War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Russell Dougherty, 1987

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Transcript

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES A12012-A12017 RUSSELL

DOUGHERTY [1]

Evolution of the Minuteman and MX Missiles under SAC

Interviewer:

ASKS WHY MINUTEMAN I COULD AND SHOULD BE UPGRADED TO MINUTEMAN II. ASKS

WHY AND HOW DECISION WAS MADE.

Dougherty:

I think it was more an evolution of existing technology. Power became

better understood. Solid propulsion became better understood. We had a

manufacturing history behind us. The accuracy was always improving. Our

guidance system was improving and we had an opportunity to begin to

think about MRVs and MIRVs. I think Minuteman III was the ultimate that

all of us wanted to achieve but I think that I and II were necessary

stages to get to III.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT EVOLUTION TO III.

Dougherty:

Guidance improvements and weight reduction, weight reduction in

warheads, better machining of warheads and better understanding of how

to handle propulsion and how to place it in the, in the missile body. I

think we all would agree that Minuteman III is just about an optimum

utilization of a missile of that size with the technology of that

period.

Interviewer:

ASKS HIS POSITION THEN.

Dougherty:

Mine was, was an indirect... perspective, part of that time. I was the

Air Force Operations Deputy in Washington. Of course SAC was one of our

major commands and we were watching it very closely and we were

handling the programs and the policies that brought these things along.

And then I became the commander of 2nd Air Force. My job there was as

commander of SAC airplanes. So my interest in their missiles was just

by looking across at my counterpart, Gen. P. K. Carlton who had 15th

Air Force, who had the missiles. And then I became the Supreme Allied

Commander's Chief of Staff in Europe and from that perspective I had an

interesting job of convincing the defense ministers of the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization that Vandenberg and MX, I mean and

Minuteman sites were as much a part of NATO as those things they saw

surrounding them in the Netherlands and Belgium. But I went from there

to be the Commander in Chief of Strategic Air Command and there I once

again got the responsibility for both the bombers and the missiles. And

it was just about that time that we were finishing the deployment of

the Minuteman III. And it was the, it was also at that time that we

stopped the deployment of Minuteman III and never did complete it to

what we had hoped would be its ultimate objective. We stopped short of

that.

Interviewer:

ASKS WHAT STRENGTH MINUTEMAN PROVIDED THEN AND HOW DID IT BEGIN TO

ERODE.

Dougherty:

The strength that the Minuteman III first brought to us was accuracy

combined with a, with a warhead that made that accuracy meaningful.

There's an old ratio like accuracy is 3 to warhead strength is 1. But

that quickly goes away because if you, if you have absolute accuracy

with zero warhead you have nothing. But the combination was such that

we could reasonably attack with certainty any known target of any known

hardness. With a warhead and an accuracy combination that would enable

us to destroy that target or significantly to damage that target. The

target system changed. The target system became made up of targets that

were both harder and more difficult to penetrate. And as we begin to

sense that our missile accuracy was not great enough and our warheads

were not great enough in enough number, in great enough numbers, we had

to have some more warheads. We also hoped that we could get a better

warhead with better accuracy. And that was the real rationale for going

into the MX. Was to get, to take advantage of new a guidance system,

and it has turned out to be a very good guidance system. And to obtain

additional warheads to be able to put at risk an expanding target

system of much harder targets, much harder.

Interviewer:

HOW DID SAC SEE ITS JOB THEN?

Dougherty:

Well SAC was, is a part of the nation's nuclear force, not all of it.

It was a very significant part. It was two of the three legs of what we

called The Triad, the three-dimensional ability to bring significant

nuclear strength to bear on an enemy. The commander of SAC also is the

director of Strategic Target Planning. And in that role it's his

responsibility with the joint staff to do the planning for all the

nuclear forces. But our part of the job was to be able to put at risk

the hardest part of the target system. That was because we had the

weapons with the accuracy to do that job. Now it may be in time that

we'll get that accuracy from other weapons. But during my watch and

those years preceding my watch, the ability to get high order of

accuracy from an Intercontinental ballistic missile or ballistic

missile was SAC's primary job. And then of course to be able to bring

to bear manned aircraft with weapons at a later time of arrival, to be

able to do a high order of accuracy job and possibly a job on targets

where the location of the ground zero was not precise and had to be

determined at the time. Or targets that remained after an initial

attack, not destroyed, and had to be attacked. Now what portion of the

target system? We were never equipped with enough weapons to attack all

the target system that we had identified. We had to go through there

and select those targets that seemed to be the most significant in

importance at any given time. That significance would change, of

course. Some targets would be most important at the outset of a

conflict, where later on they may be of lesser importance. And then the

reverse is true. Some targets take on great order of importance later

in a conflict. It was our job to make those assessments and to apply

the highest order of accuracy we had to the targets that needed that

kind of accuracy.

Interviewer:

HOW DID SAC'S REQUIREMENTS CHANGE UNDER DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATIONS?

Dougherty:

Well the response to the forces from the political side of the spectrum

is either they authorize us to have the forces or they didn't authorize

us to have the forces. And you see now how it's possible to ask for

forces and not get them, to ask for them in numbers and not get them,

or to ask for technology and not achieve it. I never saw a basic

disagreement on the philosophy of deterrence. I saw widespread

disagreement on how to achieve deterrence and what it took to deter.

The military I think remained of a mind that the basic requirement for

deterrence was to put at risk the primary forces of an enemy, or to put

at risk sufficient of those forces that he knew he couldn't achieve

with his military force what...he might try. If we could convince him

of that we thought that the first step of deterrence was taken care of.

Others thought differently. You remember and you will come into it if

you have not already the 100 cities, the 200 cities, the 300 cities.

City-kill, population destruction, 100 million lives became a series of

20 week, weekly articles in a Washington newspaper. It was called "100

Million Lives." Some sought, thought that this was a measure of

deterrence. It was never a military measure to my knowledge. I don't

know that we could back that up except by showing you that if city

destruction was the objective of our military forces we weren't well

equipped to do that. We passed up the type of weapons that achieved

massive urban destruction for weapons that took advantage of size, of

miniaturization, and of high order of accuracy. We were always looking

for more accurate weapons. Now early on our accuracy was pretty gross

and I don't think anyone would deny that. We were not able to hit

precisely what we were shooting at. So we made up for inaccuracy with

warhead strength. And as our accuracy improved through technology, we

were able to scale down the size of our warheads. And to where our

force was far more efficient and effective against the target than it

was against just urban destruction, mass destruction.

Deterrence

Interviewer:

ASKS WHAT HE MEANS BY DETERRENCE.

Dougherty:

Deterrence to me is the ability to convince an enemy, the Soviet Union

is the one that's principally armed in order to be the object of

deterrence, to convince an enemy that he cannot use his military forces

effectively nor gain any advantage by using it. Now to a politician

that would probably not be enough. There is political deterrence, I am

sure there is economic deterrence. But military deterrence is best

served I think if the other side or another side can look and find

absolutely no advantage in using his military forces in a hostile

manner. In fact, just the reverse. He will not only gain no advantage,

it will be to his detriment to try to use them. And if we can, if we

can keep that kind of posture, relevant, and I think by and large we

have up to a point. I'm not sure how relevant we are today but we've

done very well. Then I think we can say that military deterrence has

been achieved. Now we can work through diplomacy on political

deterrence and we can work through economic initiatives on economic and

trade restraints and prevention of restraints.

Interviewer:

IS THERE A ROLE FOR DETERRENCE BEYOND PREVENTING THE OTHER SIDE FROM

USING ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Dougherty:

Oh yes. I think the classic role is looking at nuclear weapons, but I

think deterrence pertains to all sorts of weapons. Deterrence pertains

to any of two sides of any...potentially hostile equation where there

is reason and logic. I think deterrence is inoperative in the face of

illogic. Or terroristic attacks. Or terrorism done for, purely for

terroristic reasons and not as part of a campaign. But deterrence can

work against any number of things if there is logic on both sides.

Interviewer:

IS THERE A ROLE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS OTHER THAN DETERRENCE?

Dougherty:

Let me answer the question like I don't think you asked the question.

You indicate that nuclear weapons are not in themselves weapons of

destruction. I think nuclear weapons are tremendous weapons of

destruction. So if you wanted to destroy a target, not to deter an

attack, but to destroy, nuclear weapons are fantastically inexpensive,

economical ways of destroying things. You know, it's a tremendous blast

and fire. Now there's secondary and tertiary effects. But the initial

effects of nuclear weapons are awesome. So if deterrence fails then I

think you've got one hell of a war fighting weapon on your hands. And

that ability to fight is what gives it the ability to deter. Because I

think it's axiomatic that if the other side is not convinced that you

can, you can keep him from gaining, and he will lose, then deterrence

is not going to work. So, yes, nuclear weapons have a tremendous

capability to destroy targets.

Interviewer:

BUT WHAT ABOUT POLITICAL VALUE?

Dougherty:

Well I think there's a pervasive aspect of this. I think there are a

lot of things that nuclear weapons themselves do not deter. And that

brings about the old shibboleth that there are many things that

conventional weapons can do that nuclear weapons cannot. And the joke

of course is the one attributed to Gen. Boff (?) when he says, you

know, the nuclear weapon is unlike the bayonet. He said, the bayonet

you can use but you can't sit on, and the nuclear weapon you can sit on

but you cannot use. You know, you can use it. And I guess it's one of

the...one of the...legacies of World War II that we saw what nuclear

weapons can do. We're not arguing about it abstractly. We know what it

can do. And that has made the deterrence effect of nuclear weapons very

great. We have built up quite a psychological thing, we call it the

threshold between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons, and for

probably a good reason we haven't crossed that threshold. We recognize

there is something different about the scale and level of nuclear

warfare that's very dangerous and very treacherous and that logical

nations don't want to cross that threshold. I think that's good. I

think that's respected and I think it's reasonable because it is a very

uncertainable morass beyond that threshold. You know, whether you can

fight a limited nuclear war against a well-equipped nuclear enemy in a

limited manner, nobody knows. Nobody knows whether escalation of the

use of nuclear weapons is going to be boundless and limitless and

automatic. And instantaneous. That a nation attacked in a nuclear sense

that has a nuclear ability to respond is going to remain restrained and

to permit diplomacy and opportunity to work and to try and contain the

conflict, nobody knows that. I think some people feel that escalation

is immutable. That it will happen no matter what if the other side is

well equipped. Most of us military commanders cannot afford to think

that. We must concentrate on how to fight a limited nuclear war because

we don't want to have a self-fulfilling prophecy just because we can

fight total nuclear war, we want to make damned sure that that isn't

the only thing we can do, or will take us to that Armageddon as sure as

the lord made little green apples. Because there's no other way. So we

must have alternatives to total nuclear conflict and we do have them

and we practice them. Whether they'll work or not, nobody knows.

Instinctively I think they will as long as there is logic. Back to that

premise that there can be inter-conflict deterrence. There can be

inter-war levels of deterrence. I think that's so. I think there can be

geographical levels of deterrence. Just as I think there can be

deliberate geographical ways of expanding a conflict, you know, of

escalating. There can be deliberate escalation. I would hope that we

have not reached the point where the sanity of an enlarging conflict

isn't sobering enough that nations can be brought to heel and to look

for ways to terminate. So I think it's up to the military to have some

options that give them that alternative without just trying to see how

fast you can run to the absolute maximum of your combat capability. A

lot of people don't, don't agree with that, and I have run into it over

the years. But I think we have to take into account that the

possibility of getting into a nuclear war and keeping it limited is

something we must plan on and try.

[END OF TAPE A12012]

Political Nature of Strategic Nuclear Weapons

Interviewer:

HOW DID UPGRADING WEAPONS BEGIN TO CHANGE?

Dougherty:

I think that early on we were able to take advantage of technology. And

when technology made improved weapons possible, within limits, within

the possibilities of a budget, we were able to take advantage of it.

There was not the focus nor the political interest, the narrow

political interest in a particular weapons system or a particular

development that there is today. You know, today, strategic weapons to

a very great degree, and even tactical weapons to some degree, are real

political footballs. And they develop, they develop political

partisans, you know, they become political weapons of the Democratic

party or the Republican party or the Conservative or the Liberal and

you name it. They run the flag up. In fact, some of them, some weapons

switch sides. If you've seen the MX and its deployment patterns, it's

switched sides several times. So I think it's because of several

reasons. Because they are important. And that's why strategic weapons

develop a political furor and fervor far greater than tactical weapons

is because they're more important in a global sense or in a total

sense. After all, it's strategic weaponry that threatens the United

States. Nothing else really threatens us. Oh our worldwide interests

are threatened and our worldwide forces and deployed positions. And

economic interests are threatened. But the real heartland of the United

States is threatened by strategic weapons. So strategic weapons are

important because they threaten us and they defend us through their

deterrent reflection. Also they're expensive. Now not in a comparative

sense, but people don't ever make that comparison. The strategic

weaponry of the United States in toto is not one-fifth of the defense

budget. But individually the weapons are very expensive and getting

more so all the time. So you can begin to focus on the fact that one

B-1 bomber will educate every child in Cincinnati through the eighth

grade, you know, which is an abstract thing but it makes a heck of a

newspaper ad. Particularly if you're a child in Cincinnati and want

your school paid for. But the fact that you didn't get that B-1 bomber

doesn't have anything to do with the education of a child in

Cincinnati. But still it's good PR. Also, they're so abstract that

people don't, don't notice whether they have them or not. They cannot

get them and feel just as good as if they got them. And if they don't

need them and if there isn't any nuclear war, you know, things are

fine. If there is a nuclear war they wouldn't need them anyways. So

people have a sort of a philosophy of this: it's out of sight, out of

mind. And I've noticed that. You know, I go around the country as I

have, trying to explain the why and wherefore and the how we utilize

the weapons they give us, and I detect these things. But technology

now, sometimes can offer us more than we are ready to take advantage

of. I detected a distinct disinterest in providing us weapons as

efficient as technology could make them. Weapons as good as we could

get, as accurate as we could get. People erroneously translate accuracy

of weapons to first use. Now true, accurate weapons can go against

targets that are in position that have not yet been fired. Weapons that

are in silos. But to me first use is a political decision. Not a

military capability. The military capability of high order accuracy and

response time gives you the ability to do that within reason, but you

could do it illogically with grossly inaccurate weapons. But first use

is a bugaboo sort of like educating all the children in Cincinnati. It

makes a good argument if you don't want to do it. And we in many

instances I think have passed up that kind of accuracy, in weapons. We

also argue over numbers. And we drive prices up by going way down in

numbers. The MX today is the classic. Finally, after many iterations,

the military was driven back to accepting a requirement of 100 MXs, to

be the bedrock of our land-based missile system. We have 50. To use

some figures very roughly, those 50 will cost us probably $10 billion,

the next 50 will cost us probably two. So the next 50 is where the

economy of scale comes in, but we won't buy the next 50. Which will

drive the first 50 very high up in relative price and make the

individual weapon system enough to educate a lot of children in

Cincinnati. So we do silly things. You know, we need a bedrock force,

but we are arguing over forces that are in the bush, like single

missile Midget-man, or rail-mounted MXs. We get off on these what-ifs,

and it's just another way of procrastinating and putting off the

decision on what we should do in the first instance. I sound cynical

about this. And to a degree I am, because I have seen the logic of

trying to do these things destroyed by the manipulations of trying to

make them fit the political maze. In fact, I caution the young military

officers that I have an opportunity to talk to, into not playing the

Washington game. I think that there's only one proper role for a

professional officer and that's to study as he can in the depth that he

can the problems of his profession and of deterrence in the environment

in which he finds it. The political environment in his country and the

fiscal environment in his country and then to give his best judgment on

how to build the best weapons system, when to build it, and what

numbers to build it. And stand clear and not try to weave it through

Congress. When we in the military try to play the Washington game then

we begin to become prostituted and we don't play that very well. And I

think we've tried to do that in instances where with the best of

intention and the best of conscience we just become a Washington

bureaucrat, trying to lobby and play the Hill, and we don't do it very

well. Now they've begun to expect it. They've begun to expect

compromises and cuts and acceptances of lesser quality and acceptances

of lesser numbers, and we don't play that game very well. Our whole

profession is oriented toward not doing that kind of thing. And we look

silly when we do it, we've got egg on our face. And that's the way I

feel.

Optimizing Nuclear Weapons

Interviewer:

WHEN MINUTEMAN FREEZE WOULD NOT LAST FOREVER, WHAT FACTORS LED YOU TO

THINK WE DID NEED SOMETHING NEW, DID YOU SET OFF IN THE RIGHT

DIRECTION?

Dougherty:

Well this decision was made by a lot of people and I was just part of

the process, not the whole of the process, by any means. Technology was

moving. There was a new guidance system, Northrop was developing it. It

promised to be very good, it is very good. Unfortunately they are late

in delivering some of them so there's a current brouhaha over some

guidance systems not delivered... In this development of the, of the

MX, this was, the decision was taken by many people. I was just part of

the process. An interested part, because it was to my command that the

weapon was going to go eventually. But technology was moving, guidance

system technology particularly was moving. Also we learned a lot about

solid propulsion. We learned a lot about how things, to keep things

from getting sticky and gummy and how to keep our missile holes dry and

how to keep our missiles reliable. Now we'd been pretty good. We kept

reliability on alert in the holes up around 98 percent. We thought we

could do even better than that. Also the target system was expanding

dramatically. Now this is very hard for a person to accept who doesn't

follow it each day, or who thinks we are all good country boys and

we're just rural agrarians and we're all just getting along fine and

why do we look for trouble. But the Soviets were going harder and

harder and harder and they were getting to the point that their

hardness and our accuracy was no longer a match. It was a mismatch. Our

accuracy was not great enough in many instances to get inside the

sanctuary provided by their hardness. We had to have more accuracy and

we had to have a warhead to go with that accuracy that could at least

put at risk their primary weapon system. Not all of them. We've never

come close to that. Not all of them but the primary ones. At the right

time, in a manner that they could not deny, that they were at risk. So

we had to have some better accuracy. This was the way to get it. And we

had to have more numbers. When we laid out a war plan I guarantee you

the Minuteman IIIs went just like that, because they were the weapons

systems that the war planner wanted to apply to X, Y, and Z target

because that was the way to get them, or way to be sure of getting a

desired result. So, the way to do that was multiple warheads and to use

existing basing modes. And that's why there was much discussion over

what kind of weapon to design. And about this time the accuracy of the

Soviet warheads began to increase as dramatically as did the hardness

of their silo basing. A point not well understood. In fact, it came as

quite a shocker to the American people ten years ago when it was

announced publicly that, ten years or more, that the Soviets have

achieved, had achieved a degree of accuracy better than hours. You

know, it must, a lot of people say, Oh, it can't be, they must be

kidding. We weren't kidding. They achieved an accuracy better than

ours. And the reverse was again true. Our degree of hardness of our

missile silos and their degree of accuracy now meant that our hardened

missile sites were no longer in sanctuary because of their hardness.

So, we had to either make a move or make them harder or accept a degree

of vulnerability. And that caused quite an internal discussion. A lot

of people just didn't want to put anything else in fixed sites because

fixed sites were almost by definition vulnerable to some kind of

attack. That's true. But a lot of some kind of an attack before you get

them all. So I thought about this and I tried to bring to bear the

thing I mentioned ago, a minute ago, about all the things I'd studied

and tried to learn about my profession, and what it was trying to do.

And the first instance was to keep a war from happening, and how to go

about that. And how to posture a force that was 98 or 99 percent alert,

right on the other end of a, of an alert signal and command and could

be fired out from under any sort of attack. And I said let's put them

in the silos. Let's improve the hardening of the silo, not make them

immortal, but let's improve them and let's put the Minuteman in there

with ten warheads, or the MX. Let's expand it to a size that will fit

the silo without major construction. And we started down that road and

we didn't get very far because the old survival bugaboo. We had shot

ourself in the foot. We had made such a case over the necessity to be

invulnerable from attack that we found ourself frying in our own oil, I

suppose you'd say. And my argument wasn't strong enough. So we started

trying to make the missile mobile. Now there's an axiom here that's

worth saying. It will some day go by the board as warhead

maneuverability improves, but the old saying say, "The only thing you

have to do to make something relatively invulnerable from an

intercontinental ballistic missile, is to make it move. And move it."

Absent a maneuverable re-entry vehicle, that's true. So everybody says,

why don't we make our missile move? Well, the MX was not the right

missile to make move. It was too big, it was not designed as a mobile

missile, and to make it mobile we had to create a monstrosity. We could

have done it, you know, we've created big things and moved them around

before. But I have to admit that it looked a little gee whiz when you

thought about running it around the desert. And running it up and down

in tunnels. We could have done it and we would have done it but it

developed a political opposition. So we looked at something like 93 or

94 different methods of basing this missile, all of which had some

problem, some support, some opposition. Most of which were absurd and

we threw those away pretty quickly, but at least we ran them down. And

we constantly went back to the rail mobile. This is one we had up in

1960, 61, 62, pretty far along. The condition of our railroad tracks

made a lot more sense in 61, 62 than today but we can handle that too.

That's manageable. But, to me there is a profound logic to putting

these missiles in the ground as well as a tremendous economy to putting

them in the ground. First they're put in the ground right in the heart

of what it's all about. Put them right in the center of the United

States. Because that's the reflected deterrence you want. You want an

unambiguous assurance that they are going to respond to an unambiguous

attack. And they're going to respond in time that they will not nearly

all be lost if we will put a sufficient number of them out there.

What's a sufficient number? To me it's something over 100. But the

military has agreed to 100. With ten warheads. That's a thousand

warheads to threaten 1000 potential targets in the Soviet Union

requiring accuracy and yield combinations that missile gets. In a fire

mode and in a fire readiness that can fire out from under an attack.

That's not a first strike and I don't mean to say first strike. I mean

when there is clear-cut unambiguous indication of the kind of massive

attack that threatens those weapons, they can fire out and the Soviet

knows they can. And knows they will because you're not attacking some

remote, detached force at some distance from the heartland. Or we call

it log(?), R-E-S, the RES. You know, you put these weapons right in

the, in the middle of the RES and there can be no doubt of their

deterrent ability. And that's what you want in the first place. So why

not take advantage of the psychology of that kind of location. And the

economy of doing it, and then the command and control simplicity of

putting them where there can be no doubt of their ability to receive

and respond quickly to a signal. They are not out remote, out of, out

of sight and sound. They are right where you touch them, can talk to

them, five different ways, hard line. You can use COAX, you can use any

amount of communication to assure they've got to get the word. Now. To

me that's bedrock. It's not the only thing you must do because God help

us if we ever get so tied up in the economy of scale that we try to

have a single mode deterrent force. We must have multiple modes. But

that's the bedrock on which to build. And without that bedrock we're

going to chase our tail a dozen different ways in birds that are in the

bush and things that might be, and numbers that might eventuate. And we

can do that far more securely if we will do it from a position of

having this kind of bedrock force. I wouldn't stop with that.

[END OF TAPE A12013]

Interviewer:

ASKS HIM TO DESCRIBE HIS IDEAL ICBM AT THAT POINT.

Dougherty:

Well we were looking for an omni weapon, one that was not range

limited. That didn't have to have a northern deployment in order to

reach the areas where targets were likely to be. One that had instant

response time and that almost dictated a solid fuel rocket, one that

could be kept on alert for longer periods of time without breaking

down, so we could have a high order of alert. You see, one of the

beauties of an ICBM in a silo is that you almost get one for one. You

put a missile in a silo and bring it up on alert, and your chances are

88, 89 percent of having it on alert. So you've got your whole force,

you don't have much lead, lag and spillover. Unlike airplanes and ships

you don't have them on the ground and in port, ...you got them on alert

doing what you're bound to do. Also, it takes very little people to

maintain them and this was a consideration of ours. You develop a force

that takes a lot of people to make it effective and you make it very

people intensive and it becomes very expensive, very fast. And it fails

dramatically, you know, it doesn't fail gracefully, because so many

people are involved. Also we wanted that responsiveness to a command

and control. We wanted to be able to get fiber optic communications to

it. Communications that didn't go through switches. Communications that

you could get multiple paths, each of which were at a, at a degree of

reliability that made it almost foolproof. Nothing is foolproof in this

business, but we had to be very conscious of electro magnetic pulse

because it may have to operate in that kind of environment. And then we

wanted it once established and once up to have long life. We had been

spoiled by the Minuteman. That turned out to be a very reliable weapons

system with very long life in alert mode. And that was good because

those strategic forces are only 20 percent of the defense budget,

that's still a lot. And...we were looking for ways to make our weapons

less expensive.

Interviewer:

AND MORE ACCURATE.

Dougherty:

Oh yes, absolutely. We had to make them more accurate. We, we had too

few weapons that could seriously threaten some of the key targets. Now

inside the Soviet planner's mind, you know, it's ridiculous to think

he's going to be deterred if he looks at what we've got, and looks at

the best capability of what we've got, and looks at his own posture and

recognizes that he's in sanctuary. Ah, you know, he can really laugh up

his sleeve on this one. And deterrence is at its worst I suppose when

you think you have him deterred and he knows you haven't. So we had to

be sure. This, this is really basically a simple thing. You've got to

have it, you've got to know you have it, and you've got to know that he

knows that you have it. And if you fail in any one of those tests your

basis for deterrence is gone.

Interviewer:

ASKS HOW HE REACTED TO OPPOSITION ON THE HILL TO MORE ACCURACY?

Dougherty:

Well I would like to think that I thought they didn't understand

but...I never could understand the opposition to efficiency in weapons.

The thing that came the closest to me was when they would say, "But it

gives you the capability for the first strike." Professionally I sort

of resented that because it indicated that I was some kind of wild man

on a leash and I was restrained only by strong cords and cables and the

threat of terrible things. I've never looked at our nation's military

that way, and I don't think the nation has any case studies to show

that it should be looked at that way. But on the other hand nuclear

weapons don't leave much room for second guessing. And I suppose some

people thought that by keeping our weapons inaccurate that they could

constrain an uncontrolled military or maybe an uncontrolled national

command authority. I like to think that the system is far more robust

and reliable than that. And that the system is deliberately designed to

prevent mad men from abusing it. But I have to admit that we're dealing

with tremendous...weapons. And there is room for discussion and for

disagreement. And we've had that disagreement. We've had people who

deliberately thought they could constrain what they, in my judgment,

erroneously called an arms race by keeping it gross and inaccurate. Or

by keeping the warheads from being effective and efficient. And to me

an efficient weapon is what we should be striving for and we shouldn't

put handles on it like first strike weapons. If people were against

only first strike weapons, you would think they would be clamoring to

buy bombers. But if you ask for bombers you would find that there is a

sufficiently active opposition for them as there is for any other

weapon. So I tend to think sometimes those arguments made are not the

real arguments. The real arguments are just I don't like to buy

weapons. That I understand better than any other argument.

Survivability

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT LARRY SMITH. WITH INCREASING ACCURACY SENATORS WORKED TO GET

A SURVIVABLE BASING MODE ON IT. WAS THAT A USEFUL MOVE ON CONGRESS'

PART?

Dougherty:

Well there was that period in the mid-'70s there when survivability

became paramount. Survivability of the basing mode. Unfortunately

people began to look at survivability of each aspect of your strategic

force and look at its survivability independent of the survivability of

the whole force. It was the diversity of the force and the diversity of

the characteristics of the force, to me that give it real robust

survivability. Without it having to be survivable in its component

parts to a finite degree. Yes, they said, as I recall, in the

compromise that the money is available here for production of missiles,

will not be expended on missiles that do not meet certain tests for

survivability. That's what I mean when I say we shot ourselves in the

foot. We made the argument for the necessity to attack these high

ordered accurate weapons of the Soviet Union and we did it to a fault.

And we played into the hands of the people who wanted to stop what we

were trying to do by using the bugaboo of individual vulnerability of

individual silos. And I think we made a mistake.

Interviewer:

WHY DID HE SUPPORT THE SEARCH FOR A SURVIVABLE BASING MODE?

Dougherty:

I guess I'll tell you why because I think we're sort of a disciplined

people and when the people who have the responsibility for making the

decision won't make the decision we regroup and say, ok, we'll go see

if we can find another answer. That's been our way. You know, I think

you could look back in Vietnam and say we fought the wrong war for ten

years trying to do it right. Our trying to do it the right way because

that was the way people wanted it done. That's, that's the nature of

the military. It can be abused because it will salute smartly and say

"Yes, Sir," and go out and try and make it work. And when you got lots

of masters and when the voices are coming at you in a cacophony, you

usually grab the last one and the loudest one and try to make it work,

and that one was the loudest. So we looked for a survivable mode,

because we thought they were telling us something, that they wanted a

survivable MX. Now I know they didn't want anything. They wanted, they

wanted the technological punt, you know, they wanted to put it off and

put it off. They were looking for a way to kill the whole project. And

they darned near did.

Interviewer:

REMINDS HIM THERE WAS SERIOUS CONCERN ABOUT A SURVIVABLE MX.

Dougherty:

I would have agreed to have a missile in a survivable basing mode and

to have it mobile but I would not have agreed to have this missile in a

survivable basing mode. This missile in my judgment was not the missile

to make mobile. The Midgetman that we are now talking about, with one

or two warheads, weighing 49 or 59 or even 70,000 pounds is a much more

logical missile to design for a mobile mode. This missile is not

designed to be mobile, it's really designed to fit a Minuteman silo and

to have ten warheads, that's where it's most effective. But we

constantly were trying to make something out of what we had. I don't

disagree with you about that. But I would say that the mobile missile

that we need is a long way downstream and it's going to take a long

time to get one that we agree in the numbers that we need. Go back to

numbers. Because that's what the person who is responsible to give you

advice on targeting has got to do. You can't give him a job to do

without at least hearing him when he tells you he hasn't got the

weapons to do the job. And that's what the director of strategic target

planning, I, my predecessor, my sue...3, 4, successors, have been

saying, I don't have the weapons to do the job. So give him at least

the bedrock capability to do that and then go get the other weapon

systems. We had this one. It was a bird in the hand. It still is. And

fortunately there is still time. I don't know when time is going to run

out, I hope it never does. But we would have much more security in

looking at a mobile survivable weapons systems after we took care of

the bedrock capability to have a deterrent anchor.

Interviewer:

WHY COULDN'T YOU FIND A SURVIVABLE BASING FOR THE MX?

Dougherty:

Well first it's a very large weapon. And it, when you take a large

weapon and surround it by a large mobile environment, you know, wheels,

gears, lifting weights. And, and balancing bodies and things like that.

It gets very big, it's very dense, it gets very easy to detect from

various censors. And then you begin to play the what if game, you know,

the people that listen to the ground and the people who detect magnetic

alloy and disruption and all these things and you say, well, you know,

the Soviets could find it. They could find it wherever it is. They can

tell the dummies from the real and we'll have to have a number of

dummies and that will cost this and that. And then we'll have to put it

out where it's out of sight and out of mind and where nobody will

object to it. And there isn't any place in the United States like that.

So we'll have to find the best possible places and that's in the under

populated or unpopulated West where we have ranges. But then it's very

visible. And so you just keep running around, you know, we're not a

command economy. We're...the government is tolerated in our country and

so you can't put it where you want to. You can't put it on our nation's

highways and you can't put it on our nation's railroads routinely,

either of which would be delightful. You know, you can't run it around

and put it in great big covered sheds and out of satellite detection

because you'd have to mix and mingle in the, in the urban areas. You

know, flying over the United States and just look down at megalopolis

and look at all those great big truck storage warehouses all around the

inner changes of the big cities, you know, there's thousands of places

where you could put missiles in this country that would be absolutely

undetectable, but you probably would run into some sort of you got to

make it available so they know where it is. Hide it from them but make

sure they know where it is. And do you remember the years we struggled

with that one? How to make it undetectable, put it in a mobile mode

where you couldn't see it and target it, but yet make sure they know

how many you've got. In fact, every now and then open them up to show

them you got some. You know, these are the situations we have gotten

ourselves into in trying to be both capable, effective, and in the

proper numbers, and then cheap. And the combination of these things is

very difficult. And particularly when sometimes you're working

different agendas.

Interviewer:

WAS THE MPS INHERENT RIDICULOUS?

Dougherty:

No, no. It was, it was extremely expensive and difficult to maintain

and probably would have been short lived. I'm going to say something

that doesn't sound good on PBS, but you know, the old KISS is a very,

very fundamental thing for military weapon systems that are going to be

operated by military people. You know, just Keep It Simple Stupid. Keep

it effective, and keep it strong and keep it ...but keep it simple.

Because you can sit down in a ...in a tabletop scenario and develop

very seemingly exact and exotic system of deployment and you can

measure it from all different dimensions and it sounds pretty good. And

you put it on and it won't work. Now the multiple silos where you were

moving around is a way to make fixed sites less vulnerable because you

got empty holes. But you see fundamental to my concept for a portion of

the strategic force is I don't worry about the vulnerability of those

holes for those weapons. Because I am going to have those weapons

sufficiently responsive and hopefully as a part of my arsenal I'm going

to have a satellite detection and warning system. I'm going to have

sensors. I'm going to know if this nation is under consequential

attack, so much so that they are vulnerable. And if I know that I know

that my national command authority has the capability to make that

assessment and to know that attack is coming and to launch those

missiles out of harm's way and into a point where they are very

effective. They must be effective because the other side must know they

are effective so you would never launch that first attack. That portion

of the force can be satisfied in my judgment by putting it in fixed

silos, protected but not protected to the point of absolute

survivability. There's where I think we made the mistake. We applied

the survivability test too finitely, too precisely to too many weapons

systems. I know some of the people who worked on that, I know some of

the reasons that they gave. I know them well. Some of them who wrote

some of those words in that law know as much about this anatomy of

deterrence as I know. I can't imagine them coming down on such a hard

position as that, unless I ascribed it to political motives.

[END OF TAPE A12014]

Vulnerability

Interviewer:

QUOTES LARRY SMITH WITH MX AS AN ATTRACTIVE NUISANCE. ASKS HIM HOW HE

FEELS ABOUT THE POWER AND VULNERABILITY OF THE MX.

Dougherty:

I think it's a specious argument although I understand where it's

coming from and I've heard it many times, and I agree that all things

being equal, the best military disposition is to so scatter your

valuable weapons that they are in multiple locations. And that the MX

does concentrate ten warheads in one missile in one location. But,

think of a submarine, you know, with 20 or 30 missiles, with an equal

number of warheads. Or think of an aircraft carrier, or think of an

airbase. You know, we think of a division in a contonement area. Think

of a depot in Europe. We have many targets just by sheer necessity of

the fiscal constraints of living that we concentrate valuable targets

in one location. Now the nature of this weapon is not hostile, it's not

hostile per se. The potential of the weapon doesn't mean that the

weapon is rocking on ready, that it's sitting there going to explode,

that it's dying to get in a fight. It's not a hostile or virile weapon,

I mean, not a, it's a virile weapon but it's not hostile. This part of

our force I would not expect to be vulnerable because the kind of

attack that would threaten it in a consequential nature is the kind of

an attack that I would expect and I think the Soviet would expect us to

respond to. And it has the capability of that kind of response. You

don't have to call it up and say, "Let me know when you're ready, you

know, because I may need you." It's always ready and it's ready to

respond to a proper execution. And that gives it the ability to deter

the kind of attack that threatens it. I guess this is not without logic

or everybody would be convinced. And there must be a down side to my

argument or I wouldn't be so, ...I wouldn't find so much disagreement

about this issue. But to me the logic of this thing is that a small

number, and I call 100 a small number, and I call 1000 warheads of this

nature a small number. People don't understand what I mean by being

small but that is a very slight percentage of the target system that

the Director of Strategic Target Planning, with which he must be

concerned. This weapon system need not be absolutely survivable in

order to be effective to do what my construct and I hope the construct

of many others is for it to play in the strategic arsenal. Now if you

wanted to make it the whole of the strategic arsenal, it would work.

You wouldn't dare hazard the whole of the strategic arsenal to weapons

systems that have this degree of vulnerability. But it's not vulnerable

to the kind of attack that I postulate, because the kind of attack that

I postulate that attacks this weapon would not find that weapon there

if our national command authority did what I think our country expects

him to do. Now you say it invites attack. It would only invite attack

if you made it the sole strategic arsenal of the country. If you kept

multiple modes of delivery, bomber, subsurface, surface, and...cruise

missile, if you kept those different modes in a relevant sense and kept

them in at relevant numbers, deployed and dispersed, in relevant basing

modes. And when I say relevant that's because it's only the enemy we're

concerned about and we've got to have quantity, types and basing modes

that are relevant to his capacity and capability and his posture. If we

do that, then we don't have to worry about this being a single

strategic force, the decapitation of which is going to leave us unable

and disarmed.

Interviewer:

WHY IS IT NOT VULNERABLE TO ATTACK?

Dougherty:

Because its capability of being launched 30 minutes before its

vulnerability becomes an issue. If you can detect, first, if you have

these weapons, it's going to take a very consequential attack to

destroy them. 100 of these weapons in 100 silos is going to take at

least 200 highly accurate weapons in route for near simultaneous

impact. And to get that you're going to detect that attack with at

least 27 or 28 minutes of warning. You're going to know precisely

the...weight of that attack in 15 or 16 minutes. You're going to be

able to make a decision to launch these missiles in say 5 or 6 minutes,

and you're going to be able to launch the missiles in one or two

minutes. And the missiles are going to be launched, and I know that and

the Soviets know that and I know that they know that. And I think we've

met the test of operative deterrence against that kind of an attack.

Now that's not going to attack against a TWA terrorist attack in the

Middle East, nor Achille Lauro nor some such...act of terrorism. But

it's going to deter a consequential nuclear attack against the

heartland of the United States.

US Nuclear Strategy and Targeting

Interviewer:

WHY DO WE NOT HAVE A LAUNCH ON ATTACK POLICY?

Dougherty:

I don't know that we need an explicit policy like that. We've had an

explicit policy that we would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons for

our NATO forces because that's NATO policy and it was adopted as NATO

policy. That doesn't mean first strike. We... it doesn't say that we

will launch an initial attack or that we will start a war, but that we

would not hesitate to be the first to use nuclear weapons. Now I said

launch from under attack. I didn't say launch on warning. I'm not

talking about launch in anticipation that they might attack us. I'm

talking about launching out from under an attack. I don't know that

there's an explicit policy for it. I don't know that there's an

explicit policy against it. But it's a capability that the MX provides

the national command authority. And if the national command authority

chooses not to use it then it's a very vulnerable weapon. If the

national command authority foregoes the ability, the ability to launch

out from under a consequential nuclear attack against the United

States, we don't have a deterrent policy anyway. So it's all abstract.

We're going to fight, you know, from out of Armageddon. But we may have

to do that and we have got to be prepared to do that too. That's why

you need diversity in a nuclear force.

Interviewer:

ASKS HIM TO DEFINE TERMS.

Dougherty:

It's like first strike, and accuracy, and first strike weapons, you

know, first strike is not a characteristic of the weapon, it's a

characteristic of how the weapon is used. Launch on warning to me means

I have warning that an attack is imminent. So I will launch to prevent

that imminent attack from occurring. That's not what I'm talking about

when I say launch from under attack. A launch from under attack is when

an attack has been launched. It has not yet detonated or may have

detonated but it has not detonated totally. And it is of such

consequence that it can be detected. It can be identified from whence

it comes, what it is, the nature of the, of the system that launched

it, the number of warheads, the trajectory of those warheads, and the

probable points of impact. And when you can put those things together

through multiple sensors, with a high order of assurance that they're

accurate, you have received good indication that you're under attack.

And you know with good indicators what's going to be attacked. Could

you, could you spoof something like that? I don't think so. Why would

you spoof something like that? You have unleashed the power of an

atomic arsenal. Even if the national command authority elected not to

launch out from under attack, you'd be the most surprised person

because you would expect him to do that.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT REAGAN'S DECISION TO CANCEL THE MPS.

Dougherty:

I think he made the right decision. I thought we had played around long

enough looking for a multiple basing mode for the MX and that it was

time to go back to basics and to put the MX in the ground. If that's

the decision you're talking about, that's... I cheered that because I

think we have now come full circle. We have given it a bloody no, and

we have run down to a point of no return ever one of these options, and

we found none that serves our purpose better than putting it in the

ground. I remember thinking about a discussion held with the chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when we were talking about survivability

in 74. And he says, you know, what do you think we ought to do. And I

said bite the bullet and put it in the ground. And in 1981 I think we

came to the same conclusion. And we are putting it in the ground and I

have been out to Cheyenne and I've seen the installation, and it's very

simple. It's not exotic and it's not scary but we in very well upgraded

and efficient silos with good communications are putting our MXs in the

ground in that missile field surrounding that three state area there in

Cheyenne, Wyoming. And it's a good location. And it doesn't seem to

bother the people in the community, as it shouldn't. And yet I think

we're deploying a first-rate, upgraded, modern force. That we can rely

on. While we look for ways to develop an ICBM force of the future. Now

if we elect not to have an ICBM force in the future, that's fine, but

we shouldn't be forced into that decision through being unable to have

this one to carry us on while we make a decision. We shouldn't have to

go by desperation into it. And these are decisions that you cannot make

quickly. It takes years to bring them to fruition. You can't just go on

down and buy some. And that's why the absence of decision is so costly.

Interviewer:

ASKS IF HE COULD HAVE ACHIEVED A NEW GENERATION OF MISSILES WITH LESS

PUBLIC ATTENTION?

Dougherty:

Senator Goldwater has taken me to task personally over the name of MX.

In his salty manner he says, "Why in the hell didn't you name the

damned thing Minuteman IV?" Well first I didn't do that wasn't my role

to do that, and by our own internal regulations we couldn't call it

Minuteman IV because the extensive modifications that were made in the

missile made it a new missile and by our regulations it couldn't be

done by modifications. It was a new missile and had to be given a new

name. Now that's part of our systems development bureaucracy that

required it to be a whole new missile. Well I think Senator Goldwater

was right that we were dumber than hell or we would have called it

Minuteman IV. But that's water over the dam and we couldn't go back and

even Senator Goldwater couldn't fix that one. In fact he didn't try too

hard.

Interviewer:

MIGHT HE HAVE ESCAPED ATTENTION?

Dougherty:

Yes, no doubt, not all of the attention, certainly, but a lot of it. I

think people are much more prone to go with an evolution of something

that they have become accustomed to than they have, than to have

something new explained to them, particularly in this area because it's

very apparent to me that we don't like nuclear weapons and I don't

think those of us who deal with them, like them. You know, there's no

love between the people in my command and the weapon. There's great

respect. And there's great attention to detail. I never had much

problem at all with discipline, even during the flower child days with

the people in the command because as they got closer and closer to the

nuclear weapon their discipline became more and more pronounced. And

you know they'd say, now tell me once more how to do it, you know, let

me go through that checklist one more time. Nobody wants to screw

around with this. And we've been a very disciplined force with this and

I hope we remain that but...I think that the political diatribes that

go on over the new weapons have to be, you know, I guess that there is

just enough schism in our country over the requirement to be nuclear

guarantor of the Free World, guarantor of the provision against the

expansion of nuclear technology among other nations, and the

responsibility of being Big Brother in the Free World is wearing on our

people. They don't like it, they don't like the weaponry that it brings

forth, they don't like the standing force that it requires and they

don't like the expenditure of funds that are involved. And I understand

that and I understand that this nation doesn't see as its future being

the military policeman of the world. It doesn't like that job and it

doesn't want it. And they don't want a standing army nor a standing air

force nor a standing navy. But...that's what we're finding ourselves

with because the technology of our time has disenabled us from turning

plough makers into defense industries and turning civilians into

soldiers and back again. That time is gone.

[END OF TAPE A12015]

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT SUDDEN INCREASE IN TARGETS TO BE COVERED.

Dougherty:

Well first the expansion in the target system and the change in the

character of the target system didn't come about suddenly. It came

about over a period of years, on my predecessor's watch and on my

watch. And it came about by and large through hardening and through

diversity and through the development of the SS-18 and through the

development of a very intricate network of underground command posts

and underground command and control bunkers and hardened communications

sites. Things that are the sinews of a nuclear force. Not just the

weapons but all those other things that are needed in order to make it

work, to make it play together and to make it responsive. And it takes

time to detect these things. And so what you're talking about happened

over a period of years, and we begin to think about, we're going to

need a higher order of accuracy than we've got, and we're going to need

more than we have. The more had been sort of given all along. You know,

we were sort of always warhead limited, particularly responsive

warheads. We got a big shot in the arm with submarine-launched

ballistic missile as far as numbers of warheads, but we lacked the

accuracy. We couldn't use them against the hard targets, and the

time-sensitive targets. And you couldn't use bomber-delivered weapons

against time-sensitive targets cause they got there too late. You get a

high order of accuracy but not a responsiveness, not a timeliness. So

you needed a high order of accuracy on missiles. And you needed more.

You know, we keep to the extent that you can with the facilities

available to you keep close watch on all those changes. A lot of

changes you don't see happening until they've already happened. Or you

don't see the, you don't appreciate the scope of it until you've put

three or four of them together and then you say, gee whiz, look at

this, let's run this up on our evaluation and see what this looks like,

and how hard this is. And then let's look at our capability and let's

see what we can do to that. And if you can shake, rattle and roll,

that's not enough. You've got to be able to knock it over, or you've

got to bend it or dent it. You've got to put it out of business. Or

you've got to destroy it. You don't have to destroy targets in order to

render them inoperative, but you've got to do more than just blow the

trees down, and that's what we've got to do.

Interviewer:

WHAT TARGETING WAS MX DESIGNED TO DO?

Dougherty:

Well the MX is designed to go against any target that requires accuracy

and warhead combination, such as the MX has to be able to render it

inoperative, or to do sufficient destruction that it could not carry

out the mission it was designed to do. Not just delay it. But to, that

if the MX is fired at that ground zero, that the target that's at that

ground zero will not function after it's attacked. Now what is that? It

could be any number of things. It could be a submarine bin. It could be

a missile site. It could be a command and control bunker. It could be a

government communications center. It could be a nuclear weapons storage

site. It could be a poisonous gas storage site. That one always makes

me wince because I hope nobody ever hits poisonous gas storage sites.

This one, you know, we haven't figured out the answer to this yet and

when we figure it out the American people won't like it. But there are

any number of targets that now require this kind of accuracy and

they're growing still.

Interviewer:

DO WE NEED AN MX FOR EACH SOVIET MISSILE?

Dougherty:

If you're going to attack that Soviet missile you only need...you may

not attack all the missiles. You may only attack certain missiles. Or

you may only attack the command and control nodes for those missiles,

which is one of the better ways. You never know which of those missiles

will have been fired or which will not be fired. You can't play the

empty holes argument if that's what you're going to ask. I'll guarantee

you there is no solution to the empty holes argument. But with the

Soviet Union having three times the number of missiles that they need

for an initial salvo, then if you could you would attack every known

site, because two out of the three will have a missile in it. Or some

will have a reload capability because they have a reload ability we do

not emulate in this country where their sites are still available. So

ideally but not practically you would be able to put a Minuteman

warhead down on every known Soviet silo after, even after launch. What

you can do though is always dependent on a reduction in optimum

numbers. You never have enough warheads nor delivery vehicles to attack

all the target systems. So you have to make some judgments as to which

ones you're going down on. Which ones will you likely fire up first?

Which portion of which field would you likely fire on first. Those are

judgment calls based on your best intelligence. If you have the

warheads to do it. If you don't, then put it on the most decisive

targets you can find. Some may not be missiles at all. Missiles are the

most time demanding. If you want to get in there, you got to get in

there fast. But it may not be the most important. You know, if you knew

where the intricacies of his command and control system were, you would

put it first down on his command and control system.

Interviewer:

DOES IT WORRY YOU THAT'S WHERE THE DECISION MIGHT BE MADE?

Dougherty:

Yes I know that argument but you see, if the MX is made vulnerable by

the scope of an attack, you are pretty well beyond nuclear war. You see

the command and control mechanism, to maintain limited nuclear

conflict, is not likely to be relevant to a conflict that threatens the

MX force. So the MX force I don't think comes into play except as a

backbone force in a limited nuclear conflict, but I know that the

argument that says the least likely place to be attacked is Washington,

and the least likely place for us to attack is Moscow. Because that's

where we're going to stop the war. You know, as long as that

possibility exists, that's going to be the least likely place we'll

hit. But when that possibility doesn't exist, it's likely to be the

most likely place to hit. So this will vary with the scenario and it

will vary with the President's reading of the tea leaves. And we'll

help him.

Interviewer:

ASKS IF ONLY HAVING 30 MINUTES AFTER WARNING MAKES HIM NERVOUS.

Dougherty:

Well of course...the whole construct of your scenario makes me nervous

as hell. And a half hour makes it even tighter. The half hour, however,

is better than 15 or 20 minutes and that's the depressed trajectory

threat. And that's the one, that's where it really gets tight. And

that's where, although we haven't seen that threat really come about

yet, and that's where the cruise missile could play launch close in off

our shores, you always have a time compression here that makes it very

difficult to be blas頡bout it. And I don't think anybody can be. But

what you are trying to set up is a degree of responsiveness that though

it's very difficult for you to handle that, it's even more difficult

for him to handle it. And that's the delicate balance of terror. No

matter how difficult it is for us to assess and react, he must take

into consideration how difficult it is going to be for him if we do.

And that's the capability we've got to build into our weapon system

that the President must have available to him. What he's going to do,

you know, I don't know. But what he can do is within our capability to

do something about, and I want him to have as few constraints as he

can. Then he can handle time compression if it's possible to handle it.

If it's not possible to handle it, you know, we're in bad shape.

Interviewer:

ASKS HIM TO DESCRIBE HIS FRUSTRATION BEFORE CONGRESS.

Dougherty:

I don't think any of us resisted exploring different options of basic

weapons. And I don't ridicule nor am I critical of what-if questions.

Some what-if questions, if asked from honest motives are very useful.

They provoke you into thinking and to analyzing your own actions and

your own judgments and none of us are foolproof. In fact none of us are

right all the time, a lot of us are wrong a lot. And it's easy to be

wrong in this area. Where you, if you continued to play what ifs,

however, you get in the worst possible situation and then you get where

you just can never decide. In fact I had an old Turkish PhD that worked

over in the NATO-SHAPE center in the Netherlands who told me one time,

he said, General, you Americans have just got...you've got...paralysis

by analysis. And you know I realized he was, his criticism was sort of

right. We analyzed things to the point that we couldn't make a

decision, and we began paralyzed. And a cessation, I mean a complete

succession of what-ifs sometimes sort of paralyzes decision. And none

of the military wanted that to happen. And so when we started looking

at these various options for how to improve survivability we readily

looked, and tried to analyze them all.

Interviewer:

WHY DID HE NOT ARGUE BEFORE CONGRESS THAT WE SHOULD NOT SUPPORT MOBILE

SYSTEMS?

Dougherty:

It's not only to Congress that you made the argument. You make the

argument inside the administration, and you, unless Congress asks you

your personal thought when you go over there you're supporting the

position of the administration on these things. And the position of the

administration changed diametrically on two or three occasions on this

one. So, I never hesitated to answer a question that I was asked about

what I thought. Otherwise I was over there supporting administrative

position which was to see if we could make these more survivable. Why?

Because the administration was told by Congress, Don't come back until

you have a mode that's more survivable. So you salute smartly and say

"Yes Sir!" The dictates of the Congressional appropriation bills

are...that's the law of the land. Now. Whenever I was asked by Congress

if I agreed with that, I didn't have any hesitancy in answering it. I

was never asked. Nobody ever asked me how I recommended the MX be

deployed. Outside the administration. Except you and others like you,

in retrospect over the events of the past few years.

Current Nuclear Weapons Development

Interviewer:

ASKS FOR A SHORTER VERSION OF HIS ANSWER ON IDEAL MISSILE.

Dougherty:

The design of the MX missile was the composite of many peoples' inputs.

And I think that design met a sort of a consensus. I think the majority

of us wanted the biggest missile that you could get that would go in an

existing Minuteman hole, with minimum modification, some increased

hardening, but not much. That would have a little space so it wouldn't

be an absolute skin-tight fit, so that it would carry up to ten

warheads, or it would carry less than ten warheads and some pen-aids,

we call them, penetrating aids, that it would be solid-fueled, that it

would have some rattle space but not too much. That we could improve

the head works, that is the sliding door on the missile, and that it

would be responsive to existing MX missile field command and control

structure. Now we've added to that a lot. It's got a lot better command

and control structure. But that was a basic design. Make it bigger but

make it fit the hole, so that we didn't have to redesign the field. In

that respect, that's when Sen. Goldwater said, why you dumb jerk, why

didn't you call it Minuteman IV. And I guess we should have.

Interviewer:

THAT'S THE MISSILE YOU GOT?

Dougherty:

Well yes we have some of them.

Interviewer:

CITES LATER CRITICISM OF HIS MAKING SMALLER WARHEADS.

Dougherty:

No, I don't think the design, the size of the missile, was ever really

questioned. Not that mode. I think all of us questioned trying to make

a missile of that size mobile and trying to put it in the various

mobile modes or the various multiple hole, multiple basing option mode.

It was awfully big to be moving around. You don't do that very quietly.

And when you make a dummy, it looks like it's a very big dummy.

Interviewer:

WHY DIDN'T YOU REDESIGN TO MAKE MOBILE BASING MORE FEASIBLE?

Dougherty:

Why didn't we? I can't answer that. I guess we are doing that now. It's

called Midgetman and so we're doing that, but you know, the time of

these programs is long and the design and the design work and the

trials and tests and...are drawn out and we've been working on a small

missile for eight years, I guess. Seven years.

Interviewer:

IS MIDGETMAN A GOOD IDEA?

Dougherty:

Only if you have a bedrock capability of MX. It's not a good idea if

it's a single mode ballistic missile because we will not build enough

of them or deploy enough of them to make a meaningful contribution or

to make the bedrock contribution to a missile force. That's my judgment

and that may go over the board as all judgments made by old soldiers.

But, I watched this nation argue over strategic weapons and their

number and their characteristics, and I would feel much more

comfortable about it if we would put at least 100 MXs in the ground,

and maybe 50 on railroad cars as Congress seems to be clambering for.

In fact, they've said, if you can't give us a better basing mode, we

won't even give you the next 50. I think that's very shortsighted and

very wrong. I think 100 MXs in the ground and 50 if they want to put

them on railroad cars, then you can take your time and develop your

best optimum mobile missile. And Midgetman seems to be on the road and

I think we've scaled it properly. We've designed it so that it doesn't

require extraordinary construction, it doesn't require redesign of

bridges, nor does it require any extraordinary shoring up that would

enable a person to know exactly where you're going to put it because

you see where culverts, or widened, beefed up bridges are strengthened

and overpasses are modified, and now you know the path of it.

[END OF TAPE A12016]

US and Soviet Union Strategy

Interviewer:

CHATTING ABOUT SOMETHING ANOTHER GENERAL HAS SAID. SHE ASKS HIM TO

COMMENT ON THAT.

Dougherty:

Well I think they were saying, Those dumb Americans, we never can

figure out what they're doing. You know, I don't, I think the Soviets

know exactly what we know about those basic things. I think they're

very sophisticated and they're very understanding about our

capabilities and our limitations. And I think they've been deterred

because we've had it, and they know we've got it, and there's

no...we're not spoofing. We're not playing games. In fact, we Americans

don't do cover and deception very well, thank goodness. We don't have

to practice it. If we ever get down to where we try to do deterrence

with mirrors, God help us, you know. The only reason we've been

successfully deterring is because we've had it, and we've known it, and

they've known it. They know we argue, they know that our major weapons

have taken on political coloration. And I've talked with enough of them

to be confident that they make their own assessments, based on their

own estimates and their knowledge, and it's good. I don't think we play

that kind of game, you know, we are not masters of deceit and

deception. Our society will have it out. Just ask any recent political

contender and you'll find out that they'll find out cover and deception

every time.

Interviewer:

SUGGESTS SOVIETS ARE IMPROVING THEIR SYSTEMS...

Dougherty:

Oh I think they really did that. Don't you remember the, you know, we

built, they built, we stopped, they built. That's exactly what

happened. And in the '60s we thought they were going to match us. And

then people turned around and said, It didn't happen. It really

happened. It didn't happen like we thought it was going to happen. We

thought it would first happen in intercontinental weapons. They made

their decision, because it was their decision, to go first to the

battlefield in tactical weapons, and they really outgunned us fast

there. And in Europe in 67, we begin to see where their money was going

and it was not going into ballistic missiles, it was going into

tactical missiles. And the SS-7s, and the 9s, and the scalable rigs,

and they came out like sausage. And then they turned into the upgrading

of their ballistic missiles and then they did MIRV and they did go for

high order of accuracy and they did go for hardening, and all those

things we thought they might do, they did. Better than we thought.

Arms Control

Interviewer:

ASKS SALT II'S EFFECT ON MX PROBLEM.

Dougherty:

Well, you know, I'm not a, I personally am not opposed to arms

limitation and arms reduction. In fact, it's the only way I know short

of maintaining a pace with the Soviet Union that we've got a chance of

providing for our security. We either are going to get reductions and

controls and constraints or we're going to build with them and stay

relevant. Because our nation doesn't really have to have many arm

forces, we, depending on the other side, we can scale right now, and

just fine, because we have no requirement for standing forces. But the

constraints are something that you've got to take into consideration

and you've got to build around it. Now when SALT II was negotiated,

first, I was asked by the Senate Arms Services, or Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, to come testify. Several of us were, just retired.

The question they said, if you were a member of this committee would

you vote it up or vote it down, and I said I'd vote it up. And I would

have. And I lost a lot of friends from that because when one of them

ever read what I said, not that they read my testimony they just read

what The Washington Post said I said, so I immediately lost all my

hardline friends. Who didn't understand or hadn't analyzed that the

SALT II treaty didn't prevent us, the terms of it, and the codicils,

didn't prevent us from doing anything that we had planned to do. Now. I

don't say that it prevented the Soviet Union from doing anything. But

it had nothing to do with whether the Soviet Union could be believed or

whether it couldn't be believed. It at least was some restraint and

some constraint on what was going to happen. That was more than you had

with no holds barred. So to the degree that it represented agreement

between us, and that they signed it and that our president signed it

was some constraint and it helped you in some way define the force that

you might be opposed to. Now did we give up some things? Probably. Did

we accept some conditions? Probably. But in the final analysis, after

I'd spent a week off by myself, seriously answering the question asked

by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I came to the conclusion

that it was better given the environment that our president had signed

the agreement, and he did to the world represent our president and he

signed that agreement. And then to have the legs cut off by Congress

not approving it. I listened to all the other side that said, you know,

they gave away the farm. But I heard those same people a few years

later saying, Well, under the circumstances I think we'd better stay

with the agreement, that it's better to stay with it than it is to

violate it. You're darned right. It would have been better to have

signed the agreement. Oh, you know, constraints are terrible.

It's...and then you put money into it. And then you put, arms control

into it. Pretty soon, boy you get a pretty complicated game. And you

don't know where and how to play it.

Outcome of the MX Debate

Interviewer:

WHAT IS HIS BIGGEST LESSON FROM THE FACT IT TOOK 13 YEARS TO GET THE MX

BUILT?

Dougherty:

In retrospect, that decision of mine was a decision of many people. And

I think that if I've learned anything from those times in the early

'70s, when that decision was made, we would have been advised to sit

down and look at the point of survivability, vulnerability, and decide

what we were going to do rather than to just drift with it. One side of

our family, very honestly and for very honest motives was making the

point of vulnerability through Soviet increases, through massive Soviet

infusion of resources into their ICBM force and into the accuracy of

their warheads and the number of their warheads. And yes, boy, we were

getting vulnerable, but vulnerable to what, you know, vulnerable only

to a surprise attack. And we hadn't really thought what it is we were

trying to do with our central strategic force. With our central

strategic force we were trying to keep an attack from being launched on

this country. The fact we were vulnerable to it is abstract unless it

comes down on you. So I think that we made diametrically opposed

arguments too loudly from the same camp. And we set ourselves up to be

cut apart and piecemeal for multiple reasons. And the multiple reasons

are at least more than two.

Interviewer:

ASKS WHAT WAS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED.

Dougherty:

On the one hand we were designing a missile to go into a fixed silo. On

the other hand, within our Air Force and without our Department of

Defense, we were screaming about increased Soviet capability and

relative vulnerability and how we had to become more survivable. We had

to make our weapons more survivable. So we were designing a weapon that

per se was not survivable in the face of a threat that was making

vulnerability more pronounced.

Interviewer:

THERE WAS NO WAY OUT OF THE SCHISM?

Dougherty:

I think there is a way of getting out of it. I don't know that it would

have been effective. We would have had to play back the same 14, 15

years to find out. But I think there's a way of explaining the role of

the weapons system. Everybody is scared to death of first strike.

Everybody is scared to death of a very fickle and delicate and unstable

situation, having, that would lead into a disastrous first strike. And

everybody is just a little bit apprehensive of a weapons system that

will not take a full-scale nuclear attack and survive and come rising

up out of the ashes like Phoenix to live again another day. You know,

this is the way we sort of portrayed the requirement for survivability.

Without really thinking through, what is it we're surviving for? Just

to prove we can survive? No. What we're trying to do is design a series

of weapon systems that will handle all contingencies but primarily

we'll keep that attack from ever happening. I don't think we explained

that very well. And I don't know with the political schisms and the

control they're getting over the thought process, I don't know whether

you could have worked it or not.

Interviewer:

THAT'S WHAT SCOWCROFT COMMISSION DID.

Dougherty:

The Scowcroft Commission was the best thought out single piece of

writing that I've seen in years. If it represented a compromise it was

a beautiful compromise of very skilled practitioners of the so-called

art of deterrence. And I think that if every American would read the

Scowcroft Commission report we would be better off. And if all of the

politicians would read it, I know we'd be better off.

Interviewer:

BECAUSE?

Dougherty:

Because it's well thought out by people who are thinking from a

perspective of objective responsibility, to the extent that anyone can

be objective. It rings true because it hangs together. It, it's

logical. It's relevant. And it's readable. And it provides an excellent

framework for what I've just described. It says it better than I but it

says build the bedrock force, not the total force. Not all the

strategic arsenal. But build the... I call it the keystone. Build the

keystone and then you can, you can build the arching stones to fit it

and you've got time to do it. But first you've got to have the keystone

to put in there to hold them together.

Interviewer:

OTHERS SAW THE MX AS HOLDING UNTIL WE HAD MIDGETMAN. YOU SEE IT THE

OTHER WAY AROUND.

Dougherty:

It was you that called the Scowcroft "compromise" and maybe it was a

compromise for those who said they would support only Midgetman and

that this was a way of getting there. But when these brilliant men, I

think there were only men on this one, set themselves to it, for

whatever reason, they came through the thought process that I did to

get to Midgetman. And they never said in there that Midgetman alone

would wag the dog, or would wag the tail or however you want to put it.

They never said that. They...they took you there through the thought

process that I've gone through to get there. Now whether it's a

compromise or whether it was just logic coming to the fro, I think it

was the latter.

Interviewer:

WOULD HE BE HAPPY WITH JUST MIDGETMAN AND DO AWAY WITH THE MX?

Dougherty:

How many, how many? Enough to cover the target system? I would not be

happy with it because I know the American people would not long support

it. First they wouldn't buy it, they wouldn't man it, and they wouldn't

deploy it properly and they would begin to constrain it until it lost

its survivability or until its survivability was very seriously

compromised. That's because we're the kind of people we are, thank God,

you know, we're just not an armed camp and we don't let our military

run around on our roads without thinking ill of them. And I would hate

to see the military getting to that position. I don't think we have to.

I don't think we need that, that kind of omnipresence that you need in

order to have a real survival force. I don't think you'll buy the

numbers. I think time and technology will provide some other

alternatives but I think that a Midgetman force in reasonable numbers,

is an outstanding utilization of technology to develop a survivable

reserve force. I think...a survivable reserve, one that is in

reasonable control and reasonable ability to command and regulate and

retarget and reprogram, I think that's the best utilization for the

Midgetman. I think, you know, through it all we have to go back. What

is it we want of our strategic force? We don't want it on show. We

don't want it for parades. We don't want it to, to troop the line on

special days. We want it to prevent a nuclear attack on this country.

Interviewer:

ASKS HIM TO REPEAT.

Dougherty:

I think that what we have, our strategic nuclear force and particularly

our heavy missiles, is to prevent a nuclear attack on the United States

or to prevent an effective threat of nuclear attack on the United

States. And that's what it's for. And we try to make it more or less

than that and diddle with it at our peril.

[END OF TAPE A12017 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Russell Dougherty, 1987

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-z31ng4h28s

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Description

Credits: Interviewee2: Dougherty, Russell E.
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: 08247a6f8ba695a1e66abe0e85fe9fc7d65f1ef2 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00

Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Russell Dougherty, 1987,” 1987-10-14, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 17, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-z31ng4h28s.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Russell Dougherty, 1987.” 1987-10-14. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. October 17, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-z31ng4h28s>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Russell Dougherty, 1987. 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-z31ng4h28s