War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986

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Transcript

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES C03029-C03031 GERRY MILLER

Rivalry Between Military Branches over Nuclear Targeting

Interviewer:

ADMIRAL, CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT THE CLIMATE WAS LIKE WHEN YOU GOT INTO

THE NAVY STRATEGIC PLANNING AREA IN THE LATE '50S. WHAT DID THE NAVY

FEEL ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT THAT POINT?

Miller:

Well in the late, in the late '50s, by that stage I had, I had been

working as a delivery pilot. I'd been flying airplanes, learning the

structure of the weapons. I had been to weapons effect school, to learn

how you computed what a weapons, nuclear weapon could do in the way of

damaging its various kinds of targets. And it was my impression,

particularly by the late '50s, when I started to really get into the

policy side and the targeting side, OK. OK. Well it was really my

impression, the impression I got at that time that the Navy had been

scrambling pretty hard to get a capability. The money in the defense

budget was in nuclear warfare. That's where all the dollars were going.

If you didn't have a role in that, you weren't going to be in the

budget. And we scrambled pretty hard, I know in the Navy, to get that

capability. I think we got a realistic capability in aircraft carriers

and with the airplanes in the late '50s, like '59, '60, we really

deployed a realistic capability. But a lot of it up to that time was, I

think marginal. But it was, we could have delivered the weapon. It

would have gone off, but as far as being a real viable capability, I

think that was highly questionable. So we worked hard at it. But

starting in the late '50s, we started to get it with aircraft, and

aircraft carriers, and then of course, Polaris came along, and that

really gave the Navy a great capability, which has, of course,

magnified since and gotten much better.

Interviewer:

BECAUSE THERE HAD BEEN AN AGREEMENT WAY BACK IN THE LATE '40S THAT THE

NAVY WAS NOT GOING TO GET INTO STRATEGIC BOMBING, THAT WAS GOING TO BE

THE AIR FORCE'S BABY. WHEN POLARIS CAME ALONG, DO YOU REMEMBER ADMIRAL

BURKE OR OTHER PEOPLE DECIDING THAT WE WERE GOING TO GET INTO STRATEGIC

BOMBING ANYWAY?

Miller:

Well, I don't know so much about the strategic bombing. The A-3

aircraft that we had, which is a twin engine Douglas aircraft, the Air

Force had it and they called it a B-66. The Navy had it and put a

different engine in it. And the Navy bird worked out well. In fact

there are still some of them flying today as electronic aircraft in

1986. There are still some of them around. It was a good aircraft. And

that gave us bombing capability. Gave us the ability to tote a

good-sized weapon with a good yield to it, or more than one if we

wanted, a goodly distance, and deliver it with considerable accuracy.

So we really got into a realistic aircraft capability. But the Polaris

capability, the idea of that taking, merging the nuclear submarine with

a weapon that came out of, out of the subsurface, and with a solid fuel

propellant in it, rather than liquid which was in the ICBMs and others,

that was a tremendous concept. And of course, all of us who were around

at that time, we give Admiral Burke just about 99 percent of the credit

for going ahead with that. He had to have the wisdom to say, that's the

right way to go. He was in that office of the chief naval operations

for about six years. So he was there long enough to see it and he

picked the right people and he gave them the right kind of guidance.

And that gave the Navy a real, honest capability. And...it was that

capability that others in the system, particularly in the Strategic Air

Command, they could see the value in that. They could see what was

going to happen. And that's when they decided, at least in my

impression, and by that time I'm really starting to get involved in the

Strategic Air Command business a lot, it was my impression that they

said, that's something that's going to be a winner. We'd better get

control of it. We better have a lot to do with it. And then the action

was taken to create a strategic command. A single command under which

all of these strategic nuclear forces would function. One commander.

And Thomas Power at that time was the head of the Strategic Air Command

and I have heard him say many times on the podium, I've sat in the

audience and listened to him on the podium argue this point, and say

that he really didn't care who commanded this strategic command. This

single command that would combine all these forces, which would have

included Polaris, but it seemed logical to him that since the strategic

air command was going to deliver about 90 percent of the mega-tonnage,

then it was just logical that an Air Force officer be the head of the

strategic command. And we all sat and listened and put our tongues in

our cheek just as you might expect. But that was a serious contest at

that stage basically between the Strategic Air Command and the US Navy

as to who was going to control Polaris. And that, there were big

arguments that came up at that stage.

Interviewer:

WE'VE TALKED TO GENERAL KENT WHO WAS AN AIR FORCE COLONEL WORKING WITH

THE AIR FORCE GENERALS WHO WERE TRYING TO GET THE JSTPS THROUGH.

GENERAL POWER, OF COURSE, AND GENERAL TWINING. NOW HE SAID THAT AT NO

STAGE DID HE EVER HEAR ANYONE SAYING THAT THEY WANTED A STRATEGIC

COMMAND OR THAT THEY WANTED TO COMMAND POLARIS. ALL THEY WANTED WAS

COORDINATION OF THE TARGETING. AND HE'S ABSOLUTELY ADAMANT ABOUT THAT.

Miller:

OK. It's quite possible that he never heard that. I can believe that.

That he never heard anybody say that they wanted a strategic command.

That they wanted coordination of the targeting. And I applaud the

objective of coordination of the targeting. There is no question that

the targeting process before the creation of JSTPS was highly

questionable particularly on the part of the Navy and the Army. And

maybe the rest of the Air Force, I'm not that familiar with all of

theirs. The strategic air command did a good job in the targeting

process. They had a mathematical process. They computed probabilities.

They went about it in a very professional manner. Far better than the

other services. And I can understand, knowing Glenn Kent and his

analytic mind and his desire to do things in a mathematical and precise

fashion, I would not be a bit surprised if that was the understanding

he had. I come from maybe the political side a little bit more and I

heard other arguments and sought other ways. But the objective of

coordinating the plan,the targeting process was certainly one thing

that had to be done. And I think the creation of JSTPS was a step in

that direction. No question about it. That it brought about the

coordination I don't know whether your records show, whether you've

come across the point, how we did this coordination before JSTPS was

established. But we had what we called world wide coordination

conferences. People would meet from all of the various commands that

had nuclear weapons and delivery forces and they would go over their

targeting processes and theoretically coordinate so that we didn't end

up in the wrong, in the same place at the same time with a weapon, and

then they'd go back and check that off. Nothing was really done about

it. It was, and that would bother Glenn Kent. It bothered me to some

degree, except I wasn't as much in the detail of it as he was at that

stage. So I can understand that comment.

Interviewer:

YOU, AND CERTAINLY MORE TO THE POINT ADMIRAL BURKE, WERE CONVINCED THAT

WHAT THE AIR FORCE WAS REALLY AFTER, ALL THAT SAC WAS REALLY AFTER WAS

CONTROL OF HIS SUBMARINE.

Miller:

That certainly was the impression that existed in the Navy and that's

one that was firmly engrained in my mind. Yeah, well I really believed

that Admiral Burke and those of us in the Navy thought that the

objective certainly of the Strategic Air Command was to get control of

Polaris.

Interviewer:

I THINK WHEN ADMIRAL BURKE LOST ON THAT ONE AND THE JSTPS WAS FORMED,

NOW YOU GOT TO HEAR ABOUT THAT FAIRLY SUDDENLY, CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT

THAT?

Miller:

Well, the argument was made and Admiral Burke lost, as you indicated.

Went to the President Eisenhower a couple of times, as I recall, and

was rejected both times. And the next thing, you know, those of us who

were working in this process and there were several of us in the Joint

Staff at that time working for the Joint Chiefs. We were in what we

call the atomic ops division, operations division. We got calls. I got

a call on a Thursday morning about 11 o'clock, said I would be in

Omaha, Nebraska on a permanent change of station by Sunday afternoon at

five. And I was there. I was in the first plane load. And my Air Force

contemporary, a wonderful guy named Bill Krum he kind of chuckled about

it because he'd had a tour in Omaha, and we used to talk about the

stockyards and all the great people in Omaha, which they are, it was a

wonderful place to go. But he kind of chuckled at me. He got his call

on Saturday morning to be there on Sunday afternoon at 5 o'clock. So we

went out there together and worked very closely together during the

time that we were out there. He was basically called the Air Force

representative. He represented the Air Force Headquarters. I

represented the Navy Headquarters. And we had an Army representative

and a Marine Corps representative, four of us.

Interviewer:

IF YOU COULD JUST TELL THAT STORY ONCE MORE FOR ME, WHAT ARE, THE OTHER

THING YOU COULD JUST THROW IN AND MAYBE LEAVE OUT THE AIR FORCE

FRIEND... IS THAT SAC HAD BEEN EXPECTING TEN NAVY GUARDS...

Miller:

Well, I got this call about 11 o'clock on Thursday, and telling me that

I was to be in Omaha on a permanent change of station by 5 o'clock on

Sunday afternoon and an airplane would go on out that day. And this was

Admiral Burke in operation. He had the detailer call me, the people

were picked to go and it was obvious that General Power and the

Strategic Air Command were expecting a small contingent, maybe five or

six naval officers to show up. But that was not Admiral Burke's

approach to it. I think the first airplane had about twenty five people

in it, and we kept building it up till we had about forty officers out

there before it was all over. But he was not about to be represented

out there by a little token force. He was going to have people detailed

into the planning business, into the intelligence part of it, selection

of targets, the whole business. He was going to have Navy

representation in there. Furthermore, I ended up being, as a Navy

representative, I was kind of the personnel officer. I was given

authority to pick anybody in the United States Navy that I wanted to

come out there as part of that team. And that was, I picked a couple of

officers out of war college. They just checked into Newport War College

two weeks and they left. And they came to Omaha, Nebraska. And it was a

good team. Many of them got promoted early and became admirals later

on. But it was a good team. But that's the kind of approach that

Admiral Burke took to that. He thought it was terribly important that

we be adequately represented in this important new process of

targeting, particularly he wanted to make sure that Polaris stayed

under Navy control. That we knew what was going to happen to Polaris.

Interviewer:

YOU MUST HAVE BEEN IN A FAIRLY AWKWARD POSITION THOUGH BEING SENT THERE

BY THE ADMIRAL TO REPRESENT HIM AND FINDING YOURSELF UNDER THE COMMAND

OF THE AIR FORCE COMMANDER OF STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND...

Miller:

That's what. I won't tell you I have scars in my back from that, but I

certainly have some very vivid memories of it. Admiral Burke is a, you

know, a wonderful human being. He's just one of the great Naval

officers of all time. Hates to lose. And he had lost a battle And as

frequently people who hate to lose do, they whip. They take it out on

whoever happens to be around. And I was ostensibly his representative.

But he did not really believe that I was keeping him posted on what was

going on. He, you could tell his frustration. I could feel it in Omaha

all the time. I could feel the frustration and he had a couple of

people there that were watching what was going on and reporting back to

him. And I was busily involved with my Air Force contemporaries and

others trying to figure out how we were going to get into this process.

We worked for a three-star admiral, a wonderful man named Ace Parker,

Butch Parker rather, who was the deputy, but he was the Joint man and

he couldn't get involved in some of the parochial details. So, we

worked at this very hard. Admiral Burke had me back two different times

to Washington to really pound on me tell me that I wasn't doing my job

properly. You could feel the frustrations, but I explained to him that

my orders read to report to the director of the Strategic Target

Planning Staff, who was CINCSAC, who was General Power. That's what my

orders read. And that's what I was carrying out. Now, how I, how I took

care of the Navy role and Admiral Burke's part was kind of up to me,

but it was, it was a difficult period. And, but again, he shouted at me

and I shouted back. And we got along fine. It turned out, it worked out

very well. But the initial days were hard on him. They really were

because he'd lost. My approach was, OK, we've lost that, now let's get

on and let's move on. And I also was motivated by the fact I know that

I'd really not been very happy with the planning process that had gone

on before, and I could see that the creation of JSTPS could do a lot to

straighten out our whole national program of how we applied the nuclear

weapons. So it made some sense.

SAC Estimates and the Missile Gap

Interviewer:

...WHAT WAS YOUR IMPRESSION ONCE YOU GOT THERE AND YOU GOT A LOOK AT

THE RAW INTELLIGENCE, WHAT WAS YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE ESTIMATES OF

SOVIET CAPABILITY THAT WERE COMING OUT OF SAC INTELLIGENCE AT THAT TIME

IN 1960, 1961?

Miller:

Well, even before that if you sat around the Navy Headquarters at all,

you worked in this area, it was a pretty common complaint that the

threat that was being generated was extreme. And it was being generated

by the Strategic Air Command. Not necessarily by the Air Force or by

any of the other intelligence agencies, but basically realized, by the

Strategic Air Command. And I have to compliment SAC, that command on

their ability to get into the intelligence process. They did a superb

job. They had a lot of people. They put a lot of money in it. Of

course, they had a lot of money to put into it. They put good people in

it. They had the right equipment. They got the satellite photography

when it existed. They had the U-2 stuff. They were the first to process

it. They generated their estimates and they got them out on the street

in a hurry Now, the fact that many of us thought that they were a

little over stressed, that they made the threat a little bigger than it

really should have been, was a frustrating aspect. And we...

Interviewer:

THEY GOT IT WRONG BY ABOUT AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE, TO SAY THE LEAST, IT

WASN'T JUST A LITTLE WRONG...

Miller:

Well... that's correct. In some instances, they SAC created the

so-called bomber threat that we had which never materialized. They

created the missile threat that was such an issue in the Presidential

campaign when Kennedy was running against Eisenhower and then when, I

remember when McNamara came to Omaha to JSTPS Headquarters, very early

in the new administration. He asked to see the intelligence material.

That material that the lot of the rest of us had been seeing. And he

was very concerned about the threat and that's when he came back and

said there is no missile gap. He was, he reacted the way we had all

been reacting. But that was a great creation within the Strategic Air

Command, but it was a tendency they had. The kept building up the

threat and building up the threat and there was a war game that we ran

along in the Spring of, I guess that was 1961, which pitted three

Polaris submarines against the threat that was generated by the

Strategic Air Command intelligence organization. There's an article

coming out very soon on that particular war game. But it was an

astronomical threat. It was nine surface action groups. It was about

1,000 fishing trawlers, many of which had an anti-submarine warfare

capability. It was attack submarines. Soviet attack submarines that had

a better speed capability and an equal anti-submarine warfare

capability to ours. All of this. It had Badger aircraft, it had ten

kiloton depth charges. It was unbelievable what we allowed them to put

into this war game, and to go against three Polaris submarines. But it

continued this constant build up of threat. And it's been tempered a

great deal since, I think much more realistically now than it was then.

It's much more realistic now.

[END OF TAPE C03029]

Interviewer:

...POSSIBLE TO COME TO SUCH RADICALLY DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS. HOW DID

SAC CREATE THIS THREAT, AS YOU PUT IT?

Miller:

Well, how an intelligence officer creates a threat, I suppose is one of

the great mysteries of all time. But you start with, in this instance,

it was raw material that was either satellite photography or initially

it was U-2 photography. And then when the U-2 was shot down, why, we

lost that. But you put professional and photo interpreters on people

with the right kind of equipment to generate it. They see various

things and then from that comes your threat. You'll always get

different interpretation from a photo interpreter. And if somebody

really wants to make something serious out of it, they can do that. If

you want to play it down, you can do that too. It depends a lot on how

you want to play the game. And it is a game to some degree. A good

intelligence officer is invaluable when you're in combat. But if you're

playing a political game, he can maybe be even more valuable. And I

think we were playing more politics than we were really preparing for a

combat situation in this. It was not, it was not a happy subject.

SIOP Guidance

Interviewer:

SO ANYWAY, YOU FOUND YOURSELF INVOLVED IN THIS ARCANE SUBJECT OF

NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANNING. WHAT WAS THE JOB AS YOU SAW IT? WHAT ACTUALLY

WERE YOU THERE TO DO?

Miller:

Well, the job of JSTPS was quite well laid out. The task, the objective

was quite well laid out in specific guidance that we were given. And I

remember that was one of the few pieces of paper that I took with me

and some of the others took from the Joint Staff when we left

Washington, D.C., was the guidance that was to be used in the

preparation of this single integrated operation plan, the SIOP. Exactly

how we were to do it, was not defined. And that was one of the first

things that this group of people had to decide to do. How are we going

to go about interpreting the guidance? And then moving into the

process. Each unified, specified commander had a representative there,

in addition to the four service reps that I've discussed, the Army,

Navy, Air Force and Marines. The Alaskan command had a representative.

The Pacific command. The Atlantic command. All had representatives. In

addition, the NATO organization, because they had weapons, the US

weapons that were committed to them, they targeted and we had to have

them involved in the process as well. And this was an interesting

conflict of ideas about authority between General Norstad, who was the

NATO Commander at the time and General Power, who was CINCSAC. General

Power felt he was to be the, as the director of this staff, he was to

be the overall authority for all of the weapons that were going to be

in the strategic planning process. General Norstad said no, no US

Commander has authority over the NATO weapons. I am the NATO target

here. And so we got around and we would coordinate, we would really

integrate the US commands, but we would coordinate with NATO. And we

made a big issue out of that. I mean, there were lots of hours of

debate went on on just that one point alone. Coordination of all of the

planning for the US commands and the US weapons integrated with those

weapons that were US weapons that were in the hands of NATO. And that's

a relationship that is, as I understand it, still exists. But it became

no problem after we got over the initial question of who was in charge.

So that became the one of the things that we had to do. And then we set

up a policy committee, which was composed of the representatives of all

of these various unified and specified commands, and the four service

representatives, chaired by the deputy director, the three-star Navy

admiral, and that policy committee then got into the business of

interpreting the guidance, passing on the reliability factors for each

individual weapon and kind of laying out the guidance, interpretation

of the guidance that would be used.

Interviewer:

CAN YOU GIVE ME AN IDEA OF WHAT THE GUIDANCE SAID?

Miller:

The guidance, the guidance we received. OK. The guidance we received

was kind of, was very interesting. Of course, a very highly classified

document. But has been discussed in unclassified terms a great deal for

at least the last twelve, fifteen years, depends on who you talk to. It

was one of the best pieces of guidance I'd ever seen, from the civil

authority to the military command. It identified the enemy. Sometimes

you don't get that. But it identified in specific terms. It told what

the countries were. A lot of people say, well, it's the Soviet Union.

But, you had to think in terms of other nations as well. It might have

been China. It might be North Korea. It might be other nations. So it

identified the enemy quite well. It specified the objective, which was

to defeat the enemy. We haven't gotten that kind of military guidance

that often either. It said defeat the enemy, and it says you'll do it

with the use of nuclear weapons. Then it laid out priorities. And this

is one of the things that I think is most important, and misunderstood

a great deal by the students of the subject. But, it was very specific

about what came first in the priority. It, and this is where the word

assured destruction came from. The guidance says, you will assure

destruction of the urban industrial base, a certain portion of the

urban industrial base, and that will be the first priority. And you

will do that before you intend to take any other task. You will assure

a certain probability of destruction of a certain amount of the urban

industrial floor space base of the opposition, before you attack or try

anything else. And that was the way it laid it out. Then it says after

you do that, you can go onto other types of targets. Well the guidance,

this was a 1960 guidance that we took with us. We sat down and

discussed it with this policy committee and it was very explicit as to

what the objective would be to defeat the enemy using nuclear weapons

and then it laid out the priorities. The first priority being an urban

industrial base. It said 'thou shalt,' and this is where the words

assured destruction came about. This was 1960 time frame again, before

anything else, before it was really discussed a lot. Assured

destruction of the urban industrial base. A certain percentage of it

with a certain degree of probability. And then it said after you do

that, then you can work on counterforce targets, other military

targets, so forth and so on. Nuclear targets. But first, you will

design a plan that assures destruction of a certain part of the urban

industrial base. And it said, you shall do this regardless of the

amount of warning that you have before the attack is launched. In other

words, if you design this plan, take the weapons that you have, pick

some targets and design a plan that will assure destruction of the

urban industrial base, even if we have to absorb everything they throw

at us first. No warning. You didn't anticipate the warning. You

absorbed the whole attack. Now, come up with a plan that will assure

the destruction. And it was that specific.

Interviewer:

IT WAS ALSO VERY SPECIFIC ABOUT THE AMOUNT OR THE DEGREE OF

DESTRUCTION.

Miller:

It got into the percentages, the probabilities, that were desired. It

was a very high level of damage that was specified. In the nuclear

effects business, we, I guess they still do it, we had percentage

figures, but we also had agitative ratings. Moderate damage is, to be a

little facetious, is gravel. Severe damage is dust. They didn't want it

reduced to gravel, they wanted it reduced to dust. I mean this was

severe guidance. And what happens when you have guidance of that nature

calling for high probabilities of reducing targets to kind of

obliterating, what you've generated is a requirement for a lot of

weapons of a very special capability. And so this is how it got

started.

Interviewer:

THERE WERE CRITICISMS. AND I'M GOING TO ASK YOU ABOUT THAT IN A MINUTE.

BUT THERE WERE CRITICISMS ALL ALONG ABOUT THE SAC PLAN, FROM THE ARMY

AND THE NAVY IN THE '50S, AND VERY SPECIFICALLY FROM DR. KISTIAKOWSKY

AND HIS ASSISTANTS WHO CAME DOWN IN THE FALL OF 1960 TO LOOK AT THE

DEVELOPING SIOP AT THAT POINT. WHO WENT BACK TO PRESIDENT EISENHOWER

AND WROTE A REPORT WHICH SAID IT WAS DRASTIC OVERKILL, THAT FAR TOO

MUCH MEGA-TONNAGE WAS BEING EXPENDED, FAR TOO MANY WEAPONS. AND

ORDINARY PEOPLE NOW CANNOT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU COULD POSSIBLY USE THE

THOUSANDS OF WEAPONS. WHY DO YOU NEED SO MANY? EVEN TO DO THAT JOB?

Miller:

Well, this question of why you needed so many weapons is a good one.

And I certainly think that the Navy people, and a lot of people were

concerned about it. It wasn't just the Navy alone. The Army tactical

air command people, a lot of people within the Strategic Air Command

itself were always somewhat concerned about the numbers of weapons. The

first SIOP had about 3,500 weapons in it, which we thought was a lot of

weapons. But if you use the process that was developed, and it was a

SAC process and I think it was a good process. It was a mathematical

process. If you used that process in computing the probability of doing

the damage, you could arrive at the number of weapons that were

required and you could build it up. The, as I indicated earlier, the

thing that determines really the numbers of weapons to do the job, is

the guidance, what kind of targets do you want to attack. And what

level of damage do you want done. Then comes into play, the factors of

capabilities of the weapons and the delivery systems. Now, maybe I can

lay it out for you here, simply on a piece of paper. See if I can

describe this. And this was a SAC process, which was a good one. They

came up with a simple mathematic term called "damage expectancy", the

damage that we expected to do. The damage that we expected to do with a

particular weapon. D.E. We always used to talk about the D.E. What is

the D.E. of this particular weapon? Alright, to compute, the damage

expectancy is a function of two things. First, it would be the

probability of the weapon arriving at the target, the probability of it

arriving at the target. And the second would be the probability of the

weapon doing damage after it got to the target. Now the probability of

arrival is a function way back. Let's say, the target is over here. The

probability of arrival starts way back here at the launch platform.

What is the probability of the launch platform surviving if it's under

attack? If there's, you've got a lot of strategic warning. If you

preempt, for example, the survivability is very good. It can be 1.0.

But if you had to sustain this under, had to sustain a bit attack, it

probability might be much lower. Now this where we started to get

different factors. For example, if you were an open target like SNARC,

or something like that. A cruise missile in Presque Isle in Maine, and

you had to undergo an attack on that, or it was an Atlas missile out in

Vandenberg Air Force Base sitting out in the sunshine of southern

California, the probability under an attack of it's surviving would be

pretty low, so it's probability of arrival would be rather low and

therefore, it's damage expectancy would be very low. If it was a

weapons in a submarine, submerged below the ocean, it's probability of

survival was pretty high, because anti-submarine warfare capability at

that stage was pretty low and it still is to this day. The

survivability factor for that submarine that's carrying those weapons

is still 1.0. It's 100 percent. So, you start off with a pretty high

factor right there. Now then, the next factor that's involved is the

probability of the weapon leaving the launcher when you push the

button. They don't always work. And this was one of the great things

that McNamara did when he became Secretary of Defense. Statistically

oriented. He had Alain Enthoven as OK. Had one of his guys. And so he

went for more testing to get us better reliability factors. But the

probability of the thing leaving the launch pad could be 95 percent or

something less. Some of them it was down as low as 30 percent. And so

you have that in there. Then there's the probability of it as it goes

to the target of it malfunctioning. Whether it was a bomber aircraft or

anything else. A certain number, every so many miles, a certain

percentage of them are going to fail. They're not going to go. And then

there is, when you got near the target area, where there was the

penetration capability. If you got to go by a big bomber base here, a

big fighter base rather, and this is a bomber, the fighters are going

to come up, the probability of knocking it down might be pretty high.

So, the first thing you've got to do is take out this base. You take

out a military target in order to get through to your urban industrial

target. Then finally, you arrive at the target itself, you've gotten it

there, you're probability of arrival now say is 75 percent or something

of that nature, cleared out all the way. Now, the weapon goes off and

it's probability of doing the damage is a function of how close does it

land to the target point, the aim point. And will it go off. About five

percent of them probably wouldn't go off. So right away you've lost

that. And then if the weapon was not very accurate, its probability of

doing the damage would be degraded by its lack of accuracy. Now then,

if you're given a high, a high, the guidance says you'll get a 90

percent confidence level that you're going to do 95 percent damage to

this target. And you start off over here, with a weapon that's only got

a 50 percent probability of surviving under attack, and by the time it

gets over here it's going to be less than that, you're a long way from

meeting this factor. And so you start adding weapons. And you keep

adding weapons and adding weapons to get to this damage level that's

set up here, and you keep adding them on and adding them and pretty

soon you get asymptotic on the curve. And if it's a very hard target,

like an ICBM, and you don't have great accuracy, you can keep adding

weapons and adding weapons and you're never going to get there. And

this is why Schlesinger and all of us had said for years, you can't get

a counterforce capability unless you have great accuracy. And if you

cannot attack the submarines and a lot of the weapons are in

submarines, if you can't even target them, how are you going to get a

counterforce capability? But this is how you got to so many weapons.

You had a high, a damage expectancy that was dictated to be very high.

That meant a lot of weapons had to go on a single aim point in order to

guarantee the probabilities that were specified in the guidance. You

want to reduce the arsenal? You really want to do an arms reduction

problem? Change the guidance. Say just, all the guidance says is put a

weapon on a target, and the number of weapons would go down.

Interviewer:

CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHY IT TAKES SO MANY WEAPONS TO DO THE JOB?

Miller:

That' a question that comes up a lot. Let me try it as simply as I can.

Say we had a target over here that you want to attack. The guidance

says you want a high probability of destroying that target. And that's

a key factor. A high probability of doing it. You start with a launch

site over here and a weapon. And it's not necessarily always going to

work 100 percent of the time, because the launch platform may not

survive, it may not come off the pad. There's lots of variables that

are going to degrade the probability of arrival. And as the weapon

comes to the target, it's going to have other factors affecting its

probability of arriving. It's reliability. Furthermore, to get it to

that target, there may be other weapons that you have to use in order

to clear the way. The penetration capability. Maybe it's a fighter

airfield. Maybe it's a radar site before that. Maybe it's surface to

air missile sites. You have to take all of these out. So you have lot

of weapons coming down here in order to give a high probability of that

weapon arriving there. And of course, after it arrives, it may not go

out so you have to put another one on. You put all of these factors

together you end up with a lot of weapons just to guarantee this high

probability that you were given in your guidance. Reduce the

probability in the guidance, you don't have to do so much damage to so

many targets or don't have to have it so severe, you reduce the number

of weapons.

[END OF TAPE C03030]

Interviewer:

I'VE HEARD IT SAID THAT THE GUIDANCE THAT SAC WAS WORKING ON WAS

ACTUALLY DIFFERENT, OR RATHER THEY UP-RATED THE PROBABILITIES FROM THAT

WHICH WAS PROVIDED TO THEM BY THE JCS. ARE YOU AWARE OF THAT?

Miller:

Well, that might have happened before the SIOP was put together, but

once the SIOP started in the fall of '60 we all worked from the same

guidance, the same criteria, and the reliability factors for every

system were decided by this policy committee, they were debated at

great length. And so we all worked, we all worked from the same

guidance, the same criteria, and agreed upon reliability factors.

Interviewer:

IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL OF DEBATE ABOUT POLICY,

ABOUT MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION, ABOUT COUNTERFORCE, NO-CITIES

STRATEGIES, WAR FIGHTING STRATEGIES. PRESUMABLY ALL THIS HAD A DRAMATIC

EFFECT ON THE KIND OF TARGETS THAT YOU WERE AIMING AT AND THE WAY YOU

WENT ABOUT YOUR JOB.

Miller:

Well, that's there's a, there's a lot of stories about that and there

were a lot of pieces of paper written, and I'm sure a lot of well

meaning people thought they were changing the guidance, modifying

things very much. But I was surprised when I came back in 1973 to be

the Deputy Director, the three-star Admiral of JSTPS when I called for

the guidance, I wanted to see what the guidance was. They brought me

the guidance. It was exactly the same piece of paper -- not just the

same guidance, it was the same piece of paper that I had put in the

files in 1960, that I had worked with, that still had my pen and ink

scratches on the side of it. So despite all of the chatter and all of

the talk, basically the guidance never changed, it stayed the same. Uh,

we still went for the same things. And one of the reasons why is,

there's just limited things that you can do with nuclear weapons.

They're a very poor military tool, and not very flexible, and they have

great limitations on them. They can do one thing very well, they can

obliterate -- cities. From then on, they're not very useful. So you

could say all you want about modifying, make them flexible, limited

responses and all of that. But basically, when you get down to it,

about all you can do with a nuclear weapon is create a lot of havoc and

retaliate. Now, maybe we'll someday get to the position where they're

can do better than that. But anybody who's ever targeted with them is

stuck with massive retaliation pretty much as the thing that works.

Interviewer:

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE SAID TO, SAY, GEORGE RATHJENS OR GEORGE

KISTIAKOWSKY WHEN THEY CAME DOWN IN THE FALL OF 1960 AND THEY PUT OUT

THIS REPORT THAT REALLY THE SIOP WAS A MASSIVE OVERKILL?

Miller:

I would have said if you think it's a massive overkill, go back and

change the guidance. Go get the guidance changed. Get the President of

the United States, you're advising the President, go get the President

of the United States to change the guidance. Reduce the level of damage

that he desires, the high probability, and get off of some of that. But

if he...writes a guidance to demand what he wants, and these weapons

only have a certain capability, then you're going to build the

requirements for that number of weapons.

Interviewer:

YOU DON'T THINK IT WAS GOING THE OTHER WAY AROUND, THAT SAC WAS

DISCOVERING TARGETS...

Miller:

Oh, the target list kept going up, but, and the biggest change in the

target list as I recall occurred, excuse me, occurred later on in...

Interviewer:

START AGAIN, THE BIGGEST CHANGE.

Miller:

The biggest change in the target list that I recall occurred about

1974, uh-four, January, when Schlesinger came out with new guidance,

this is much later. But he wanted he changed it, modified it he

incorporated in the guidance there an entirely new factor, and

that...go out and study target lists, and the target lists really

jumped that time. And he thought probably that he was going to reduce

it. It just depends on how you word it, and what you say in the

guidance. But the number of weapons that came were available, would

undoubtedly increase the target list, you know, from the first hundred

cities, now you got a lot more weapons, you go to the next two hundred

cities. That job you could always do. It was always a question of do I

apply the weapons against the targets I can destroy, the

urban-industrial base, or do I put them against the targets that I

can't destroy, the counterforce targets, the hard military targets, the

ICBM sites, the hardened command and control sites and so forth. But

after you've put down seven weapons and you haven't got any probability

of doing damage against a hard target, why put any more there? See, we

had this dichotomy going on all the time of people saying, hey, we've

got to go counterforce, and you didn't have a weapon that could go

counterforce.

Miller:

So you end up with a, with a tremendous... And this, let me make this

one point. There were a lot of people in the academic world that were

very confused about this in the '70s, in the early '70s and

particularly. They thought that most of the weapons were going against

counterforce target. I mean, against urban-industrial targets. And that

very going against counterforce that we were just going to go for

cities. That was just as wrong as you could be. The ratio, I'm not

going to go into the details of the ratio, but it was so obvious, so

much in the other direction that I was appalled that the academic

community could be so naive in figuring that out.

Interviewer:

WHAT ROUGHLY WAS THE RATIO OF WEAPONS THAT WERE, GIVEN WHAT YOU'VE JUST

EXPLAINED THERE, WHAT WAS THE RATIO OF WEAPONS THAT WERE FINALLY

TARGETED ON URBAN INDUSTRIAL TARGETS AS OPPOSED TO WHAT YOU MIGHT...

Miller:

Oh I, I don't recall exactly, but it was a ratio of about one for an

industrial target against four against military, a ratio of about

4-to-1, 5-to-1, something like that. But that's only part of the story.

The probability of doing damage against the military targets, even

though you were putting down four times as many was ridiculous,

absolutely ridiculous. You couldn't do it. The weapon just didn't have

the capability to attack those hard targets and destroy them.

Interviewer:

YOU DIDN'T HAVE HARD TARGETS IN 1960 DID YOU?

Miller:

Well, you had you had the ICBM sites starting to come along, and some

of the, some of the submarine pens and things of that nature were

pretty hard. The nuclear storage sites were pretty hard, nuclear

weapons storage sites. Some of those were pretty hard targets. Of

course, the weapons weren't as accurate then either, so you didn't, you

just couldn't do it. It's always been a tough thing to do. You got lots

of talks about it now, we're going to have pinpoint the cruise

missile's going to be pinpoint accuracy. Fine. Then I come back to the

thing I've always pointed out on counterforce, the submarine. Tell me

how you're going to target that. And with the United States having, you

know, over 50 percent of the weapons in submarines and the Soviets

about 30 percent, when they're at sea, how are you going to do it?

Unnecessary Nuclear Weapons Build Up

Interviewer:

ONE OTHER QUESTION. LOOKING BACK ON THE 1950S, FROM THE POSITION AS YOU

SAW IT CULMINATE IN THAT SIOP OF 1960, DO YOU THINK THAT THE UNITED

STATES COULD HAVE GOTTEN ALONG WITH FEWER ACTUAL WEAPONS, SMALLER

MEGA-TONNAGE, AND STILL DONE THE JOB, AT THAT TIME?

Miller:

No question about it.

Interviewer:

JUST PUT THAT IN A STATEMENT FOR ME.

Miller:

Yeah, I, I don't, I think that the numbers of weapons that have been

involved in the, in the nuclear process, the amount of dollars that

have been spent gross waste far more than we ever really required,

dictated as much by political pressures as anything else. Really one of

the more, well, I almost say shameful aspects of our society, that we

have focused on this so much, we have now built such a, a... cult

really of people that are wrapped up in it, that make their living on

it, and it just keeps going out of control, all the time. I think

that's a big mistake. I could take you to people around this town who

were in on the initial plans of SAC, when we had right after the war,

when we had 55 weapons, who wondered what we were going to do with them

all. Yeah, I thought 3,500 was a lot. When it got to eight thousand

when I was back there the second time, I couldn't believe it. Now it's

up to ten thousand. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff go along with that.

You find them, they'll give 50 percent up, anytime they want. You know,

anytime you want, take any 50 percent. The only thing is they want the

Soviets to give up 50 percent, too. That's where some of this the

targeteer, a lot of the old targeteers that I've worked with, we don't

care what the Soviets do. Take 50 percent of them anyway. And then

after you do that take another 50 percent. Just leave me alone a little

bit and I'll give you a decent plan that will do as much as a nuclear

weapon can do. Which is not an awful lot, except destroy soft targets

and cities.

Interviewer:

AND DO YOU THINK THAT THE, I'LL ASK THE QUESTION AGAIN, AND I'LL

REPHRASE IT ACTUALLY. IT'S OFTEN SAID THAT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER DID HIS

UTMOST TO HOLD BACK THE ARMS RACE IN A CLIMATE THAT BASICALLY WAS

PUSHING HIM FOR MORE. DO YOU THINK HE DID AS MUCH AS HE COULD HAVE DONE

TO LIMIT THE ACQUISITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Miller:

Well, I, that's a tough question for me to answer really. But if he was

gonna, if he was, as I think I indicated before, if the President of

the United States really wanted to control the number of weapons that

were going into the into the stockpile of the United States, the

biggest thing to do was to change the guidance for the SIOP. Just

change the guidance and you've reduced the numbers a great deal.

Interviewer:

LOOKING OVER, BACK AT THAT DECADE, AND YOU CAME IN AT THE END THERE

WITH THREE AND A HALF THOUSAND WEAPONS OR WHATEVER IT WAS, DO YOU THINK

THE UNITED STATES COULD HAVE GOTTEN ALONG AND COULD HAVE DONE THE JOB

WITH FEWER WEAPONS?

Miller:

No question about it. The United States could have definitely could

have definitely gotten along with far less weapons than the, than the

3,500 in the, in that first SIOP. We had-- we didn't need that many by

any means. We needed a few good ones, kind of like the Marines.

Interviewer:

LET ME ASK YOU AGAIN, COULD YOU TELL THE THOUGHT THAT YOU HAD THAT SOME

PEOPLE AROUND IN 1947 SAID 55 WAS TOO MANY?

Miller:

To give you a feel about this subject, and there are people in this

town, for example, who were involved in the first nuclear warfare plans

that we had, who were delivery pilots. When we had 55 weapons. And they

would wonder, what are we going to do with all of those weapons? This

was the thinking that we had after the first two went off. And it just

kept escalating. But we were appalled at 3,500. It was an awful lot of

weapons. And, and you couldn't do much with many of them, because they

didn't have the capabilities. The weapons are, I repeat again, that

nuclear weapons are very limited in what they can do. And it doesn't

take an awful lot of them to do what they can do. You can add and add

and add, never got anymore, get anymore capability out of it.

Interviewer:

THAT'S FINE. OK. THANKS A LOT.

Interviewer:

IF YOU GET, IF YOU HIT THE RADAR SCREEN FROM ALL SIDES...

Miller:

That's David and Goliath. That's any military campaign. That's you

against me. That's anybody in conflict. The most effective campaign

I've got is to hit you when you're not looking, first, with all I can

hit you with, get it over with in a hurry. That's Ali, that's anybody.

This is the most effective plan. Put it all down and do it first. And

you don't need a lot of weapons in that situation either. But that's

remember Schlesinger has said all along, we've never ruled out the

preemption option. Now, we never expect to use it. And I've briefed the

Naval War College on that point and others, in the '50s, that we had a

pre-emption option in there. We always had that plan. That was an

option that we should give the President of the United States. Never

going to use it. But it's at least a plan. Remember the SIOP is a plan,

and that's a significant factor.

SIOP Strategy Options

Interviewer:

THE ALLEGATION BY PEOPLE LIKE DR. KISTIAKOWSKY, WAS WHEN THEY CAME DOWN

TO SEE IT IN NOVEMBER OF 1960, WAS THERE'S ONLY THE ONE OPTION, AND

THAT'S THE ALL-OUT ATTACK WITH EVERYTHING THAT SAC HAS. MAYBE A

RETALIATORY OPTION, ALL THEY'VE GOT LEFT. BUT JUST THE ONE,

ALL-INCLUSIVE PLAN.

Miller:

Well, I have great respect for Dr. Kistiakowsky and I talked to him,

later on. I know George Rathjens who was with him. I've watched many

people come through there, get briefed. All I can say is, they're

wrong. They're wrong on that aspect. The first SIOP had options in it.

Every SIOP has had options in it. And it was not one massive, big

retaliatory strike. There were many options in there that could be used

by the President of the United States. Not as many as in some later

plans but there were a considerable number in there.

Interviewer:

IF THE PRESIDENT'S SCIENTIFIC ADVISER DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THOSE OPTIONS,

DID THE PRESIDENT KNOW ABOUT THOSE OPTIONS? AND IF HE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT

THEM, HOW COULD HE USE THEM?

Miller:

Well, the way of course President Eisenhower never saw the plan. See,

really in any detail. It wasn't until it was put together by the time

he turned over, but I don't think he ever saw the plan. I did the

initial part of the briefing to most of the people in Washington, D.C.,

the Secretary of Defense and so forth, and the progress of it. The

initial part of it, I didn't do the whole briefing, but I did part of

it, I participated in that. We never got out of McNamara's office on

that particular subject. But I, I have my doubts that he was familiar

with the details of the SIOP. I have my doubts that many Presidents

have been familiar with the real details of the SIOP. There's a lot of

books on that subject. That talk about the football and the details of

the plans. Some Presidents spend more time on them than others. I

thought President Ford asked some of the best questions when he was the

Vice President. He certainly went into it...

Interviewer:

COME BACK TO 1960. THERE WERE OPTIONS AVAILABLE?

Miller:

There were options available in 1960. No question about it. There were

options in the first SIOP, a considerable number. It's a misconception

I think that's been circulated around which is entirely erroneous. But

there were, there were several options in the first SIOP. You didn't go

all out against everything with all of the weapons. There were many

options that you could, execute.

Interviewer:

PRESUMABLY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PILOT SURVIVAL AND THE ABILITY TO

GET THROUGH TO THE TARGETS, THE BEST THING IS TO HIT THE SOVIET RADAR

SCREENS WITH AS MUCH AS YOU CAN AT ONCE. I MEAN IN A MILITARY WAY.

Miller:

Well, the problem with... the problem with nuclear weapons against,

again in an, there are limitations. You got various delivery systems.

That some of them take a long time to get the weapon on the target.

Others, 15 minutes. Some of them less. Then there is the problem of the

damage, the explosion, what happens in the atmosphere, so you have to

be careful about not blowing other aircraft out of the sky, or

yourself. But you have that problem, what we call a separation problem.

You had to separate the weapons on the individual targets. It took a

lot of hours to put down the 3,500 weapons, a lot of hours to lay that

whole thing out. To have the separation and everything else. We've been

asked that question many times, wouldn't the best plan be simultaneous

launch? No! Best plan would be simultaneous impact! Where they all go,

you start it, and they all hit at exactly the same time. Can't do it

with 3,500 weapons. Maybe with 55, but not with 3,500. Now, that

requires going into the details of the targeting a lot more than I

certainly intend to and or that would be proper. Or that would keep

people interested...

Interviewer:

THANKS A LOT.

[END OF TAPE C03031 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-rn3028ps1v

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Description

Credits: Interviewee2: Miller, Gerry
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: 3582442d7c716d9151b9c93544d0ade428fba599 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00

Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986,” 1986-03-25, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed January 15, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-rn3028ps1v.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986.” 1986-03-25. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. January 15, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-rn3028ps1v>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-rn3028ps1v