McNAMARA ON BOMBING THE NORTH

In an evenhanded report on the air campaign against North Viet Nam, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara last week provided the Senate's Preparedness Subcommittee with a wealth of information that has never before been made public--and some sober conclusions unlikely to encourage either the hawks who would drastically escalate the bombing of the North, or the doves who would end the bombing entirely. Among the highlights:

WEIGHED against its stated objectives," said Mc-Namara, "the bombing campaign has been successful." There were three objectives when the bombing began in February 1965, and they remain unchanged: 1) to reduce the flow and increase the cost of Hanoi's supply of men and materiel to South Viet Nam; 2) to raise the morale of the South Vietnamese; and 3) to make clear to Hanoi that aggression in the South would have to be paid for by a high price in damage to the North.

Infiltration has indeed been made costly and difficult for the North Vietnamese. From January through July of this year, said the Defense Secretary, U.S. fighter-bombers averaged 13,000 sorties a month over the North --75% of them directed against lines of communication and goods moving over them. "In addition, we have struck approximately 1,900 fixed targets in North Viet Nam, including 57 bridges, 50 major railyards, troop barracks, petroleum storage tanks and power plants."

Attacking from China. For all this harassment, enough supplies keep coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail to fuel the Communist war in the South. In clear terms, Mc-Namara explained why. North Viet Nam has, he said, such a highly diversified transportation system, ranging from sampans to bicycles, that even at the present level of bombing, "the volume of traffic it is now required to carry, in relation to its capacity, is small." It is surprisingly small: "Intelligence estimates suggest that the quantity of externally supplied material, other than food, required to support the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces in South Viet Nam at about their current level of combat activity is significantly under 100 tons per day--a quantity that could be transported by only a few trucks." Therefore, "complete interdiction of these supplies has never been considered possible by our military leaders."

But the price Hanoi must pay to get the goods through "is hurting North Viet Nam's warmaking capability." Some 500,000 people, said McNamara, have had to be di verted from other tasks to repair bomb damage. Since the President has authorized attacks on 85% of the 359 targets chosen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, few really damaging targets remain. True, four airfields are as yet unhit, but only an estimated 20 MIGs are now operating from North Vietnamese fields. The clear implication is that the rest of Hanoi's air force now nests in China and attacks from Chinese bases.

Seldom by Sea. McNamara turned next to the arguments of the hawks, who advocate either total obliteration of everything that moves in North Viet Nam, military or civilian, or closing Hanoi's ports by bombing and mining. Total bombing, he said, would violate America's limited aims in the war. In addition, "short of virtual annihilation of North Viet Nam and its people," such bombing might very well not work.

What about interdicting Russian and Chinese supplies to Hanoi by closing North Viet Nam's ports, notably Haiphong? That, too, argued McNamara, would not work. North Viet Nam imports some 5,800 tons a day, some 4,700 tons of it through Haiphong's port. Military equipment makes up only 550 tons daily in imports, and "little if any" of it comes in by sea. Haiphong is a "convenience rather than a necessity" for imports, and even if all 400 miles of North Vietnamese coast could be interdicted, "North Viet Nam would still be able to import over 8,400 tons a day by road, rail and waterway." McNamara noted that the U.S. had long ago destroyed Haiphong's petroleum off-loading facilities. As a result, Hanoi now unloads petroleum from tankers sitting offshore. Barges float the fuel in by night, and Hanoi has "no evidence of an oil shortage."

Proof in the South. Since U.S. air power cannot completely cut off supplies to North Viet Nam, or the arms and men Hanoi sends south, McNamara's inescapable conclusion was that the U.S. should continue bombing the North at roughly the present level, using the air campaign as "a supplement to," not "a substitute for" the ground war of counterinsurgency in the South. "I am convinced," said McNamara, "that the final decision in this conflict will not come until we and our allies prove to North Viet Nam that she cannot win in the South. The tragic and long-drawn-out character of that conflict in the South makes very tempting the prospect of replacing it with some new kind of air campaign against the North. But however tempting, such an alternative seems to me to be completely illusory."

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