War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Harold Brown, 1986

That's a chat about the Air Force and concerns there and particularly Curtis Lemay has concerns about about the dawn of the missile age. I mean when you first came into the Pentagon was this really the cusp of a new age. Curtis Lemay was you know he had been his experience had been with bombers did he. How did he react to that to the decision to phase out bombers Lay's attitude was the bombers were a proven capability. They had been proven in World War II where he had been the commander of a very large and very effective bomber forces. I can recall even in the late 50s when Lemay laid down. What were his priorities for new weapons systems. A replacement for a successor for the B-52 was very high on his list and ballistic missiles were

lower on his list and he considered that they had not really been proven out. And he tended to rely more on the large payloads that bombers could deliver and belief that manned forces had advantages. Did you object to the phasing out a B 47 B 58 B 58 was always a marginal weapon system although it was faster than a B 47. Its range was not appreciably different and its numbers were so small compared to the before the 7s that it never did constitute a major weapons system. There were if I remember correctly well over a thousand to be 47 on less than 100 or something like a 100 be

58 Lemay I think was concerned about to schedule it which would be 47 were phased out. It happened over a relatively few years. It happened after the submarine launched ballistic missile had already come into the force. And so while the solid fueled Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile was coming into the force he would have preferred to keep them in longer. As to whether you would want to have wanted to keep them in indefinitely that's another matter I doubt. What about to be 70 What was his reaction to that. Well to be 70 he be 70 of course was the apple of the eye of many of the Strategic Air Command generals and alumni of which lamé is I guess he was vice chief of staff and then soon after became chief of

staff. Soon after the decision of the incoming Kennedy administration to cancel the 70. I think he didn't like that decision at all because the B-7 he was after all the the new intercontinental bomber it could fly faster and higher and carry a big payload. And those were the criteria and the criteria by which bomber advocates in the Air Force tended to judge the efficacy of the system. So Lemay didn't like that at all nor did most of the other Air Force people. How did you feel either when you were in research and engineering or secretary of the Air Force about the need for follow on bomber. Well while I was. The the B-17 cancellation decision was made just about as I became director of defense research and engineering.

I did not enter on that post until May in 1961 and my recollection is that the decision had been made a couple of months before an air force although very happy and by that time I guess accepted the decision. From then on through the rest of the 60s from 1961 to the beginning of 1969 when I left the Defense Department. After serving for four years as director of defense research and engineering then four years as secretary of the Air Force. The bomber question was always a very important one for the Air Force. They wanted to have a bomber fall on partly because there were still many people in the Air Force who had an attachment to bombers. But more important because they supported as did the rest of the U.S. defense establishment.

The idea that it would be a good thing to have a diversity of strategic retaliatory capability so that there would be no single program on the Soviet side no single technological breakthrough on the Soviet side that could put the whole of the U.S. strategic retaliatory capability at risk and thus undermine deterrence or. Counter-force or any other purpose that U.S. strategic forces might have as a result during that whole period from 1961 on through the end of the 60s and of course it's actually continued right to this day. The Air Force has advocated. Modernization of the bomber for its replacement of old bombers with new ones not because they wear out in the wings fall off. All that argument is sometimes made

but because such weapons systems become more vulnerable to Soviet preemption for example that is destruction before they can be launched in retaliation. And because such bombers also tend to become more vulnerable to active defenses. On the other side in the continued interplay between measure and countermeasure and so forth the Soviets with a massive commitment over the past three decades at least two air defense have invested in newer and more effective and more modern air defenses as a result. Bombers which can be reasonably sure of being able to penetrate such defenses at a certain stage become 10 years later 15 years later 20 years later more vulnerable to intercept. And if you're going to keep a bomber force and there are reasons to keep it as I

indicated having to do with diversification of your Italian capability the bomber force has to be able to adapt and have different characteristics so as to be able to penetrate what those characteristics are. Depends upon what the air defenses are on the other side and how effective they are. The bomber characteristics that are involved are speed altitude detectability by. Radar or by infrared or by some other means the ability to carry countermeasures. The ability to carry short range missiles which can suppress defenses or occasionally long range air air to surface missiles which can suppress defenses and so the bomber force if it's to remain as part of the strategic force needs to have those characteristics re-examined and new designs put forward.

And all during that period of the 60s the Air Force was looking at what characteristics a new bomber should have in order to be able to survive to penetrate and thereby to deter. Let's talk for a minute about about the Nike system and the missile defense. Jacquelina told us that you accompanied him. He said he was the first person to brief Kennedy on ABM in and around Thanksgiving of 61 Do you remember that. Well yes. What happened was that Eisenhower. Had during his tenure. Several times rejected the army. And to a lesser extent the secretary of defense as I was and Tom Gates proposals for Anti

Ballistic Missile System deployment that was a so-called Nike Zeus system which was a primitive anti-missile system. When Kennedy came in he was pressed again by some of the military but not at that time by Secretary McNamara to consider the deployment of a Nike system. My recollection is that during the summer of 1961. Jerry Wiesner was Kennedy's science adviser thought it was time to bring Kennedy up to date on this matter so that in preparation for the budget decisions to be made around Thanksgiving of 1981 Kennedy would be informed of these these issues. To that end

I who was the chief research and engineering individual in the Defense Department Andrew Weena who had been assistant director for defense research and engineering for defensive systems but had since become director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency I went over and talked with Kennedy about this. I remember the occasion quite well because he was going off. I'm not sure whether to Hyannisport or Camp David it was summer after summer afternoon and Mrs. Kennedy kept coming into the Oval Office and urging him to join her on the helicopter and he was too interested to do so. And it lasted an extra half hour. So

at any rate at that time no decisions were made. But I think Kennedy began to understand some of the difficulties that accompany a an attempt to defend urban populations and industry from a ballistic missile attack. These are a natural consequence of the extreme destructiveness of nuclear weapons the extreme vulnerability of urban society and the ability of an attacker to concentrate his forces on a particular target to overwhelm or to use up exhaust the defense whereas the defense has to be able to defend everywhere the attacker only has to be able to attack one place at a time. I'm sure that stuck in his memory because there was a further exposition of this issue

in all around Thanksgiving of 1961 McNamara at that time instituted the practice of briefing the president on the budget issues before the budget decisions were made usually made during December and he would go and brief the president he did it first with Kennedy and I asked for it. And then later when Johnson became president he did it at the Johnson Ranch always at about Thanksgiving and he generally took people along with him on this occasion. The army was making a pitch for deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system. The. Secretary of Defense McNamara did not support that but he believed it useful and President Kennedy believed it useful to give the advocates their turn. This is particularly so because at that time General Teyla Max Taylor who had been chief of

staff of the army back in the Eisenhower days had left the service had retired had subsequently been called back by Kennedy to be his personal military adviser and Taylor's army connections were such that he was prevailed upon to urge that at least to Kennedy at least here the Army's presentation while they brought their presenter up to Hyannis. And McNamara said Well since the Army is making its technical presentation we'll have our people there too. And I recall sitting around the room you know I.A. the living room of the Kennedy house in the compound and going through these arguments. It was part of a much bigger budget presentation. I remember that presentation was made on the rest of the defense budget a presentation was made on civil defense and so forth to some extent this may have been just

pro-forma. I think Kennedy probably had already made up his mind but he was exposed to the arguments as to how anti ballistic missiles could save population in case of a war. And the counter arguments as to why it wouldn't. Providing that the other side took prudent measures to make sure that they could penetrate the defense and that that came out that he like all of his predecessors and all of his excesses until the present time up until the present president of the United States concluded that the anti-ballistic missile defense although. Was was itself was was not feasible. Like all the other presidents he continued research and development on the basis that some new developments might occur that it was important not to allow the Soviet Union to surprise us and

that working on ballistic missile defense would provide us with a way of being able to penetrate and thereby defeat any ballistic missile defense that the Soviet Union might mount and so preserve our deterrent capability. How did we just had a long talk with the general about the damage limitation study done. How did that get underway. Secretary McNamara during the first couple of years of his term as secretary of defense had gone through several stages in his views about nuclear strategy. He came in I think perhaps believing that. Deterrence was the most that could be done and that if a

nuclear war. That is that nuclear weapons could at best deter nuclear war and that if a nuclear war occurred civil populations would almost certainly be destroyed and the countries engaged in such a war destroyed with them. There were all sorts of estimates of casualties. But the one I remember best comes from early 1961 from a National Security Council meeting that said depending on the circumstances of a war the U.S. could at the very least suffer 10 or 20 million casualties although the U.S. could be pretty sure of inflicting a million deaths in the Soviet Union. And I remember that. President Kennedy did not find that very reassuring as evidence of a usable U.S. superiority although I think there's reason to believe that the Soviets at that time very much felt

themselves inferior facing the same figures. Subsequent to that McNamara influenced by some of the right systems analysts whom he had brought in people from the Rand Corporation in particular concluded that perhaps it would be possible to adopt a doctrine of military targets only U.S. nuclear strategy had always been directed primarily at nuclear targets although everyone knew that attacks on military targets particularly ones involving centers of military command and control would produce very large numbers of civilian casualties. But there were alternatives that would at least not target civil populations and might even withhold some military targets to

minimize civilian casualties. That would go with with attack on military targets. But McNamara went further and in a in one of his speeches said why don't we adopt a new a military strategy that says military targets only. Thus perhaps endowing nuclear weapons with some military meaning since if you could avoid a massive exchange on urban industrial targets that might make military make nuclear weapons usable as instruments of war aimed at other instruments of war. This approach lasted perhaps a year perhaps partly because it became clear that it would take two sides to ensure a military targets only strategy. And the losing side would have a strong

impulse to change the rules of the game so as to persuade the other side not to go ahead it and when the strategy was changed changed back to one of deterrence by the threat of retaliation. Another reason for this change could have been the recognition that the collateral civilian casualties would be great even if only military targets were targeted. And so we returned sometime in 1960 to do a strategy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation. In retrospect it seems to me that the strategy never did change that. That's understandable. And I think praiseworthy attempt by McNamara to make sense of nuclear weapons as a as as usable in a military sense in a series of counter military

exchanges was never more much more than a trial balloon. In any event we were back by the end of 16 two to deterrence by the threat of retaliation. And the question then came up as it comes up whenever one thinks of deterrence what happens if deterrence of nuclear war fails for whatever reason accident miscalculation political misjudgment for any reason. Well the the U.S. nuclear strategy has been ever since before the 60s to deter nuclear war and indeed try to deter all war. But in any event to deter a nuclear war by the threat of retaliation and if deterrence fails to limit damage to the maximum extent possible limit damage to the US to the maximum extent possible. And there are

various ways to do that. One is by trying to limit escalation and by saying by negotiating to come out in the best possible relative position for the U.S. but there are other ways to do it you can try to do it by destroying the others. The other side's attackers nuclear capabilities. In other words by counter military strikes. Another way to do it is by civil defense by sheltering population so that even though nuclear weapons are very destructive you try to put people into shelters. It's harder to shelter buildings and it's harder to shelter industry. But some people have suggested that you can perhaps even do that and then you can use active defense air defense of course was a traditional way of doing that during the bomber era and the U.S. had at one time very

extensive bomber defenses. But in the age of the ballistic missile and anti-ballistic missile system would also be needed to the extent that you wanted to pursue. And pursue defense against nuclear attack during 1963 and early 64. General can't Glenn can't an air force officer who was in my office was at a time when I was director defense research and engineering and is a very talented systems analyst himself worked on this question. And what he tried to do was to compare active defense that is anti ballistic missiles and air defense all the air defense question is more complicated analytical one and civil defense.

And to see how well they could do against various offensive forces in limiting damage to the U.S. if deterrence should fail and he did this is a two sided question. He looked at what damage the U.S. could inflict on the Soviet Union what Soviet defenses might be able to do to limit damage to themselves and what various changes in offensive forces on the two sides would do to the outcome on the basis that one must consider a reactive situation if one side puts in defenses and the other side obviously will try to counter them in various ways. And he looked at various mixes of forces he looked at submarine launched ballistic missiles he looked at intercontinental ballistic missiles. He looked at bombers and he looked at air defenses and ballistic missile defenses and civil defense that is passive defense. And he looked at various damage levels because

it is a lot harder to limit damage say to the deaths of one percent of the population than of 10 percent of the population and easier to limit damage to 10 percent to hold damage 10 percent than to keep it to 30 percent and so forth he developed a very elaborate set and a very skillfully analyzed set of results which showed that civil defense is more effective than active defense and it showed that at the state of development then even if you wanted to limit casualties to the deaths of 30 or 40 percent of the population it would still be three or four whatever number of times more expensive for the defense to be able to do that than it would be for the offense to

assure that it could destroy that fraction of the population. We thought in terms of I think one of his lines was 70 percent to 70 percent survival of the poppy that's right. Well let's before we get into the reaction assuming the Soviets do nothing. Did this study show any. So you give you a confidence that we could limit damage to the extent that 70 percent of the population was about well if the U.S. were prepared. Well the study showed that if the U.S. were prepared to invest enough money and the Soviets kept their forces what they then war and didn't do anything to try to restore the situation from their point of view the U.S. could limit damage so that 70 percent of the population survive. That however is not realistic. If the Soviets have as their

goal to destroy say 40 percent of the population and can do so by building their forces and spending only a third or fourth or a tenth as much money as the U.S. needs to spend. In other words there is there isn't. In other words a ratio of offense expenditure and defense expenditure that goes with any level of survival. You pick a level of survival and I'll tell you what the ratio of what the defense and offense have to spend to produce that. Percentage of survival and that ratio will depend upon how wise the choices are that the two sides make. And what the state of technology is. Seventy percent survive. Did this give you just assume that the Soviets did nothing. My distending is that's about

60 million dead. Was that a happy. That's the point. I think the point I think is that the U.S. could presumably by being willing to spend three times as much as the Soviets sure 70 percent survival no matter what the Soviets did. However looking at that in realistic political and strategic terms the question is is that a sensible arrangement from the U.S. point of view. And I believe that Secretary McNamara concluded that it was and remains my conclusion that under those circumstances the public is not going to be well served and the Congress will not support. And I think it's unlikely that any president will support the expenditure of. Well what more than billions and would now be

tens or maybe hundreds of billions of dollars simply to assure that 70 percent of the US population survived that only 60 million people were killed instead of 80 or 100 million people. What that has to be weighed against is the question of how much all of this affects the likelihood of nuclear war. And I again I can't speak for anyone else but I suspect that Secretary McNamara's conclusion was it's worth more. The money is better spent to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war than it is to spend to assure that only 60 million instead of 80 or 100 million Americans get killed if there is a nuclear war. Do you ever when General Kent first showed you his his studies what

what was your reaction to him. I want to get to me anecdotally said you know Brown said Come on then let's go up and see you know grab your carrots and goodness because he might come around. Well I went one Kant showed me his charts that you know this this always this sort of thing always happens over a period the sort of thing happen always happens over a period of hours or days it doesn't happen in five minutes. I'd been kept informed of what the study results were as they came in when he had them finished I said this is an extremely instructive set of results. It said it tells it says it confirms. Civil defense is more effect cost effective than active defense. It confirms that. The offense can penetrate the defense at a lower cost.

It says something about the tradeoff between bombers and missiles. Let's go show this to the secretary of defense so we did. I mean I called back up and we went down and saw him and he was very interested in the results. And I think as was characteristic of him and he drew some conclusions from those results and those conclusions stuck in his mind very hard. And I think persisted through the rest of his tenure as secretary of defense a strong conclusion that against a determined and technically comparable doesn't have to be equal but comparable adversary it is not feasible to defend populations against a massive nuclear attack delivered by ballistic missiles or bombers. In fact you remember what he said to you at the time.

After that briefing my recollection is that he concluded that what he said was a damage limitation strategy pursued by active defense. If these numbers are right it is going to be so expensive and so unrewarding in terms of still allowing many tens of millions of Americans to be killed that it is not going to be acceptable politically. Did he ever. I see. OK. Ken said he said I'm not prepared to believe the American people will support expenditures three times more for that. Well I don't remember I don't remember the exact words the tenor was what I suggested and I think it may well have been some more colorful version. Well now if you give up on expenditures for limiting damage

doesn't it then that leaves us pretty defenseless pretty helpless. It leaves us in a situation in which every American president beginning tonight. Keene 61 has found himself as he entered office a situation in which the United States can be destroyed by decisions taken elsewhere and in which a decision to destroy the United States is prevented by rational calculations. That such an action would result in the destruction of the Soviet state. That's what one means by mutual deterrence. And the Soviets have to make the same calculation about us which is what you mean by mutual deterrence. It is not as I said a satisfactory situation and every president has therefore tried to find a way out of it

by each one by his own combination of unilateral force deployment decisions arms control negotiations and an attempt to alter or ease or resolve the political differences fundamental political differences differences of system of ideology of goal between the United States and the Soviet Union. That makes the situation dangerous but make the situation dangerous. If but when you get it is when we got into the position where we are no longer talking about damage limitation and suppressing assured destruction. Was that a real change in strategy. What would we do the Assured Destruction mean a a procurement criterion because the Air Force was getting greedy for an hour more with the

missiles or was it a things that now assured destruction was a codification of what had always been the the strategy the strategy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation retaliation against military targets. But with the understanding that in the extreme and the ultimate You could actually also you would also be destroying or could destroy people and industry that has always been the strategy or main strategy assured destruction gave it a name and it was an attempt to quantify what could be counted on to deter a rational decision to attack the United States. And McNamara rather arbitrarily came up with these numbers. I mean that you could deter any rational decision to destroy the United States to attack the United States. If the Soviet leadership understood that no matter what the course

of a nuclear war the United States would be able to destroy 50 percent of the Soviet urban population and a comparable fraction or more actually of Soviet industry that size is a force not a going in force but a force that would survive almost no matter what the attack was could be made on it by a preemptive Soviet attack. And that was what McNamara occasionally called the worst case scenario in other words the U.S. would have enough forces surviving no matter how successful a Soviet attack could be expected to be no matter what the circumstances of the attack and allowing for all sorts of reliability errors on the U.S. side and accuracy errors and attrition of the forces by Soviet air defenses in the case of bombers for example if the Soviets knew that no matter what happened

the forces that could hit them after the worst they could do to U.S. forces would wreak destruction of that size. You know and again it's the order of 50 million deaths and most of industry gone. There could be no rational decision to attack the United States. That however did it's only when you put in the attrition factors and the uncertainties that you could derive the appropriate size of the peacetime U.S. force bombers cruise missile I mean bombers ballistic missiles launched from submarines ballistic missiles ICBMs. The corollary of that was that in anything less than a worst case situation and of course when you're dealing with you're procuring forces you're talking about what you'll have five years from now when the Soviet forces will be different and presumably less than you project in your worst case projections. That meant that the U.S.

would have much extra capability beyond what it needed and therefore that was what would be applied to the military targets. In other words you size the force so as in the worst case worst case of Soviet force procurements that is most unfavorable for the US most unfavorable case for attrition for accuracy and so forth. You have enough left after a Soviet surprise attack to do unacceptable damage to the Soviet industrial and urban structure. But since you don't have the worst case the U.S. can stand in this approach. Target military targets and use that to reduce damage to the United States. So you procure the forces to assure to have

assured destruction capability but you target so as to minimize damage to the United States after a Secretary McNamara declared the misspoke of a city avoidance of counter-force policy in Ann Arbor 1962. What was the Air Force's reaction to this did this just trigger a second reaction to this trigger a demand for more and more hardware. Well the the. Counter-force approach city avoidance approach military targets only approach certainly open the door to unlimited requests for force because although what it takes in a way of surviving and penetrating forces to do the Assured Destruction job is really

not small but certainly limited. If 400 one megaton bombs can do the job then even after attrition through destruction by the other side and attrition through defense some thousands of warheads should be enough. But if you're going to target lots of military targets then you need as many warheads as our military targets at least even if there's no destruction before launch and even if there's no attrition by defense as a consequence a military targets approach tends to open the door to unlimited force size. And this indeed may also have played some role in a shift from military targets only strategy to an Assured Destruction strategy because with an assured destruction strategy you say we will procure a force sufficient to do

the Assured Destruction job under the most unfavorable assumptions. That will leave us under any real situations with many more warheads than we need for the Assured Destruction function. And what we will do then is do our targeting by targeting the bulk of the warheads on military targets. Reserving enough survivable and penetrable warheads to the Assured Destruction task which can also then operate to assure deterrence so that if there is a nuclear war and by some evolution of events the two sides do attack military targets principally on the other side. We can reserve enough warheads and have them survive so as to deter a deliberate attack on our urban complexes and on our industry it say you know it

is a plausible theory but I think no one can be certain that it would have very much chance of working in the fog of war after many nuclear weapons had been launched so it cannot be and I don't think that Secretary McNamara ever put it forward as a a way of preventing nuclear war from causing catastrophic and terminal destruction on the two sides. It is at best a way of saying if a nuclear war happens perhaps it can be kept from inevitably destroying both sides. But the one where Plan never changed. It wasn't really more of a rhetorical shift from counterforce to a sort of disruption than it was a change in strategy. I mean the war plan was always to have the options in Omaha to to to destroy or to separate cities from military.

The war plan remained directed at military targets with the ability to withhold if it were so decided at the time by the president attacks on cities. But you did need a a doctrine that would be understandable to the public that it would be effective internationally and that would provide a basis for force procurement and. The assured destruction approach did that. But it didn't mean that we were going to if deterrence fail we would enter into. We would take such action as to our own destruction the Assured Destruction approach was a criterion. It was not a targeting doctrine. It remained important to reserve enough forces so that the threat for Assured Destruction in

retaliation for the destruction of the United States's society would be a credible one. But it never became. And of course it's been misused by critics both of the right end of the left to suggest that it was but it never in fact was the approach for the U.S. targeting themes I mean the targeting schemes did not say if a nuclear war starts or by whatever route the U.S. action will be to assure destruction of the Soviet Union. The doctrine was in fact to assure retaliation and reserve enough forces so that the threat of a destruction of industry and of cities remain good. Well are you familiar with a sigh up during the 60s. I'd been brief. I had been briefed on this type in the 60s. McNamara wanted options.

Did he ever get them and McNamara came in and was appalled by the relative lack of options and he insisted on options. Gradually they evolve but very gradually to sign off changing the Psyop is a lengthy and elaborate process and although options were produced they were never as elaborate or as detailed as McNamara or his civilian successors and the secretary of defense's job including myself or as presidents might have wash but that is a reason for this. Military people understandably don't like to be asked to produce a very large number of different plans. Because the more plans you produce with a given amount of

effort the less certain you can be of each plan. Moreover they always suspect and not with that reason that their civilian superiors will say I'll take this much of this plan and this much of this plan and this much of an other plan without recognizing that it doesn't work that way that you need a single integrated operational plan which is what psyop means and that multiplication of options. Introduces more and more chance that things won't work. Well is it bureaucratic in transit. Is it is it is it is not a technical problem collocation said you can change the site and then in a matter of hours you can make choices in a matter of hours. But you cannot improvise strategic plans. I think that the that sure you can do the computer

calculations quickly but. You do need considerable care in assuring that things happen in the right sequence that you don't get your own way and that you've considered all the implications of a change that cannot be done quickly. And I think also military senior military people have a concern that in a time of crisis a civilian decision maker can't keep in his head only a certain number of options and understand them. And again you have to consider that in time of what may be seen as imminent nuclear war people may not be at their best in careful calculations and rational decisions.

There's another side to this. Of course the military people often. Want to have just a single. Approach or a small number of approaches as possible because they don't want to be governed in detail. They want to send it. They say all right if we're going to go tell us to go. And don't get in our way. Did McNamara give up on us options under the kinds of refinements that you might need to make deterrence credible and to answer the question what do you do if deterrence fails. I don't think I. Well I think that while he was secretary of defense I don't think he did give up. He may have given up subsequently but I believe that during his tenure as secretary of defense he continued to try to get more

options and that approach actually continued after he left and certainly continued to my knowledge through the end of the 1970s. People love harry Rowe on Wall Street or criticize him for not moving more in that direction. And he got so discouraged bad after the Cuban missile crisis that he had you know he really presided over ushered in a decade of neglect that put us behind. Robert Richardson we talked to yesterday said that he was good on product improvement but not on you know R&D for the cutting edge of new technologies that we could be in our fourth generation of an ABM system by now. Is that do any of these criticisms ring a bell and they strike you as being valid. I think this is I think that.

Complaints that development proceeded too slowly in the 60s are the result of falsie faulty hindsight. In fact the US then and subsequently made qualitative improvements first on quantity. The US tended to lag behind in numbers of missiles for example. But given the choice between important new qualitative changes and grinding out systems like sausages I think probably the U.S. made the right decisions. If we it is true I think that we could have had several additional generations of land based intercontinental ballistic missiles then we did have however given the

U.S. tendency to to be sloppy on some of these things is probably just as well if the US kept some of its systems for a long time. It allowed their reliability to improve and it meant that when we did make changes they were not small changes. They were enormous changes. As for example going to multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles which was a foff which multiplied the number of targets that could be hit we made changes in accuracy that were very very substantial as between Minuteman 1 say Minuteman 3 and AirMax. I think that probably made more sense but I understand that there could be other judgments in the case of anti-ballistic missile systems if the advocates of deployment had had their way we

probably would have had a completely useless and very expensive and ballistic missile system deployed not on one occasion but on two or three that could still happen. What was the rationale for for the moving decision was it to revive the counter-force option as we foresaw that the Soviets were building more of the Merve decision really was a way of covering a target list. The the. Desire to be able to hit Soviet targets Soviet missiles for example which at that time were sufficiently soft so that simply adding re-entry vehicles on the same missile would allow us to cover many. Many more Soviet missile launch sites made a considerable amount of sense at that time. I think we were very largely concerned with the Soviet threat to Europe Soviet medium range ballistic missiles

and the Merve was the the Merve merging of ICBMs was designed to be able to say to the Europeans we are covering the target that threatens you without our having to build a lot of great many additional missiles. It also served to. Improve the U.S. capability to penetrate what were then seen as a possible Soviet anti-ballistic missile systems. In 1964 and five the Soviets were deploying what proved to be an air defense system but which was seen by many analysts and the more alarmed intelligence analysts and the more alarmed strategists as a Soviet ballistic missile defense. One way to penetrate a ballistic missile defense is to increase the number of warheads that you fire at it. And to be able to put those warheads in precisely

the right place serving a system does that. Both of these reasons for multiplying warheads on the Minuteman and subsequently on the submarine launch ballistic missiles were therefore responses to perceived Soviet threats. One Soviet threat of medium range missiles against Europe another Soviet threat their anti-ballistic missile system. One last question that people get mad over the term mad. What what's what are some of the myths that that mad suggest to you and what one of the realities said when people use the acronym mad to denigrate mutual deterrence by saying that it stands for mutual assured destruction.

They are in effect railing at the way the world is rather than trying to improve it. Indeed it's the case very probably that if a nuclear war starts the U.S. and the Soviet Union will be destroyed it's not certain but it's very very probable very likely. That is what mutual deterrence means. And many believe I tend to believe it myself. It's it's an unprovable matter that had it not been for deterrence by the threat of retaliation there would very likely have been a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. There hasn't been one for 40 years. It would be a mistake to throw that away. That deterrence it way

before we have something better. And what that something better is. No one has been able to say they've been various claims something unilateral disarmament is better. Some think that a perfect defense is better and achievable but no one's been able to show that anything better is achievable. We therefore ought not to discard it lightly. But that does not mean that the situation is a comfortable one. Because deterrence may fail. And as I. Have indicated. Before. Every president comes to office. Asking whether there isn't some better solution. Up until now they've all decided that it hasn't. There is no better solution that deterrents by the threat of retaliation is the way to prevent nuclear war.

While we try to manage the adversarial relation with the Soviet Union which is bound to extend as far as we can see it doesn't mean it will last forever but no one can say when it might end. But the only escape from that is through is through defense I mean that theoretically isn't the use options are an escape from that from the assured destruction capability I think that side from the active defense and effective active defense and it invulnerable active defense and a cost effective active defense use Option options don't solve the problem because even if they are confined to military targets the threat of an escalation to. Cities and industry and people will always remain. So you would have what's called intra War deterrence by the threat of of attack of

cities. So there doesn't seem to be any military solution. People have claimed various political solutions as I say arms disarm you know unilateral disarmament arms control political negotiation. And I myself believe that deterrence of nuclear war is not solely a military matters it's not solely a matter of deterring by the threat of nuclear retaliation. It also is a matter of political negotiation of the political situation of the way each side feels whether it feels so threatened that it's sure that a nuclear war is coming because it seems to me that the most likely failure of deterrence will come if one side or the other feels so sure that nuclear war will happen that it determines to strike first.