LETTER TO G.A. KEYWORTH II FROM WILLIAM J. CASEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01116R001102090021-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: April 15, 1986
• Content Type: LETTER

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The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington. D. C. 20505
' , APRR 1ES5
Dr. G. A. Keyworth, II
Keyworth/Meyer International
Washington Harbour
Suite 320
3050 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007
Dear Jay:
Thank you for bringing your recent speech on SDI and CDI to
my attention. I, too, am confident that the important work of the
Packard Commission will serve to restore public enthusiasm for the
President's defense modernization efforts. The concept of
technical leverage which you address is, of course, central to
this reinvigorated effort, and I am pleased to see the point made
so well in an important public forum.
Sincerely,
William J. Casey
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LETTER to G. Keyworth re speech on SDI and CDI
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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIA
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Ke-vworth/Mever International
Executive Registry
86- 1362X
Washington Harbour
Suite 320
3050 K Street, N.V.
Washington. D.C. 20007
The Honorable William J. Casey
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
You may find the attached remarks, delivered recently on the SDI and
similarly motivated CDI (conventional defense initiative), to be of
interest. Together, they comprise the defense strategy that the
President envisioned before delivering the SDI speech three years
ago. It is particularly pertinent today, as the Packard Commission
is beginning to focus attention upon restoring technical leverage to
our national defense.
Very truly yours,
G. A. Keyworth, II
Telephone: [phone] Telex: 5106011821
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Remarks of Dr. G. A. Keyworth, II
Chairman, Keyworth/Meyer International
Washington, D.C.
Keynote Address to the
American Defense Preparedness Association
Washington, D.C.
March 18, 1986
"Opportunities in Defense"
During the next two days, this conference will examine
the present status of the SDI. I predict that you will
emerge with a certain sense of pity--pity, that is, for the
Dow Jones, whose remarkable recent climb seems lethargic in
comparison to the exponential rate of progress that we've
witnessed in the SDI. For all of you who have persisted in
working on the technical challenges of SDI over these past
three years, I offer my congratulations on that remarkable
progress and my continued encouragement for the future.
When I was thinking about what I wanted to say today, I
couldn't help but contrast my sentiments now to those of
just exactly three years ago, which was five days before
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the President's March 23, 1983 speech to the nation that
began the Strategic Defense Initiative. As a personal
aside, I can say that those days when the decision was
being pondered about whether or not to proceed with the SDI
were the most intense, and most momentous, in my life. And
yet, I only partially foresaw the true consequences of the
President's bold and courageous vision. That vision went
beyond ballistic missiles, and all the attendant trials
that resulted, to encompass a new defense strategy that
could stem the erosion of Western security.
The SDI does not exist in isolation from the rest of
our defense programs. It's both a product of earlier
efforts and the precursor of what's to come. First, the
SDI is very much a product of the President's decision in
1981 to undertake strategic modernization--to close the
"window of vulnerability". Remember that we entered the
1980s with an alarming mismatch in forces between the West
and East. The President responded by putting back on track
our sole ICBM project, the MX, after keeping it on hold for
more than 10 years; we began to recognize our dependence
upon and improve our submarine-launched missile deterrents;
we restarted the B-1 bomber to replace the ancient B-52s
and we spurred development of the revolutionary Stealth
bomber; we speeded up development of cruise missiles to
ensure penetration of the increasingly effective Soviet
air-defense system; and we took steps to improve the
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survivability of our command and control
capability--without which there is little credibility in
our retaliatory deterrent.
Strategic modernization--closing the window of
vulnerability--was one of the more difficult tasks
confronting the President during those early years in
office. Finding ways to safeguard our retaliatory '
capability had become revealing in its complexity. In
effect, there are vanishingly few ways to protect our
land-based strategic weapons today--and perhaps even our
strategic submarines someday in the future--against
accurate ICBMs. The consequence, which becomes more severe
with each cycle of improved offensive weapons, is that
there's an increasing perception that the aggressor--the
one who strikes first--could possess a winning advantage,
and at some point in this deterioration of stability, that
perception of advantage may become unacceptably large.
The erosion of stability is not simply the result of
the number of weapons, but of advances in technology as
well. Nor was it the advent of MIRVing that gave the ICBM
the first-strike potential it has today, in spite of the
tremendous destructive power that proliferation of warheads
creates. Today's problem came from something less
dramatic: development of the precision guidance systems
that led to "counter-force targetting." Counter-force
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targetting introduced today's crisis instability--the ten
to thirty minute window available in which to decide
whether to launch-under-attack before the ability to
retaliate is lost.
The strategic modernization program was an essential,
and necessary, step toward restoring the credibility of our
deterrent, and the President made it the cornerstone of his
defense efforts in the first two years of his
Administration. But what struck the President at the time
of those decisions was the extraordinary difficulty of
maintaining that credible deterrent. He perceived, as only
someone bearing that special responsibility could, that it
would become even harder--perhaps impossible--for his
successors to make comparable corrective responses in the
face of constantly improving Soviet offensive weapons. The
current round of modernization should provide us with
strong deterrents through the end of the century. And we
can be reasonably certain that no technology is going to be
developed over the next several decades to enable the
Soviets to threaten our least vulnerable deterrent,
submarines. But nonetheless, what we're seeing, over time,
is a gradual diminution of the stability that is supposed
to come from assured retaliatory weapons. Counterforce
weapons have steadily whittled away at two legs of the
strategic triad, and to me that trend is ominous. And with
the rapid progress being made every year in sensors and in
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data processing, there's a chance that the submarine
detection problem will succumb in time. What then?
The President concluded that the time to ask the "what
then?" question was now, while we still have time to ponder
the answer--and while we still have time to do something
about it. The answer he came up with was to propose to
abandon the offensive arms spiral and to shift away from
today's total reliance on retaliation--on the deadly
doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction--and increase our
reliance on defense. And that, of course, was the impetus
for SDI--a means to introduce a new basis for stability
that's based on making taking away that first-strike ICBM
option from an aggressor.
The next question, of course, was a practical one:
Could we develop defenses good enough to let us shift away
from offensive deterrents? The question we had to ask
ourselves in 1983--the question we were struggling with
exactly three years ago--was if the state of science and
technology would permit us to develop an effective
strategic defense. Today, thanks to the efforts of people
like you, we're asking ourselves which technologies that
have emerged since then will work best, not whether they
will work at all.
Several developments within the SDI program are
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particularly worth noting, because they've been some of the
key determinants in that change from "if' to "how." First,
without doubt, has been the emergence of the means for
boost-phase defenses. Three years ago it was our
perception that it should be possible to develop the
technologies needed for directed-energy, boost-phase
interceptors--something that had not been possible just a
few years before. That assessment rested heavily on the
brand new technology of atmospheric compensation, which
opened the doorway for ground-based lasers. If there was
any key technology that permitted a green light for the
SDI, to deploy just a small pun, it was due to this first
realization that the enormous leverage of boost-phase
interception might be accomplished without the attendant
vulnerability of expensive weapons based in the low-noise
environment of space.
The new promise we first saw in 1983 has since been
borne out with dozens of additional developments. In a
concrete way, that progress has gone far to negate the
earlier--and I think often hipshot--skepticism as to the
feasibility of SDI technologies and to allowing, if not
forcing, us to think about how the SDI will fit into and
alter our defense strategy. As we look back, we can see
that one of the reasons the SDI has emerged as our highest
defense priority has been the speed with which the
technical community built on those initial technologies and
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produced tangible results. I like to cite, in particular,
the successes in developing free-electron lasers, as well
as pulsed, excimer lasers, particle beam and other
directed-energy concepts as the core of SDI--because, in a
real sense, they're the pacing items today. They may
represent but a small part of an effective strategic
defense, but their sheer speed and leverage has provided us
a totally new perspective on the feasibility of missile
defense.
Another development that's so revealing about the
progress in SDI has been the increasing level of support
from our Allies. We all remember how tentative they first
were, trying to assess just how serious the President
really was while trying to make their own independent
assessments of the technical feasibility. When they
observed that the President never wavered, not even a
blink, and realized he wasn't going to, they concluded that
the United States was truly committed to SDI, a commitment
that was set in concrete in Geneva last fall. And as
technical feasibility has become less of an issue with each
advance, our Allies are concluding that participation in
the SDI is not only important to building a defense
partnership for the West, but is also an opportunity to
participate in and share the results of leading edge R&D.
To the extent that they see the SDI as possessing the kind
of technology stimulus that, for example, the Apollo
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program was in the 19G0s, they know they must be part of
it.
All of this progress has set the stage for what really
counts, which is to begin to give us the tools to deal with
the unprecedented challenge that nuclear weapons present,
and to finally begin to truly manage the nuclear age
without the ephemeral construct of total reliance upon
faith in arms control. By managing, I mean to be able to
diminish the possibility that nuclear weapons might be used
or, more likely, might become the means by which the
Soviets could blackmail the West into acceding to their
intimidation. So one important outcome of SDI will be to
catalyze a new basis for arms reductions--for massive arms
reductions. In fact, I think we can make a good argument
that the SDI has already begun to have that impact. In
1983 the arms control process was still nibbling around the
edges; in 1986 we and the Soviets are talking about those
massive reductions, perhaps the kinds of reductions that
finally begin to address the most destabilizing aspect of
the arms race--the unbalanced emphasis upon counter-force
weapons that the Soviet doctrine of "damage limitation" has
brought about. Obviously we have a long way to go before
we can assess how serious the Soviets are about reducing
their first strike weapons, but it seems clear to me that
the handwriting has been on the wall for several years now:
SDI can make the ICBM obsolete as a pre-emptive threat.
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And, if that's the case, then a destabilizing trend can be
reversed.
Those two major decisions--strategic modernization and
SDI--have in large measure dominated our defense planning
for the past five years. They represent major and ongoing
successes in restoring eroded national security and in
taking the initiative to regain control of our own
destiny. But now, in 1986, we confront two additional
challenges.
One is a matter of public priorities. When we read
public opinion polls about defense, two things emerge
consistently. First, the American people continue to
assign high priority to national defense. They believe in
being strong, and they recognize that America and the world
are more secure when we deal from strength. Few people
argue with the principle that government's first priority
is defense, and they like the America that has emerged on
the world scene in the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan's
leadership.
Yet those same polls show sharply diminished support
among the public for how we're going about providing that
defense. Little of what they see--and only further fueled
by the distractions of waste, fraud and abuse--looks like
the kind of leverage competition-battered industries in
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other sectors are pursuing.
That dichotomy in public support is unmistakable and,
to me, clearly conveys, in a democratic society, orders to
Washington--orders to do the job better. And anyone who
fails to respect the significance of those orders is
forgetting that we cannot have strong defense without
strong public support. But we haven't done a very
effective job in earning that support. With only a few
exceptions--the President himself being the notable
one--we've allowed debates on defense to become alarmingly
localized here in Washington, as if the only issues were
turf squabbles between the Pentagon and the Congress.
One of the consequences has been the hue and cry about
waste, fraud, and abuse--and the inordinate diversion of
energy to dealing with those issues as if they were the
fundamental threats to our national security. Yet in
Washington we have, to a large extent, invited that
situation by neglecting to demonstrate to the public those
many successes that show how well we can do the job of
providing defense.
The public sees perfectly clearly that the Soviet
Union's industrial economy is no more competitive today
than it was 30 years ago. The gap in industrial technology
between East and West remains enormous, and our fellow
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citizens rightfully ask why we don't seem to be better able
to take advantage of our technological and industrial
superiority. Thirty years ago a major part of our defense
thinking assumed a "force-multiplier," based upon our
ability to use technology to give leverage to our
military. We were well able to counter, and contain, the
Soviets' brute force approach to defense with our better
weapons, better organization, and better personnel.
Well, in thirty years we've let that force-multiplier
erode. It's obviously not because of the failings of our
industrial machine, and it's a weak excuse to say the
Soviets have managed to close the gap simply by stealing
our own technology. After all, competition in the free
market is based upon the premise that the innovator must
also be the implementer, lest lie be the loser. The bottom
line, I believe, is that we haven't done a good enough job
of putting our immense resources to work for defense. One
reason that the SDI stands out so startlingly is that it's
a rare example where we have married what we're good
at--technology--with bold leadership. The impact on the
Soviets has certainly been galvanizing, and it's captured
the imagination and enthusiasm of free people in a way that
no other recent defense program has.
But SDI was unusual in that it was born not in the
defense establishment, but in the mind of a civilian--the
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President. It was born with the kind of vision and
strategic purpose that was curiously lacking as the
force-multiplier so dramatically eroded. So
notwithstanding the example of SDI, we are now at an
important--perhaps even precarious--point in the defense
restoration of the 1980s. The public has issued its
orders. What steps are those who are in a position to
respond going to take?
Let me suggest something that I think is a good gauge
of what's likely to happen. As I said, one of the pitfalls
has been our distraction with issues of waste in defense
programs. Last year, when it was first clear that the
nation was demanding response and action to correct those
problems, the President chose one of the wisest and most
respected Americans I know, David Packard, to develop some
remedies. The problem he was asked to address was the
broader problem of how we allocate resources for defense,
and that leads inevitably--at least if you have the vision
of a David Packard--to the problem of how you establish
priorities for defense. As the interim report of the
Packard Commission showed a few weeks ago, we have the
opportunity to make far better use of our inherent
strengths--our science and technology, our industrial base,
and especially the renewed vitality of our commercial
sector as it responds to the competition from abroad. One
thing the public is dead right about is in demanding that
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we bring the same kind of competition-induced vitality to
defense as American industries are bringing to the
marketplaces in which they compete. And we should
recognize the debt we owe to some of those reinvigorated,
foreign challengers for stimulating our own newly
competitive reactions.
It's no surprise that there's such strong consensus
building for the kinds of reforms the Packard Commission
has called for--because implementing them can address that
dichotomy I mentioned earlier between public expectations
for defense and what the public perceives is being
delivered. The Commission, by the nature of its
recommendations, is pointing the way for us to recapture
leverage for our defense effort.
Archimedes, in another context, said that a lever long
enough could move the world. In fact, technological
levers, like those we pursue in the SDI, are capable of
changing the world. The SDI is hardly unique in that
sense--only the most visible because the issues it takes on
are so prominent. But there's another important complement
to the SDI in developing a defense strategy that uses our
own strengths--and one that I believe is rapidly gaining
momentum. When the President proposed the SDI, he also
emphasized that our success in reducing our reliance on
nuclear weapons would necessarily increase our reliance on
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conventional defenses. If that meant we'd have to rely
strictly on the kinds of conventional defenses in use by us
today, arrayed against the Warsaw Pact forces, we'd be at
an unacceptable disadvantage. Because, just as the Soviets
turned to the brute force approach of massive numbers of
ICBMs for their strategic forces, they've deployed massive
numbers of troops and equipment in the field for their
conventional forces.
But we can be as clever with what's coming to be called
the CDI--the "conventional defense initiative"--as we're
being with the SDI? That is, can we again find the tools
for leverage based on our industrial superiority and our
technological advantage? Let me offer one example. The
Soviets build a pretty good tank, as do we. In fact,
they're about comparable in overall performance. However,
they have about fifty thousand of them deployed in Eastern
Europe, and the sheer numbers create a substantial
advantage over NATO armored forces. But instead of our
continuing to think in terms of tank versus tank, there's
every reason for us to think about how we could make those
tanks ineffective by using technology--in a way similar to
the way SDI can make the tanks' airborne counterparts,
ICBMs, ineffective as weapons. Using a combination of
imaging tactical radars, advanced sensors, modern
"survivable" battlefield communication, and inexpensive
unmanned aircraft, we can develop a deep interdiction
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capability that could go far to reverse the present
numerical imbalance. And this is but one example of how
technology can restore conventional leverage to preserve
our interests, and those of all free people, in as bold and
innovative a manner as in the SDI.
No one is a stronger proponent of moving boldly to
capture that leverage than the President. From the vantage
of history I think we're going to see his call for and
commitment to the SDI as one of the most important and
courageous steps of leadership of any American President.
This single step, followed--by design--by restoring
conventional leverage with the CDI, can lead to a defense
strategy that is synchronous with the competition-led
reindustrialization of America, and there is no small
linkage between those dual needs--of a new defense strategy
and of industrial revitalization. But let's remember that
the President took enormous political risk in stepping out
front, in confounding his supporters and opponents alike by
challenging the scientific and technical communities, and
the military, to go to the drawing board and come up with a
workable and totally-new basis for defense. In effect, he
said the Soviets have been setting the pace and choosing
the means of competition for too long, and it's time for us
.to assert our leadership.
That attitude is also reflected in the work of the
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Packard Commission, producing a blueprint for doing what we
do best. For that reason, I see the Commission as a timely
means by which we can not only modernize defense and
restore public confidence in defense, but even more
important, to make it possible for us to develop a winning
strategy for the West.
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