Debating the Debate

By James Kelly

Critics launch the first-strike attack on Reagan's defense plans He's been successful in developing a package of decisions that will satisfy nobody completely. The doves and the hawks and the moderates will all have some objections." So said retired Army General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1962 to 1964, summing up the debate over President Reagan's $180 billion program to beef up America's nuclear forces. Sure enough, when Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger visited Capitol Hill last week to sell the proposals, he was greeted with a barrage of skeptical questions fired from both sides of the aisle.

Reagan had rejected a plan recommended by Jimmy Carter to shuttle the new MX missiles among thousands of shelters in a vast "drag strip" in Utah and Nevada. The most heated grilling of Weinberger involved the Administration's alternative plan: temporarily housing the first 36 of the 100 proposed MX missiles in "superhardened" Titan II missile silos. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Defense Secretary began his testimony by trying to clarify the "window of vulnerability," a term used to describe the period in which American land-based missiles could possibly be wiped out by a surprise Soviet attack. He warned: "That window will be at its widest in the period 1985 to 1986 because we have not modernized our strategic forces as we should have in the past."

Republican John Tower of Texas, committee chairman and a supporter of the dragstrip approach, acidly noted that the hardened silos would hardly make the MX invulnerable. "What is recommended does not enhance the survivability of the MX missile," he asserted. Democrat Henry Jackson of Washington argued that by shielding the MXs in fixed silos, "we're giving the Soviets a better target." Weinberger quickly fired back: "I don't agree, Senator." The Secretary pointed out that the silos solution was only temporary, and that strengthening the silos did protect the missiles. Said Weinberger: "Whatever we gain is worth it."

The most damaging doubts came not from a Senator but from the man sitting next to Weinberger at the hearings. Dressed smartly in a blue Air Force uniform with four gleaming silver stars, General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, candidly admitted that he still favored the dragstrip approach. "I remain to be convinced that the alternative provides survivability," said Jones. "I reserve judgment whether it would be wise to go ahead with hardening." The general hastily added that he and the other service chiefs fully support Reagan's decision. "I found out a long time ago," Jones drily explained, "that it was more important for me to convince the Commander in Chief than for the Commander in Chief to convince me."

The questioning was no less sharp from members of the House Armed Services Committee, who quizzed Weinberger next day. Chairman Melvin Price, an Illinois Democrat, complained that the Pentagon lacked proof that "36 MX missiles in Titan silos will be any less vulnerable than the missiles presently in those silos." Many House members, as did some Senators, also attacked the Administration's plan to build 100 new B-l bombers at a cost of $200 million apiece.

The plane is scheduled to start rolling off Rockwell International assembly lines by 1986, and is designed to replace the aging B-52s until the "Stealth" bomber can be completed, which Weinberger says will be by 1989. But critics contend that the price tag is too high for a plane that will be obsolete by the late 1980s, when the Soviets may well have improved their air defense systems to foil the B-1s. Said Democratic Senator Gary Hart of Colorado: "We cannot afford both bombers, and the Stealth is the more formidable of the two."

Weinberger is said to be disappointed that so much attention has been focused on the MX missile and B-l bomber decisions. He feels that Reagan's proposal to improve U.S. radar and satellite communication systems, which went all but unquestioned at the hearings, is just as important as building new weapons. With these improvements, the President would be better able to launch a retaliatory strike while an enemy attack was under way, but before all American silos had been hit.

If these ingredients of the program have been ignored by the President's critics, it is largely because Reagan has emphasized that a window of vulnerability is about to open. "If you believe that the window is anything more than a pencil-and-paper calculation, then it's true this program doesn't go far enough," says William Kincade, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. "But I don't believe it anyway."

Other defense experts are also skeptical about the window; even some of those who do believe in it stress that only the leg of land-based missiles in the triad of air, sea and land missiles will soon become vulnerable. And as the U.S. improves the accuracy of its own missiles, Moscow has reason to fear for the vulnerability of its missiles in case of an American attack.

Many of those who buy the notion that the U.S. is staring out that window argue nevertheless that some of the $180 billion targeted for the programs might be better spent elsewhere. Chief of Staff Jones, for example, fears that the heavy commitment to the MX, B-l and Trident submarine programs will drain funds away from improving the nation's con ventional military forces. Indeed, there is one aspect of Reagan's proposals that draws universal agreement: the price tag is too low. Weinberger admitted last week that the cost of the six-year program was figured in 1982 dollars. By the time inflation takes its bite, he said, the bill is likely to hit $222 billion. -- By James Kelly. Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

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