased if a rocket came
within 10 miles of its target. The launch crews used to point
their V-2s in the direction of London and hope for the best.
Later, the accuracy of ballistic missiles improved to a mile,
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TOTAL DESTRUCTIVE
POWER OF THE U.S. AND
USSR ARSENALS'
AVERAGE SIZE OF NUCLEAR
WARHEADS IN THE U.S.
AND USSR ARSENALS
MEGATONS 4
PER WARHEAD
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then to half a mile, and then to a quarter of a mile. For the
SS-18 and the Minuteman III, it is 200 to 250 yards. For the
MX, warhead accuracy is about 150 yards. That is, half the
time an MX warhead will land within 150 yards of its target,
after a flight of thousands of miles.
The remarkable precision of these weapons has an impor-
tant consequence. It makes it possible to achieve the military
objectives of a nuclear attack - destruction of the adversary's
missile silos, command and control centers and other sites
vital to his effective retaliation - with quite small nuclear
weapons. The record demonstrates, in fact, that as accuracy
has improved, the sizes of nuclear weapons have gone down
markedly.
In 1962, the average explosive power of the nuclear weap-
ons in the U.S. strategic arsenal was three megatons (three
million tons of TNT). Today it is seven times smaller. The
average explosive power of the weapons in the Soviet arsenal
was 41/3 megatons in 1970; today it is five times smaller. The
total destructive power of the U.S. arsenal is a quarter of what
it was in 1962; the total destructive power of the Soviet arsenal
is down by about 40 percent since 1970.
These trends toward greater warhead accuracy and small-
er nuclear weapons have been steady over several decades.
Now, enter the Pershing 2, recently deployed in Germany.
The Pershing 2 is a quantum leap behond the technology of
earlier missiles, because its warheads are "smart." That is, they
have computer "brains" and radar "eyes" that view the ter-
rain below, compare what the eye sees to a map of the target
area stored in the computer's memory, and then adjust the
warhead's course so that it steers itself into the target.
Prior to the advent of the Pershing 2, ballistic missiles car-
ried dumb warheads. Once a dumb warhead has been pushed
off its ICBM, its course is set and cannot be changed. The
accuracy of the warhead in reaching its target depends on how
accurate a push it received at the start. The finest dumb war-
heads presently deployed are carried by SS-18s and MXs. The
150-yard accuracy of the MX is probably close to the ultimate
that can be achieved with a dumb warhead.
But the Pershing 2 warheads, with their brains, eyes and
ability to change their own courses, can do much better than
an MX warhead. Half the time, a Pershing 2 warhead will land
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4
within 35 yards of its target. The Pershing 2 warhead is truly
a revolutionary development in missile technology. It has been
said, with only mild hyperbole, that it can fly through any
window in the Kremlin.
Still, the Pershing 2 is only the beginning of the new revolu-
tion in warhead technology. Experts see the possibility of
warhead accuracies coming down to a few yards or even feet.
They forecast the destruction of key military targets by nuclear
charges so small as to produce essentially no unwanted blast
damage or radioactive fallout.
At first, this trend to accurate warheads and smaller nuclear
weapons seems like a good thing, because it means no whole-
sale destruction in a nuclear attack, and no civilian carnage.
But Dr. Brzezinski has pointed out another, and less reassur-
ing, meaning.
When nuclear warheads were all large and very destruc-
tive, he notes, a nuclear first strike was "messy and unpredic-
table ... not an attractive option for either side." But small,
accurate nuclear weapons are usable. They make it possible
to carry out a surgical first strike - a surprise attack that decap-
itates the opponent's command structure and destroys the bulk
of his forces, leaving him "strategically crippled, capable of
only a spasmodic, disorganized and strategically aimless re-
sponse - or none at all."
For the military planner, Dr. Brzezinski concludes, highly
precise nuclear weapons make the dreaded first strike "a viable
option."
When would the attack come? According to the conven-
tional wisdom among American analysts, a nuclear exchange
would develop out of crisis escalation, as in the Mideast crises
of 1956 or 1973, or the Cuban missile crisis. As tension mount-
ed, the U.S. would place its forces on nuclear alert; bombers
would be loaded and dispersed; the entire fleet of ballistic
missile submarines would be put to sea; the U.S. command
structure would be geared to a prompt decision when word
came that the dreaded ballistic missiles were on their way.
But the conventional wisdom is almost certainly wrong.
Why would an adversary pick such a moment as this to at- when the chances of success are minimal? It would be
far better to wait until the crisis has been defused by diplomatic
concessions, weary U.S. forces have been stood down from
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their alert, and American leaders are relaxed in the euphoric
belief that the threat of nuclear war has passed. That would
be the time to strike.
The mind recoils from the possibility of the "bolt out of
the blue" - a surprise nuclear attack, launched when Amer-
ica's guard is down, after a skillful Soviet campaign of decep-
tion and disinformation. Yet, as Dr. Brzezinski notes, in com-
menting on the developments in nuclear weapons in recent
years, "One can disregard this possibility only at the greatest
peril."
The Need for a Space-based Defense
In the ongoing, and often abrasive, argument over the
Strategic Defense Initiative, this is one of the main issues that
separates SDI supporters from their opponents. Opponents
of SDI, by and large, do not believe that the Soviet Union
can launch a successful first strike, because they do not agree
that U.S. retaliatory forces are vulnerable to a surprise attack;
they feel that U.S. deterrence of a Soviet attack by the threat
of retaliation will remain effective for many years to come.
In our view, their confidence is contradicted by the events
of the last 10 years: the new thrusts in anti-submarine war-
fare; the trend toward accurate, small-yield nuclear wea ons;
and most important, the Soviet ICBM buildup, coupled with
alarming signs of Soviet preparations for an overt breakout
from the ABM Treaty by the early 1990s.
As matters stand today, powerful congressional forces are
opposed to the deployment of a missile defense in the 1990s.
The SDI budget has been cut to levels that postpone the
achievement of test objectives by several years, and a major
effort is underway in Congress to force a type of compliance
with the ABM Treaty that would preclude demonstrations
of the first-generation space-based defenses regarded by the
Department of Defense as feasible for deployment in the 1990s.
As a result of these congressional actions, it appears that
the United States will have no defense - and certainly no
defense based in space - against Soviet ICBMs in the 1990s.
That is unfortunate, because a space-based defense located on
satellites orbiting over the Soviet Union, that can shoot down
the Soviet ICBMs as they rise from their silos, would have
a paralyzing effect on Soviet first-strike planning. Since the
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planner cannot tell beforehand which missiles and warheads
will be shot down and which will get through, he cannot target
key sites, such as missile silos and command posts, and be
confident of their destruction. Thus, the sine qua non of a
successful first strike - the guaranteed destruction of the
adversary's retaliatory forces - is denied to him. Space-based
defenses, even if their effectiveness is limited, have a toxic ef-
fect on first-strike planning.
g S ace-based defenses, even if
t eir effectiveness is limited,
have a toxic effect on first-
strike planning.
This is not true of the "point" defense favored by some
members of Congress for the protection of our MX silos and
other key military sites. The Soviet planner, confronted by
a point defense surrounding a small number of critically im-
portant sites, can assign five, 10 or even 20 warheads to those
sites to be confident of their destruction; and yet he will have
consumed only a very small part of his arsenal on those targets.
But if he is confronted with a space-based defense, and feels
it is essential to achieve the same level of confidence in destroy-
ing these key sites, he must multiply his entire arsenal by a
factor of five, 10 or 20, since he does not know beforehand
which particular missiles in his arsenal will be shot down.
Since the present Soviet arsenal cost some $700 billion, that
would mean an expenditure of trillions of dollars.
This is only true of the space-based defense, not of the
ground-based "point" defense. That is one of the main rea-
sons why Defense Secretary Weinberger has insisted on the
inclusion of a space-based layer in even the earliest defenses
under consideration by the Defense Department for deploy-
ment.
The outlook for the next 10 years is not promising. The
congressional politics of missile defense - and especially the
opposition to early deployment of a defense from prominent
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Members of Congress - are such that in the early 1990s the
Soviet Union is likely to have a lethal combination of a first-
strike attack force and a defense against retaliation - and the
United States will have neither. In these circumstances, we
believe it will be clear to all that the American government
cannot protect its citizens from a nuclear attack, and is no
longer a nuclear superpower. The consequences, writes Robert
Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA, will be "awesomely nega-
tive for stability and peace." We suggest that this develop-
ment will be seen by the world as the greatest military revers-
al the United States has ever suffered, with catastrophic polit-
ical consequences certain to follow.
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