Nuclear Numbers Game

The life-or-death question of how the U.S. would come out in a thermonuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union has a nagging habit of cropping up shortly before Election Day. In 1960, the Democrats' misleading charges of a "missile gap" served to confuse and alarm voters. This year it was Richard Nixon who sought a last-minute advantage. "The present state of our defenses is too close to peril point," Nixon charged in a radio speech, "and our future prospects are in some respects downright alarming. We have a gravely serious security gap."

The statistics that Nixon used, matched against figures marshaled by the Administration to rebut him, added to the mystification of the layman. But close examination suggests that Nixon was being less than responsible in playing a nuclear numbers game.

sbMISSILES. Discussing the U.S. arsenal of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, Nixon declared that Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1961 bequeathing to the U.S. a 50% advantage over the Soviet Union. Today, Nixon maintained, U.S. superiority in this "crucial weapon" is only marginal--and diminishing daily.

True. But not quite that simple. In 1961, the U.S. owned precisely ten ICBMS, and the Russians had only 50% of this--just five missiles. In 1968, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford has noted, the U.S. has a total of 1,054 land-based missiles, while the Russians have installed 900.

sbBOMBERS. Nixon charged that the Administration has "so positioned our country that by 1970 or 1971 we could find ourselves with a 'survival gap'--discovering then that we are irretrievably behind in the most critical areas." Nixon continued: "Eight years ago, our numerical advantage over the Soviets in bombers was 30%. Now it's more than the other way around. Today the Soviets are 50% ahead of us." At the end of 1960, when both superpowers still relied principally upon bombers as a means of delivering nuclear warheads, the U.S. had 1,930 big intercontinental bombers, the Russians only 1,200. Today, with bombers serving primarily as a back-up force to the missiles, the American bomber force has been reduced to 646 planes.

The Russians have approximately 150 heavy Bear bombers that can reach the U.S. and get home again without refueling. Nixon's figure can only be attained by including the Soviet force of some 700 relatively slow, medium-range aircraft that could fly only one-way missions without air-to-air refueling.

sbSUBMARINES. When the Democrats assumed power, the U.S. had 14 nuclear subs, the Russians none. Today the U.S. fleet has 76 atom-fueled submarines and the Soviet Union 55.

Nixon neglected to mention the overwhelming superiority that the U.S. now enjoys in submarine-launched missiles.

American submarines can launch 656 missiles, while Soviet undersea craft have fewer than 80 missiles in their nu clear magazines.

Nixon also left one important and familiar question begging: When the stockpiles of both powers already ensure a massive overkill, why should the U.S. add to its thermonuclear hoard in or der to convince any potential enemy that all-out warfare would signify immediate devastation? Nixon's view is that keeping ahead of the Soviets in a nuclear race would ensure peace by demonstrating that the U.S. had not turned soft.

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