THE COMING MISSILE GAP

Power in the Bomb Bays; Trouble on the Pads

Behind the politicking of the missile-gap debate that sputtered in Washington last week lay some troubling nonpolitical questions: Will the missile gap mean a power gap? What dangers will the missile gap bring? Does the Administration's defense program provide for adequate preparations to cope with those dangers?

TODAY there is no missile gap because neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. (so far as the U.S. knows) has any significant intercontinental ballistic missile capability. The U.S. has only three operational ICBMs--three Atlases on launching pads at California's Vandenberg A.F.B. The U.S.S.R. has more--ten, says one Washington guesstimate--but not enough to add up to a meaningful weight on the scales of power. By mid-1961, the U.S.'s total will be up to approximately 72 (four Atlas squadrons with ten missiles apiece, two Polaris subs, each carrying 16 missiles), and the U.S.S.R.'s up to about 100. By mid-1963, according to revised plans and estimates, the U.S. count will be 200-250, the U.S.S.R.'s 400-500. Beginning in 1963, the U.S. hope runs, the compact, solid-fuel Minuteman missile, to be launched either from underground concrete silos or from moving railway-car platforms, will go into mass production, and the missile gap of the time will swiftly disappear.

The Administration argues that an ICBM gap of 2 to 1 in 1963, or even 3 to 1, will not mean a "deterrent gap." In 1963, explains Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, the U.S. will not be relying solely or even mainly on ICBMs for its main deterrent power. The big punch will still be the H-bombs in the bays of the Strategic Air Command's manned bombers. Backing up SAC's bombers will be a growing force of missiles, but SAC alone will provide an abundance of what the Pentagon calls "overkill." The H-bombs carried by a single B-52 bomber add up to 20 megatons of blast power--the equivalent of 1,000 A-bombs of the size that leveled Hiroshima--and SAC has 400 B-52s. During the next three years SAC will add 300 more B-52s (armed with 500-mile Hound Dog air-to-ground missiles as well as H-bombs), plus about 90 supersonic B-58s. The theory of deterrence rests on the assumption that the enemy leaders will be rational, and the Administration argues confidently that Soviet leaders, faced with the prospect of getting hit by SAC, could not make a rational decision to launch a missile attack on the U.S., even with missile superiority of 2 to 1 or 3 to 1.

There is no real argument about the power of SAC, backed up by the nuclear-armed fighters of the Tactical Air Command in Europe, to deter a Soviet attack on the U.S. this year. But earnest and patriotic men are haunted by doubts as to whether the U.S. can complacently rely on SAC to bridge the missile gap as it widens in 1961 and beyond, and whether the President's $41 billion defense budget for fiscal 1961 is an adequate response to the challenge of that gap. The critics do not argue that the 1961 budget fails to provide for adequate security during its own time span--July 1960 through June 1961--but that it fails to provide an adequate safety margin for the years beyond that. And the complexity of military technology in the missile age, the long "lead time" between a decision to undertake a program and the translation of the decision into ready-for-use hardware, requires that the defense budget for any year take account of the foreseeable problems and perils of the future.

The most insistent worry is that sometime in the early 1960s the U.S.S.R. might be tempted by its edge in missiles to try to knock out U.S. retaliatory power with a surprise attack on U.S. bomber and missile bases. The warning by SAC's commander, General Thomas S. Power, that with a mere 300 ballistic missiles the U.S.S.R. could "wipe out our entire nuclear strike capability within a span of 30 minutes," is much to the point. General Power's answer to the threat--an "airborne alert" that would keep 25% of SAC's B-52s in the air at all times -- would be enormously strenuous and costly. It would require more flight and maintenance crews, more spare parts to keep up with wear and tear, more tankers, enormous quantities of fuel, all adding up to $1 billion a year. But without it, SAC will be vulnerable, and the U.S. will be in danger.

A second widespread worry, inside and outside the Pentagon, is the possibility that Soviet advances in air defense might largely cancel out SAC's bombers before the U.S. gets around to closing the missile gap. To assure that SAC keeps ahead of Soviet air defense progress, SAC's Power and the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Thomas D. White, want to start placing orders for North American Aviation Inc.'s B70 bomber, designed to fly at three times the speed of sound. In its money requests for fiscal 1961, the Air Force asked for $464 million to get started on a B70 program. The Administration slashed the request to $70 million, which will buy two militarily worthless prototype B-70s by 1963.

Generals White and Power make a persuasive case for the B-70, but it would be even more persuasive if a lot of defense experts did not argue just as plausibly that it would make more sense to narrow the missile gap by speeding up development of Minuteman. If defense funds were unlimited, it would doubtless be well to push ahead with both the B70 and Minuteman--and build more B-58s, more Polaris submarines and more Atlases, make SAC more secure by dispersing its bases, and hasten modernization of Army equipment too. But every defense budget, whether it totals $41 billion or $51 billion, must have a limit, must make choices between alternative courses and overlapping programs. Having made their choices, however, defense planners must follow through on the logical implications of those choices--and President Eisenhower's 1961 defense budget is vulnerable to the criticism that it does not follow through. Items:

Polaris & Minuteman. The decision to bet on the future of the Polaris and Minuteman systems, and to put up with a missile gap in the meantime as a calculated risk, entails a responsibility to push Polaris and Minuteman as fast as possible in order to shorten the duration of the gap. But the 1961 defense budget provides for starts on only three Polaris submarines (nine have been authorized by Congress). And although the U.S. is depending upon Minuteman to close the missile gap in 1963-64, the Administration is doing next to nothing to assure that when Minuteman is ready to go into mass production, launching facilities for the missiles will be ready too.* One of the high hopes for Minuteman is that it will prove feasible to launch the bird from moving cars traveling back and forth on the nation's railway system, but research into this possibility is barely getting started under a meager $1,000,000 contract. Needed: a speedup in the Minuteman program, possibly a step-up in production of Polaris subs.

Airborne Alert. Dependence on SAC during the years of the missile gap requires that SAC's bombers be safeguarded from a surprise missile attack. The 1961 budget includes a skimpy $90 million to provide for preparations for an airborne alert at some unspecified future time. Needed: additional funds to ensure that 25% of SAC's B-52s can go on airborne alert in 1961.

Research. The U.S. decision not to match Soviet power missile for missile calls for energetic probing for technological breakthroughs on the frontiers of military research. The 1961 budget skimps on frontier programs. Needed: more funds for military research, especially on possible uses of space, such as reconnaissance and early-warning satellite systems.

Fallout Shelters. A decision to rely on massive retaliatory power demands some kind of program for protecting civilians against radioactive fallout. A fallout shelter program would reduce casualties in case of attack, make U.S. deterrent power more convincing to the enemy, and help safeguard against ballistic blackmail. Experts of the Air Force's think-factory, the RAND Corp., argue that even a minimal program, costing no more than $500 million, would save millions of lives in case of a nuclear attack on the U.S. in the early 1960s. The money would not go into building shelters, but into identifying and labeling existing potential shelters (caves, basements of heavy masonry buildings), educating citizens about fallout hazards, developing and distributing low-cost radiation meters, etc. With even such a program under way, state and local governments and private citizens might get going on shelter programs of their own, but they can hardly be expected to do much about civil defense as long as the Federal Government does nothing at all about it.

Vigorous pushes in these four directions, while they would not settle all doubts about the adequacy of the Administration's defense program, might go a long way toward assuring the world that the coming missile gap will not mean a gap in the power of the U.S. to protect its citizens from enemy attack and the free world from Communist domination.

* The complex needed for launching ICBMs--bases, pads, fuel, crews, communications networks, etc.--costs from three to five times as much as the missiles themselves. Because of a lag in getting launching facilities built, the Administration's 1961 goal for operational Atlases has been cut back twice in less than two years: from seven squadrons (70 missiles) to five, and then to the current 1961 goal of four squadrons.

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