GENERAL, WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCE'S BIGGEST CONCERN DURING THE MCNAMARA YEARS WITH THE DECISIONS HE MADE? HE MADE SOME VERY CONTROVERSIAL DECISIONS.

Well, he did, and in retrospect, I think I can see why he made some of those decisions, Early on, in the early '60s were the growing pains of the directorate of strategic target planning, called the JSTPS, the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, which came out of a Gates decision made in the early '60s to put all strategic nuclear planning in one staff located in Omaha, headed up by the officer who was the commander in chief of Strategic Air Command and a second hat called the Director of Strategic Target Planning. In that role, we pulled together the planning for the submarines with their sub-launched ballistic missiles, the bombers. And the emerging intercontinental ballistic missile force of the Strategic Air Command. At that time technology was limited, the technology of accuracy had not yet developed. The weapons were in retrospect of a gross accuracy that did not enable precise application of weapons to targets with precise results. And early on there was a lot of talk of city busting. Ah, this had an economic effect because it limited the number of weapons that you needed, if you were just going to destroy X number of cities, and that was often equated in the early '60s to 300 Soviet cities of the first and second magnitude in the Soviet Union. Then you only needed the weapons to do that job. Ah, I've never considered and I don't think the Air Force considered nor a lot of thoughtful people considered that this had any military utility. This was a gross sort of thing that the Air Force in World War II wouldn't do, didn't do, lost thousands of people trying to do accurate bombing in daylight. Ah, and we pushed technology in order to move away from the gross accuracy of the early days. Ah, at this...

DID MCNAMARA PUSH THE CITY BUSTING PHILOSOPHY IN THE EARLY DAYS?

No, I don't think so. I think I think early in those '60s as my memory serves me the McNamara early years were consumed with trying to develop conventional forces, and trying to develop a conventional option. And trying to make more accurate and more effective nuclear weapons. But the press was on conventional force development. If you'll recall those were the Kennedy years. And Kennedy came into office with that commitment. And he came in with a large number of people who were dedicated to that was a problem. The problem has to be recognized, I think, like this. Ah, we were looking desperately for a conventional option. But time and technology was passing us by. The Soviets were becoming a major nuclear power in their own right. And given that, there was no such thing as a conventional option when there is considerable military power on either side. What you can do is raise your option raise your level of expectation from conventional forces, but it's very expensive. And if my perception is right in retrospect, very early on, Mr. McNamara recognized the expense involved in trying to develop a conventional option and the relative economy of nuclear weapons to hold at bay, a nuclear equipped power such as the Soviet Union. Other things were happening too the Vietnam War was beginning, it began in Laos and spread to the whole of Indochina, and we were in the emerging years of this. His attention was progressively distracted by that, until the... I think the nuclear aspects got into the background. Except when he would attend the NATO planning meetings in Europe. Ah, we created there, he created it was one of Mr. McNamara's initiatives, the NATO Nuclear Planning Group. The NATO Nuclear Planning Group was conceived in the doctrine that if the Soviets, I mean if the European allies understood the uncertainties of nuclear weapons, if they understood the dynamics of nuclear capability, then they would understand better the dilemma of the United States as it went down the nuclear road trying to hold the Soviets at bay with just a nuclear deterrent. And that the Europeans would then come in and pick up progressively more of the conventional load for defense in Europe. Ah, and there was lots of effort devoted to the exercises of the Nuclear Planning Group, which was five, sometimes six nations, with swing nations, those larger NATO nations that had some substantial role in nuclear planning and also in conventional planning.

IN THE, SOME OF THE EARLIER DECISIONS IN '61 THAT ALAIN ENTHOVEN I THINK WAS INVOLVED IN, ALTHOUGH HE — THERE WASN'T AT THAT POINT A SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OFFICE. IT WAS A THOROUGH REVIEW OF THE FORCE STRUCTURE AND THEY PROMOTED THE... THEY PUT THE MINUTEMAN, ICBM AND THE POLARIS PROGRAM ON OVERTIME, AND IT SEEMED TO ME MADE SOME PRETTY DRASTIC CUTS IN THE BOMBER FORCE, THE B-47s WERE PHASED OUT, THE B-58s WERE CANCELLED. THEY STOPPED THE PRODUCTION LINE ON THE B-52 AND CANCELLED THE B-70. WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCE'S REACTION OR YOUR REACTION TO...THE DOMINANT REACTION TO THE PHASING OUT OF ALL THESE BOMBERS?

I was a Colonel, planner in the Air Force in those early years. So my perspective can hardly be that of the Air Force, except I was at fairly close range to some of the decisions made by my seniors. Let me see if I can put some sort of an assessment on that. In my judgment the cancellation of the B-70 had to be the B-70s technology and the B-70s... B-70s expected regime of operations was such that it would have been very vulnerable at the outset of its operational life. Now that's not to say that had we had the B-70 we may have been able to build on it, into even something that we call today a transonic vehicle because it had a lot of power, it had a lot of speed, and a lot of potential. But early on in its operational concept it would have been very vulnerable to surface-air missiles and to high-flying interceptors. Ah, the decision was that we had to go low. We had to get on the radar. We had to do 2- or 300 foot penetration. And the B-70 was not designed for that. And so then came along what was earlier called the Advanced Strategic Manned Aircraft, the AMSA, which later transitioned into what today we know as the B-1. Now that was a long process, and I don't want to get stuck in that. Now, the B-7... B-47, you have to recognize was an early second generation jet engine in a... mid-'40s design, a swept wing high-wing loading. A beautiful airplane. I flew the B-47 early. And it was pretty dramatic to recognize that you could outrun any fighter in the world in that big bomber. That didn't last long. Like so many things in technology, technology overcame it to where when I left the B-47, I couldn't outrun any modern jet fighter. The B-47 was a capable airplane, but if you had kept it, you would have had to re-engine it you would have had to redesign it, you would have had to get it down low where it in its original incarnation it was not efficient down low. It was a gas guzzler, to use that expression. Also it required true force, it required extensive basing, it's range was such that it required lots of refueling. So in retrospect I can... I can see that technology overcame the B-47. Though, you know, as a... as an airplane buff, I can see thousands and thousands of ways in which it could have been utilized for other things, many other things. But I don't think the decision was wrong. We were betting on the technology of Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles. We were betting on the technology of submarine launched ballistic missiles. And the bet was worthwhile. Ah, the early intercontinental ballistic missile investments really paid off in terms of accuracy, reliability and economy. Ah, the technology that went into the early Polaris gradually gave way to the Poseidon, which was a dramatic improvement over the Polaris, both the subs and the missiles. And the Minuteman II was a dramatic improvement over Minuteman I, and the Minuteman III, even more. All of these things had their genesis in those years.

I'M SORRY TOMMY POWER ISN'T HERE TO SPEAK FOR HIMSELF, BUT HE TOLD ALAIN ENTHOVEN... ALAIN ENTHOVEN TELLS US THIS STORY WHICH WE'VE USED, ONE DAY TOMMY POWER CAME UP TO ME AND SAID, LOOK, ALAIN I'VE BUILT UP THIS MAGNIFICENT FINE ORGANIZATION AND NOW YOU'RE COMING AROUND AND TEARING IT APART. AND ALAIN REPLIES, I KNOW TOMMY, BUT YOU KNOW, TIME AND TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO PASS US BY, AND YOU KNOW, WE SEE THE FUTURE AND ICBMs UNDER THE LAND AND SUBMARINE LAUNCHED MISSILES. WELL, PUT YOURSELF IN TOMMY POWERS' POSITION. WHY WOULD HE HAVE BEEN FRUSTRATED AT THIS FINE ORGANIZATION BEING TORN APART?

Well, I think I can put myself in his position. After all, I had his job several times removed. No one wants to see an extant organization destroyed to bet on the come. And there was a lot of betting on the come. Ah, we've come around to where we've exploited technology and built it back up. But you... take some dangerous chances when you bet on the bush rather than the bird in the hand. Ah, Tom Power did have an organization that was expensive in its conception, and it was extant and it was trained, and it could have developed tremendous capability by evolution. So I think that Tom Power was taking a very logical approach. When you have brought technology along and when you can prove that you can do it, then is the time to transition, not to bet on it when it's still in its incubating period and still in the laboratory and not in the hands of the troops. Today, our people have exactly the same argument in front of them, on the BIB and the advanced technology bomber. Ah, the argument goes, well, why build the BIB when you can build the Advanced technology bomber. But the advanced technology bomber is not yet extant. And the training base, the understanding base, the planning base, the pros, cons, how to use it, all these things that make a weapon system a true weapon system rather than a development idea, have not yet happened. And I think that was what Power meant. Power meant when you get the technology and we can transition it into blue suit — well, I use that expression — I mean by that into the hands of operational forces, that's the time to start tearing down the panoply of bases and of aircraft and of trained people. We do this a lot. It's a tough one, because people always want to bet on technology to produce something cheaper, more efficient and better. And...and they want to have the money to pay for it, so they have to disestablish today's expenses in order to make investments in tomorrow.

WHAT'S THE CASE FOR — NOT FOR ANY PARTICULAR BOMBER, BUT THE CASE FOR THE BOMBER IN THE '60S MAYBE TODAY, FOR DEFENDING EUROPE. WHAT ADVANTAGES DID THE BOMBER HAVE OVER THE MISSILE?

In many respects the rationale for the bomber in the early '60s and the rationale for the bomber today are different, in many respects they're the same. Let me see if I can draw a distinction. In the early '60s we were dealing with what I would call gross inaccuracy of missiles, compared to today, not compared to nothing. They're very accurate, compared to the challenge of technology. But we're talking in terms of miles. Accuracy in miles in the early '60s. Today you're talking in terms of accuracies in tens of feet, and at most, hundreds of feet, for modern missiles with modern guidance systems. Given that early inaccuracy of missiles, and given the fact that the missiles were just coming along and they weren't in quantity in the hands of operational forces, the bomber provided you the accurate delivery capability. Ah, accurate by maybe three times more accurate than missiles, four times. And the delivery capability of the bomber also gave them much greater capacity to deliver weapons to multiple targets. Many more weapons than the early missiles could launch. MIRV-ing came along with one warhead turning into three warheads. And then three turning into ten and then the MX, accuracy improved. And today I would think that there is a... there is a decided shift in the rationale for the bomber. Today, the bomber is most effective in imprecisely located targets or targets that move.

THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SAME IN THE '60s, BUT LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT USE THE BOMBER MIGHT HAVE BEEN IN THE '60s, THE EARLY '60s COMPARED TO THE MISSILE, SAY IN TERMS OF DEFENDING EUROPE? AGAIN, IN THEATRE PROJECTION FORCES, THE MOVING TARGETS. WHY DID THE AIR FORCE THINK THE BOMBER MIGHT BE USEFUL IN THE EARLY '60S IN CASE THERE WAS A WAR?

First we were confident that the bomber could penetrate. Could penetrate the defenses. Not that you ever put a bomber right in the lethal envelope of a surface-to-air missile, that's ridiculous. You don't hazard something as expensive as a bomber against something as cheap as a missile. But we knew where they were. We could fly around...we could stand off and destroy them with SRMS so that the... and early it was hound dog and later it was SRM. Ah, early on the bomber was a very useful delivery system for multiple weapons. And we didn't have enough missiles to address the targets. Now a lot of people don't understand that. But if your job is to weigh targets and take those value targets and apply weapons to them, you would run out of missiles very early on, and you'd be left with a vast array of targets not as risk or not subject to attack. Now the bomber solved that problem by multiple weapons against multiple targets like nothing else we have. So early on we didn't have the missiles. Let me give you a little vignette that makes this point. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, many of the people who had been living in a programmatic world rather than an operational world, thought we had hundreds of Minutemen Missiles in their holds, on the line, and on standing alert. Because for years we'd been talking about having thousands, maybe two thousand to use Tom Power's figure, of Minutemen Missiles, But given the Cuban Missile Crisis, we didn't have any. So it — there are years between the programmatic decisions made to do something and the operational capability in the hands of operational forces. That happened in the Minuteman, and early -- so in the early '60s when you talk about having missiles we didn't have modern missiles in the early '60s. We had some early Titans and some early Atlases, and these were very unreliable, grossly accurate and very expensive to maintain.

I DON'T WANT TO OVERSIMPLIFY IT BUT, TELL ME THE CASE FOR THE... FOR THE BOMBER BOTH IN TERMS OF THEY WERE USABLE AND IT'S BETTER AGAINST MOVING TARGETS AND MIGHT BE MORE EFFECTIVE IN FIGHTING A WAR IN EUROPE.

Let me see if I can sort of give you a paragraph on the utility of the bomber. Ah, and contrast it to a missile. The first thing I would have to come to is reusability...

LET'S START WITH "THE BOMBER..."

When you look at the case for the bomber as opposed to the case for the missile, either the ground launched missile or the ballistic missile, a short range missile you have to come to the fact that a missile once expended is gone. So that your force can be sized very accurately by an opponent. A bomber has a reusability about it that's unique that no missile has. A missile expended is a missile gone. A bomber has a capability to look for a moving target. A missile, unless you want to go to another step of technology and put what's called a MARV in the front end of that missile has no capability to look for a moving target. So the old idiom that all you have to do to make a... target relatively invulnerable from a missile is to make it move is true — though you can overcome it at great expense. Ah, the bomber, has the capability to go against moving targets. It has the capability to carry very diverse load of weapons, not all of a kind. In fact it has the capability to carry and exploit a lot of different kinds of weapons, non-nuclear. Ah, a bomber has a flexibility about it that is... that is very apparent. It also has an expense. You pay for a bomber, in crews and in basing. Ah, and invulnerability, But it gives you another mode of threatening an enemy. Ah, if you go to a single mode with your capability and then that mode becomes subject to a defense, an effective defense you're, you're left up the creek without a paddle. You can't do that if you're country is dependent on you've got to have multiple modes of delivering weapons to an enemy. Now, in this, in this problem of putting an enemy at risk to the point that you convince him that he can't use his force effectively. Ah, there's much of the Soviet military commonly called the Soviet Army, the Red Army the Red Navy that, isn't static, and it isn't fixed it is moveable. And in time of conflict is likely to be on the move. I don't think any military person would ever be comfortable with his force if he didn't have a very consequential capability to put at risk the moving portions of an enemy's military, and particularly the Soviet's military because of it's consequence and it's size and it's relationship to Western Europe. We've got to be able to put the Red Army at risk, Early on in the '60s we did not do that very well. We did not do it very well because we didn't have the capability, we didn't have the numbers, we didn't have the technology. The bomber was key in being able to do that at all.

WHAT IF THERE WAS AN INVASION OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE EARLY '60s, WHAT ROLE MIGHT THE BOMBER HAVE PLAYED?

In the early '60s it would have probably played the only role...

THE BOMBER.

...ah, the bomber would probably have played the only role in stopping those forces or at least inhibiting their rate of advance. Both ours...

SAY "IF THERE HAD BEEN AN INVASION OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY '60s..."

Well, given the postulate that there would be a Soviet invasion of Europe in the early sixties, the bomber would have played a very key role, both the Strategic Bomber and the Fighter Bombers that were extant in Europe at that time, and there were quite a few. Both ours and in the hands of allied forces using American warheads plus those of the French and those of the of the British . The ability to get deep beyond the front and back into what we now call the second and third echelon was solely the role of the bomber. Ah, interdiction points, road and rail networks, confluences where you to bunch up in order to move forward very lucrative targets very lucrative targets all the way from Western USSR to the front. That was the only way we could have kept the second and third echelon from reinforcing. And it's almost an axiom that if you can keep the Soviet and the Warsaw Pact forces limited to those in position in the forward area you can contain them. What you can't contain is almost an unlimited reinforcing capability from the East. And that was the role of the bomber, the Fighter Bomber, and you mentioned the B-47s, the early B-47 deployments were designed to retard the motion forward, of consequential Warsaw Pact forces. Only the bomber was there to do that. There, there wasn't anything else. Now, we've brought in token quantities of Pershing Missiles in our hands, and in the hands of the German Luftwaffe with out warheads. Ah, we've brought in now a ground-launch cruise missiles. We're getting a little different situation. The case for the ground-launch cruise missile and the Pershing is to take some of the load off of the penetrating fighter bombers that would have had to go into an increasingly sophisticated defense environment. And it does that. There is a military rationale, a strong one for the improved Pershings and for the ground-launch cruise missiles in Europe.

WHAT ABOUT STRATEGY? MCNAMARA ANNOUNCED A WITHHOLDING OPTION IN ANN ARBOR, WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCE'S REACTION TO THAT?

The Air Force has always espoused a counterforce doctrine. Ah, the Air Force was very pleased at the early indications during the sixties of support for what they considered to be the only legitimate role for military forces. And that is to put at risk, and if you become engaged to destroy or to render impotent the military forces of an enemy. If you can do that in our judgment you, you have won. If you can convince the opponent that you can do that and keep him from ever using his forces you've, you've won the ultimate victory. You've sustained a viable deterrent. Ah, we thought that counterforce was the challenge to technology. This was our role. This is what we should have done. Ah, those things that can attack us, those things that can directly can support it is what counter, is what the military's all about. And counterforce, unfortunately became a almost a dirty word. You just couldn't use the word, counterforce. Ah, fortunately there was a rationale developed that,

ON ANN ARBOR, WERE YOU DISTURBED BY THE WITHHOLD-HOLDING OPTION?

The, the option to withhold attacks on various categories of targets didn't bother me because I thought technology could support that. Early on you have to understand, that our nuclear planning was done on yellow tablets with stubby pencils and with strings on a map, and with clocks in our hand, and times written down on the yellow tablets. Ah, withholds would have been well nigh impossible in those days. Ah, de-confliction was difficult enough, and to de-conflict targets and to withhold categories of targets, required an application of the technology that by and large we called computer, ADP today. We didn't have that early on. Nobody had it. But we began to get it. And by the time I became the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command, we were well on our way to being able to do de-conflictions and to do withholds and to do optional attacks. And to do them with the precision that I considered reliable. And that I would have bet my life on. And I would have gone to the Pres--and did, go to the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff and say, we can do it. Ah, we couldn't do that early on, because we didn't have the capability, just like we didn't have the capability to attack some targets, we didn't have the numbers, we didn't have the sophistication. You know, time and technology has moved very rapidly here. The counterforce option that was espoused in the early McNamara years gave way I think it gave way economically. It was costly. It required applications of technology we didn't have, and also I think that there was there was an increasing detachment from these things based just upon the practical occupation of the Vietnam years on the part of the Secretary and the President, And...

ISN'T THE LOGIC OF A COUNTERFORCE DOCTRINE ONE OF ENDLESS ACQUISITION OF HARDWARE? DID THIS LEAD TO AN INCREASING REQUEST ON THE PART OF SAC WITH THE AIR FORCE FOR MORE AND MORE MISSILES?

If you have an enemy that grows in capability and sophistication and threat to you really have a choice of countering him or not countering him. Ah, if you are effective in being able to reduce him through negotiation, that's one thing. But if in spite of your best efforts to negotiate he continues to grow in consequence and capability, you either counter that or walk away from it. Ah, yes, there could me made an argument that this is endless, and that as he grows, you must grow, and he changes, you must change, and you must have multiple modes. And that you can't spend dollar for dollar, and go weapon for weapon. People attach to this a trite phrase the Nuclear Arms Race. I'm sorry they do that because I think it's much more important than some game we play at Churchill Downs or some such place. This is bet your nation. And you can look at it that it's endless, but so is life, and so is the human race, and if that's, if that's the price we have to pay in order to keep that from becoming virulent, to keep it from becoming active and to keep it from attacking us, then I think it's a price well paid. If we can continue to make deterrents work and to do that we need all the application of smarts and technology, and patriotism and loyalty that we've got then I think that's, that's a price that the nation, fortunately can pay and should pay. Ah, what are the alternatives? The alternatives are found in dreams and prayers and hopes of reducing armament. So yes, it's endless but fortunately we've, we've got 40 years now or more of showing that you can keep it constrained. We don't have any experience at all in showing what we'd do if we'd abandon that contest.

IN 1962 WHEN MCNAMARA WAS ASKING FOR 1,000 MISSILES, BEFORE HE TALKED IN ANN ARBOR. WHAT IS THE CASE FOR MORE MISSILES RATHER THAN LESS?

Well I think Power was not wrong from his perspective. Ah, and I think that McNamara possibly was not wrong from his perspective. Ah, how secure do you want to be? If you had given Power what he asked for in the time frame that he asked for it, he probably would have been able to put at risk far more targets. Deterrents would have been far more reliable, and deterrents has to be reliable in a period of tension know, when there is antagonism to the extreme not when nobody's mad, and nobody feels threatened, or coerced. So I think that . Power was expressing a military requirement, not a requirement that was that was pie in the sky, but was based upon his perspective of what had to be put at risk and what it took to do that. I think that the argument, if I can take Mr. McNamara's position here, or the government's Policy leader's position, was that they didn't want to make that expenditure and they didn't want to be that secure. They were willing to take some risk. This is always there. The military always gets itself into a position where it wants to reduce the risk to its nation. And that's the proper role of policy and the government is to determine how much, how much risk the nation's gonna take. Or how much it's gonna bet on the future or how much it's gonna bet on the interaction of forces rather than the forces that are in the hands of the commander. So, looking at the target systems that I saw during my time and my watch in the job that Power had I had far more target systems that should have been addressed by weapons than I had weapons. Now that's very difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't want to believe that. A lot of people don't want to believe that the Soviet Union has that kind of capability or that it—it's that hard. Ah, that they have dug in to the point that ordinary weapon can't dig them out. Or where you can only engage in tree blow down, you can't engage in silo destruction. Or you can only engage in area bombing rather than effective bombing against a sub-pan or a dock or something of that nature. Ah, when you look at it from that perspective you get a different answer than when you look at it from the perspective of, "I've got a budget," you know, "I've got a nation. I know what my nation can afford and I know what I'm gonna pay." Ah, the military commander can't look at it like that. He's got to make his recommendations based upon what he sees and what it sees it takes in order to put that at risk. Now if you want to minimize that expenditure then that's the policy decision and that's the way we're organized. And that ain't bad!

WOULD THE 3,000 OR 10,000 MINUTEMEN HAVE GIVEN US A FIRST STRIKE CAPABILITY? THE AIR FORCE ALWAYS WANTED TO GO FIRST.

Ah, no I don't think that's right to say we wanted to go first. I think the Air Force doesn't want to go at all. But they wanted the enemy to know that we could go first so they didn't dare even think about it. Now to have the capability to attack the Soviet Union before it had the capability to attack us, we had that capability for years. They knew it and we knew it. So the ability to do that was there for many years. As they began to develop their capability as they began to diversify, as they began to harden it, as they began to make it multi-mode, or if, as they developed the quantity that exceeded our ability to do that we didn't have that capability any more. And we haven't had it for a long time. I'm not sure that you could get it. Ah, I think it's pie in the sky. What you want is not an ability to first strike, what you want is an ability to convince him that you can, and that you can do it in a consequence to where you would not have the surviving weapons to out-gun you, and to disarm you and remain armed. And that's of course the big threat of the SS-18s and the number that they have it. At that in the secure strategic area, you know, they could disarm us and remain armed, and that is a threat. Ah, now whether that threat becomes active, that's a decision. And it's that fickle, frangible decision process that you're working on all the time. To try to convince him that he could not succeed. And how much is required to do that is the ultimate policy decision of our government. Ah, the obligation of its military commanders is to make as reasoned and as precise a recommendation as it can. You know we don't give our military what it wants, we expect our military to give us its honest advice, and its best judgment based upon its experience with handling those weapons. I think it's very important in any conversation of these things to recognize that there aren't any nuclear war experts. And the military has no more expertise in fighting nuclear war than anything else. We dropped two weapons in a wartime environment, but it wasn't a nuclear war it was one sided.

WHAT IS THE CASE FOR MORE MISSILES THAN LESS?

Well, the abstract question is why do you need more than less. It depends upon the assurance of damage that you want to achieve in order to achieve the level of deterrence you think is enough. Ah, it's very difficult for a military planner to rook at an array of extant-targets, not might-be targets, but real targets. And to look at what it takes in order to make those targets ineffective. Ah, and to make a recommendation for less than that, because if you're gonna charge him with a responsibility he wants to make sure you know the dimensions of the job. Now if you're willing to take some chances, or if you're willing to bet on notice, or if you are willing to assume that the provocation level won't get that intense, then that's the policy decision I don't think any military person argues with that. But I think they do argue with trying to distort his recommendations by saying, "You recommend less. Because I can only give you less." If the military recommendations were always at the level of affordability that the policy maker comes out with in advance, of looking at the facts. You know, I think you'd have a prostituted military. And I think that the one thing about the military that stands out, almost a hallmark of the American military, is its integrity. Ah, every now and then that integrity gets threatened, and nobody is more concerned about that than the military. But part of that integrity goes to the process of making recommendations to the policy leaders. Now a lot of times people want to try to get the military into the log rolling process. Ah, "You recommend less, because you're gonna get less, because you're we're got a problem of affordability, and we've got a Gramm-Rudman formula here..." Now these things have been going on for years, but you wouldn't want the military to do that. Now going back to the Thomas Power days, I remember when his figures looked high to you from a Washington perspective. But his perspective was, he was not able to put at risk a consequential amount of the Soviet threat, particularly he was not able to put at risk the Soviet Army. I use the Soviet Army in the generic sense. Those mobile forces that could have been that could have overrun Western Europe, had it not been for a nuclear threat to put 'em at bay. And he felt that that was getting ragged. That their ability, their mobility, and their b..., self-defense ability against that days bomber capability and fighter bomber capability was such that he had to do some of that job with missiles. A lot of that interdicting job had to be taken over when any fixed target that you could apply a missiles to, a nuclear war is an efficient way to take it out. And so he was trying to do that. Ah, I can only assume that as they looked at it they said, "That's more than we want to do. We don't think you have to do that. And we think we can hold the Soviet Union at bay just by threatening its urban areas." Now you remember a lot of the conversation at that time was a 300-city or a hundred million lives, and we even came up with a level of, of lives that if we could put at risk that many lives, that the deterrent would be viable. The military never espoused that, if we did, it was a mistake. If we did, we got into the Washington environment too deeply. But the military always looked at the credibility of its deterrent based upon the realistic ability of a Soviet planner to understand our forces and to understand their abilities, and to look at it and say, "If he did to me what he could do to me, I couldn't win. I couldn't offer you any assurance of prevailing." And if we can counter that, then we've come up with what is called, a countervailing strategy, and that ain't bad.

MCNAMARA TALKED ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION AS A PROCUREMENT CRITERIA. THE RHETORIC WAS EVEN AFTER WE ABSORB A FIRST STRIKE, WE CAN RETALIATE AND THREATEN THEM. BUT I UNDERSTAND THAT WAS NOT A STRATEGY FOR HOW THE FORCES WOULD BE USED. SO THERE WERE NO NEW INSTRUCTIONS TO SAC.

It's very difficult for a military person to take assured destruction as a targeting philosophy. Assured destruction was a sort of a net assessment that you might do as you look at it and determine that that's the end result. But it was not the way you would approach the planning. You approach planning by applying weapons to targets and you do it in the most logical possible way. You don't apply a little weapon to a big target but you apply -- and you don't apply a big weapon to a little target. You try to use your force wisely, and logically. Ah, but the end result of assured destruction is not in my judgment not a illu..., not a legitimate military objective to do the targeting. Ah, I know that phrase kicked around, and I know that MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction was voiced on all sides I don't think it was accurate to say that that was the way the targeting was done. Ah, and I certainly don't think it was an accurate way in which to instruct the people doing the targeting to approach it. You don't you don't do targeting by saying, "I want an assured deterrent. Now you go and target an assured deterrent." You do the best you can to apply military capabilities to extant targets with within the limitations of your force. And it was that gap between the limitations of force and the prevalence of targets that caused military requirements to be greater than what was approved. Now you look back and say, "But we haven't had a war, so it must have been enough." Ah, that's a retrospective judgment. And it's a very difficult one for a military person to be assured of. He just can't...bet that way.

BUT.

Now let me make one other point. Also you have to look at how you measure destruction, from the point of view of a, a military planner. Ah, nuclear weapons have multiple effects. We know that. You know, we've seen the Winter argument, we've seen Chernobyl accident. We've seen all these things that result in secondary and tertiary effects of radiation. Ah, I think you have to understand that if you're charged with a responsibility of doing nuclear planning, you could not base the effectiveness of your planning on secondary and tertiary results. You have to do it based upon first echelon results, blast damage. And that's the way you measure your ability to destroy targets. You don't try to use things that you can't measure, or you can't measure with precision. Ah, so I think that when you, when you apply weapons to targets and you're using blast damage as your measure of damages you get an entirely different result than if you're looking at it philosophically as to the overall effect of multiple nuclear weapons being exploded in an area and what that's likely to do to atmosphere and agriculture, and to things of that nature. Ah, I don't mean to be heartless, and certainly I don't mean to be inhuman, but I mean to be very practical. Now the targeteer must look at what his weapon is going to do through blast. Over pressure.

THE AIR FORCE HAS ALWAYS HAD A DOCTRINE OF COUNTERFORCE...

Yes.

...DID NOT THAT REMAIN DURING THE SIXTIES DESPITE THE SPEECHES AT ANN ARBOR. WHAT CHANGED?

Counter-force has always been hh, a basic doctrine, a fundamental doctrine of Air Force application of force, because the Air Force considers that's why they exist, in order to counter force. Counter-military is another expression that further refines it. Ah, and early on it became apparent soon that phrase was aggressive. It demonstrated hostility which we did not ascribe to it, but which some ascribed to it. It des-, it demonstrated a war-like capability, a war-eagle or war-lover connotation which we didn't intend that it have. Ah, we were trying to express to policy makers what we considered to be a fundamental task that we were capable of performing and designed to perform. Ah, it got merged into this amorphous, assured destruction. And that became the preferred expression. But even within assured destruction there was a, a recognition and I hope you've talked to General Glenn Kent, because he was very prominent in this. Ah, there developed an inside philosophy of within assured destruction called, damage limitation. And forces that could achieve a limitation of the damage that assured destruction incorporated. Now it sounds like I'm making a play on words, and I may be, but the phrase, damage limitation, to the Air Force planner was another way of saying counterforce. If I could effectively counter his force, I could limit my damage.

FROM THE AIR FORCE PLANNERS POINT OF VIEW, DID THE TARGETING DOCTRINE CHANGE AS THE RHETORIC EVOLVED DURING THE SIXTIES?

During the sixties, yes there was some change. Early on the damage limitation was very secondary and was not supported in a weapons decision manner. And this is very important. Where did the money go? On what weapon, on what weapons did you put money? Damage limiting weapons, high order of accuracy, multiple small warheads very accurate bombs didn't get the attention that assured destruction weapons did. Ah, you could make a case that there was an argument there between the subs and the bombers, or the subs and the inter-continental ballistic missiles. I think that's an endless argument. But early on the sub--subs were espoused, of course with the Navy, and the Air Force was concerned that we would go too far that way, because the submarine-launched missiles were not accurate. They were weapons of assured destruction not necessarily of military targets, because of their small warheads and inaccuracy. So the Air Force possibly in retrospect emphasized its counterforce argument parochially, and the Navy emphasized an assured destruction argument parochially. Ah, I don't want to pre-judge those things except there has to be some of that when you have weapons banging together. It's the policy makers judgment to sort those things out. But the Air Force was trying to increase the recognition of damage limitation to where it drove weapons decisions and where it drove weapons investments. And in the late sixties as a result of constant study of the targeting, strategic targeting and attack, policy, I think that there was a, was a...

LET'S PICK IT UP "IN THE LATE SIXTIES..."

Yeah, O.K. Throughout the sixties, in fact throughout the seventies and eighties, there's always been active evaluation of our targeting and attack policy, particularly with regard to nuclear weapons. This almost seems to be a, a given with every administration. Every administration that I have seen come in, and I've seen many now come in with a, a review of the strategic targeting and attack policy, review of the application of resource to weapons, particularly to strategic weapons, because strategic nuclear weapons are basically political. You know they have a political life that's entirely different from their military life. But every administration does that. Well throughout the sixties there was an intense review of our national strategic targeting and attack policy, particularly as technology evolved. And by the late sixties we were beginning to get some indications that technology was going to be able to help us do things like optional planning, do things like sub options that we could not do before. Ah, recall and war cessation, war termination. All of these things began to come into our lexicon of thinking. And there was starting a very serious evolution during that period of time. Members of the Joint Staff, National Security Council, key members of the service staffs were working on this with key administration officials. I think you see the fruition of that coming later in the Schlesinger years. And you will see that come into fruition. And you will see the transition from assured destruction to a countervailing strategy. Ah, and if you will, a recognition of the importance of counter-military and counterforce application of weapons.

DID MCNAMARA LOSE INTEREST IN THE NUCLEAR WAR? WAS IT THAT HE DID NOT FOCUS THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S R AND D EFFORTS ON MORE OPTIONS OR WAS IT THAT THE TECHNOLOGY WAS NOT THERE?

Well I think it's all, I think that the focus during those years has to be looked at, in light of the times. All these things were hammering. There was the distraction of Vietnam. There was the inadequacy of technology to make some of these things come true. We were, we were just learning how to exploit submarine-launched ballistic missiles. We were just in the early stages of the MIRV, and we were talking about the capability of MIRVing. We didn't know then, that you could take ten warheads and put them inside a football field, you know at four thousand miles. We couldn't do that in those days. Ah, the was just coming along. This is the strategic air-launched missiles which has a multiple capability either ballistic or low altitude. All these things were coming. The ground-launched cruise missiles hem, was just a gleam in the eye of people. The air-launch cruise missile we tried some earlier versions, but we didn't have anything as accurate, as we did today, with terrain following guidance systems. All these things were happening. The computers that did the planning, the communications that communicated to the delivery vehicles was not even extant in the early sixties. Ah, so a lot's happened in the last three decades. And the things that we see today were just ideas. Ah, very early war termination was a very difficult thing to in-, too envisage. Ah, it was almost irrevocable. If you turned it on you would be very difficult to turn it off. Ah we don't think it's impossible today at all. But weapons security, you know, if you steal a weapon, how do you, how do you make it impotent? How do you keep it from becoming a real threat in the hands of, of a terrorist? Ah, today we can, we can approach that problem. It was very difficult back in the early sixties. We've come a long way. And, and we've come that way I think, in retrospect very wisely. Ah, we could have done a lot of things different. But we haven't made a mistake that's cost us a nuclear war, and I think that's important. Ah, you can—you have to look at all of the little eddies and currents, and tides of the times all of the decent, all of the arguments, whether they're economic arguments whether they're military arguments in that context that we have, we have not made a mistake.

WHY WAS THE US AIR FORCE SO HOSTILE TOWARDS MCNAMARA?

Hostile I don't know is the right word to describe the relationship between the Air Force and Secretary McNamara in those early years . Ah, there was resentment. Ah, the resentment I think was one more of personality and of circumstance. First the military was treated not on any one incident, but in gross by many of the people in the early sixties, was treated from a position of arrogance. And from a position of "We know the answer and all we want you to do is swear to it." And, "We've already taken the decision, we want you to either be quiet, or associate yourself with the decision." Intellectual arrogance is something that's very difficult to, stomach. And particularly if you are an older person. It was not as difficult for me. One, I never did feel that I was in a secondary position. I felt I was a, a military officer and my job was to make recommendations not to make decisions. I understood that. Ah, also I had listened to Professor Abe Lincoln from West Point when he told us in the late forties, that there's going to be a debauch of the scholars. Because nuclear war has never been practiced or fought, like the Indian wars of the past have, or the conventional campaigns of Napoleon, and Bull Run, and Gettysburg, so it's going to be — and it also lends itself to analytical calculations and computations. I think the military found that very difficult to see it put into practice from at the policy level. Ah, also the military did not want to get into the log rolling business of Washington. And there it was . Because they tried to get us inside the solutions rather than just to stand off and make recommendations. There was right and wrong on both sides but I have to come down on the fact that there was more wrong on the point of view of the officials in the administration than there was in the military. Based upon watching others do the same job without the animosity and without the hostility and without the personal affronts that went on during those years. We had some very smart and brash young men come in their twenties and accept some very responsible policy roles and then be very irresponsible in their treatment of people. Ahhh, there's a, there's a limit to the hierarchical structure of Washington that, just can't stomach any sort of personal affronts. And there were lots of them. And now looking at it in the intervening years, I've seen other people with similar academic qualifications as smart or smarter, and handle themselves entirely different. And have a very different reaction, because you know, the military is not just an amorphous thing it's a group of individuals with personalities, and with sensitivities, and with emotions that are, completely normal and human. And they don't like to be stomped on, particularly if some of them have been very important during major war years And in the sixties we still had lots of those they're gone, but they were in positions of responsibility. They, they had grown up very quickly. Ah, they'd been measured and they'd measured up in actual combat. Ah, and they'd gone through a war and they'd had authority, and they'd had responsibility. And that needed some grooming.

[INAUDIBLE QUESTION]?

And that needed some respect and it... they didn't always get it.

AND THESE WHIZ KIDS COME ALONG.

Well, you know, you talk about Mr. McNamara, he was one of General LeMay's Whiz Kids. Ah, he worked with the Far East Bomber Command. He worked with that period, during World War II, he knew that. Ah, but and it isn't just Mr. McNamara. Mr. McNamara was it was the tip of the iceberg, but the iceberg was very big. And it was very arrogant, and it was very demanding. Early on, at the outset of the... of the Kennedy Administration some things happened that set a course that was very difficult to redress. For one thing we'd never — most of us had never seen an administration change. You know, we had the... wartime administration then followed by the... of Truman and Roosevelt and then followed by the Eisenhower years. We'd had the Eisenhower years, and during which basic policies were developed and country policies were developed and relationships were developed and people began to understand where they fit and this that and the other. And of course early on came a new administration, like a new broom, and I can see this now in retrospect, and they swept it all out the door. And one day we had this cohesive group of policies starting with basic national security policy and extending on down through every country and those of us working national security relationships, you know, weren't without trials and tribulations, but we knew where we stood. And then the next day it was all swept out and we started over. And we started over to develop a new basic national security policy. We never really got it. Ah, one policy we did, it was a basic policy toward NATO in Europe. I, I was very close to that. You know my biographical bit. You know that was an area of very great interest to me. And also my nuclear planning interests were there, because that was where there's always conflict because there's always confrontation. No matter where another problem may arise you have to look at your Professor Bob Bowie. Ah, you don't know Professor Bowie. He's from the Council of Foreign Relations in this area. Bob Bowie headed up the study groups, finally hammered out a basic policy toward NATO. That policy, by the way, had a lot to do with the evolving strategy of NATO from an instant nuclear retaliatory strategy which was known in NATO parlance as 14 slant 2. That's the number on the NATO paper. NATO basic security policy 14 slant 2. And it evolved in 1967 to NATO basic security policy 14 slant 3, which is known today as the flexible response strategy, which makes a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense in those days. Never has been adhered to completely because nobody wants to pay the price. Ah, the 14 slant 2 was a nuclear retaliatory strategy. It was cheap, inexpensive. But back to those transition years, then we started down working country papers and country strategies. We were able to hammer out a few. But we were plagued in that sense by pragmatism. The Eisenhower years I mean the Kennedy years, the McNamara years. And I don't ascribe it all to President Kennedy or Mr. McNamara. But they were pragmatic years. We didn't operate from basic policy because we had swept the basic policy out. We operated from the last assistant secretary to speak on the problem. And what he spoke was the way it was. An absent doctrine or policy at the government level. You're left at the whim of an assistant secretary, or a deputy assistant secretary, which is the bottom of the policy making hierarchy. And that's what we were faced with. So oftentimes, a lot of these senior people that I mentioned came face up with a flat turndown or a rejection or affront from a deputy assistant secretary, or an assistant secretary. You have to live with it in order to understand that. We went from sort of order to disorder. And that disorder continued until out of the disorder became an order of its own. And that was the mature years in the '60s and that was interrupted by Vietnam and the trauma that was Vietnam for all of us. And it was a trauma. So I guess that what I'd have to say is the pragmatism of those years ran against the grain of many senior people who recognized that government needed an order about it and could not be done on the back of an envelope by the last person that picks up the problem. I There are many illustrations that run through my mind to try to give you that assessment. Ah, and I don't think it's useful to deal in individual personalities. Ah, but there... those were tense years. Ah, those were years where to those... to those of us in the Air Force it was very important to have the George Browns and to have the Moose Hardens, that's Ernest Harden. Those were McNamara's execs during those years. George Brown later became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force for a while. Ernest Harden whose nickname is Moose later became an Air Force Commander in Tactical Air Command and a very senior Air Force officer. But those officers almost felt it was their role, and you can read General Brown's biog... autobiog... not autobiography, biography, and see that. He went around using his pension and his communicative abilities with people like General LeMay and General Dave Burchinal, who was the Ops Dep during those years, and... General Glenn Martin, the Director of Plans during those years, these were important people. Ah, to a lesser extent you could talk to General Power, but General Power is very difficult to talk to. Ah, he was uptight about this of course. But they went around smoothing the waters explaining why the...this decision or that decision, trying to remove it from the vitriol of confrontation of those individuals. I'm not doing a very good job of describing this. But thank goodness Colonel, later General, George Brown would come around and say, "Here's what McNamara really based that decision on." And then it began to make sense. But if it came out to General LeMay from Alain Enthoven, you know it was very difficult to ever get the straight of it. Um, second and third echelon helped a lot to communicate these things. But these were tough years, and they were years that you have to recognize they were years of change and dramatic change is always resisted by the military. Not for some stilted nonsensical reason, but the people who are responsible for the military are almost a father image for millions of people. And you don't just go around changing things like you change an academic paper or an academic premise. You know, every time you change something and you talked earlier about General Power resisting the disestablishment of his base structure and his command structure. You know, there are millions of people affected by that, real people, and families that were just uprooted. One day they were out in the front line and important and the next day they were excess and chopped off. I saw this based upon a policy that changed one time when I was the Commander in Chief of SAC, I had to get 850 of my first line combat crew people that had spent 20 years being trained to say, we don't want you anymore. We want you to resign. That's very difficult. These are real people. Now you say, well industry does this all the time. Maybe so, but industry is not a total environment as the military. The military is a total lifetime environment. You know, all the way from toilet paper in the latrine to burying you with a flag. It's a lifetime environment. And when you shake it do it with caution. And the LeMay's of the times and the Sweeneys, and the Olds, and the Powers, they knew that. You know, they'd occupied this father position for military people since they were in their late '20s or early '30s. Much too young to be senior generals, yet there they were, you know, World War II did that to them. And they carried this responsibility on and they just didn't like people just chopping the bush down right out from under the people they had living on it. Ah, I can make the argument pro or con. I can see the other side. You know, I'm...I'm a constitutional buff of the first order and I like the way our country operates, and I like the way that the military and the.. and the policy levels are divorced and I like the policy people to be the elected officials of the country. And I don't want our military to be a caste system, but if it's to maintain its responsiveness and if it's to maintain its discipline, and if it's to be relied on to do what you ask it to do and not do what you didn't ask it to do, then that hierarchical structure has a life of its own that even a democracy such as ours has to appreciate. And I think that was attacked not just by Mr. McNamara, it was attacked by a lot of people. Now, you've got some of them alive today, you know. The Nitze's the... Paul Nitze is still around, he was very key in the later years there. McNaughten's gone. He was one of those very smart young men. Alain Enthoven is still around, and they see it from a different perspective. Let me give you a vignette. The military coveted its classified areas. Ah, and yet they came in and they wanted to sweep classification out of the way. You know, if you were given a policy position one day, the next day you would have unlimited access to all of the classifications. And that was something that military found very dangerous, because a lot of these people went in and out of office like a revolving door. Ah, and I remember the first person I ever knew to be completely exposed to all the classified material having to do with the development of the single integrated operational plan was Dan Ellsberg. You know, now I'm not saying anything pro or con about Dan Ellsberg, but you know, he was in and then he was out. And people went in and out of government like that and... they insisted on their first day or first week in office to be exposed to all the code words and all the classification and things that were very zealously guarded by the military. Maybe that was wrong, but it was a fact of that time. And the sweeping aside of the... of the constraints of classification was one of the r- things that rubbed very wrong. The administration came into the Pentagon in 1961 and immediately as I recall 64 questions. Ah, and it really stood the whole Department of Defense the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Army on its ear, as we ran around answering those questions. And it was a very pedantic exercise. The answer to the 64 questions begat 128 questions and on and on and on, until all we were doing was running around answering questions. Ah, and it gave the appearance that we were responsible for just answering questions rather than just running the military, and that rubbed some of the seniors very wrong. And I was one of the question answerers. I ran around with my quota of questions, and I got wrapped up in answering the questions too. It was not a bad technique but it was very pedantic. And to some of the seniors it was very insulting, and I don't think they ever got over it.

MCNAMARA SAID THAT AT SOME POINT WHEN THE SOVIETS DEVELOPED A LARGER CAPABILITY THAT HE BECAME CONVINCED THAT NUCLEAR WARS COULDN'T BE FOUGHT. AND THAT THERE WAS A DETERRENCE ONLY. THE ONLY USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS WAS FOR DETERRENCE. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THAT?

I think Mr. McNamara did come to the conclusion that nuclear wars could not be fought. Ah, and I think you have to draw a... a distinction there with the military who must plan on fighting nuclear wars. A lot of people say, well, we've got nuclear weapons, the Soviets have nuclear weapons, we must use them only for deterrence. It's inconceivable, unacceptable, unthinkable, that we'd ever fight a nuclear war. Fundamental to the military approach to this is that if you're going to have an effective deterrent you must be able to fight effectively, and to prevent an enemy from having any advantage. So the ultimate test of a deterrence... of a deterrent force is its ability to fight. Dichotomy, maybe so. You know, peace-loving warrior, maybe so. Ah, but that is a dichotomy of a military in a democratic society such as ours. They have to practice fighting wars and they have to go through the exercise to be able to convince that they've got a credible deterrent. Now, Mr. McNamara unless I'm mistaken, and I watched him his secretary Polly was a wonderful interpreter. Mr. McNamara's left handed, and I'm left handed. And neither of us write where anybody else can understand it. But he would make his marginal notes with his left hand on papers, and Polly would dutifully transcribe them into understandable English so that we'd know what the boss was putting on the papers. And unless I miss my guess, during those years, I watched an evolution of his thinking. You know, an evolution from his Michigan speech toward his San Francisco speech in later years. And unless I missed my guess, Mr. McNamara became convinced that nuclear war could not be kept limited. And that once the fire break into nuclear conflict had been... had been crossed, particularly in Europe that escalation was inevitable, and that we would ultimately wind up in a disastrous full-scale nuclear conflict. Ah, and I think that permeated his thinking. I think it permeates the thinking of a lot of people who come to the conclusion that nuclear war means an immutable escalation to the extremes that a nation possesses in its nuclear arsenal.

WHAT...

A military planner cannot think that way. But a military planner, charged with the responsibility of translating force into effective application of force can't look at nuclear war as if escalation is immutable. You've got to look at the possibility of nuclear war. And you've got to look at how it comes about, and you've got to try to keep it limited. Now that's called escalation control, and nobody knows whether you can control escalation. But you've got to try. If you don't try then you've got a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then sure enough you've got escalation to total nuclear conflict. But you've got to try. And it's not enough just to stand off and say I don't think you can use any nuclear weapon without using them all. Ah, if you do you're condemning yourself to oblivion and Armageddon, and you've got to try. And that's what we've done over these years. Ah, that's been the evolution of our strategy. Ah, technology has helped. Automatic data processing has helped. Communications has helped. Weaponry has helped. Diversity of weapons has helped. And that's why diversity of weapons makes so much sense to me. It gives you an option that may be successful in keeping nuclear war limited. Now these things are political dynamite. You know, the President has touched on this. And he's -- President Reagan, and he's gotten into deep water for touching on it. And yet what he said was absolutely accurate and legitimate. But he was talking as if he were in a... in a military planning exercise, rather than as the President. And the President just has to be Presidential. Ah, but the nuclear planner has got the nitty-gritty to come to grips with. Herman Kahn wrote a book on this, "Thinking About the Unthinkable." That's what you've got to do. There's an old idiom that just wrote into a chapter of a book recently, that Schlesinger and Kahn when they were young and they were planners at SAC coming up the hill one day to work with the SAC staff on something. And saw the SAC motto up there that deterrence is our profession.

PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION.

Peace is our profession. Well, deterrence is our profession, peace is the end result. Peace is our profession. Herman Kahn said, "Hmm, peace may be their profession, but making war better be their damn business." You know, and that's the dichotomy of the military. Ah, how do you make a peace-loving American into a warrior, you know, that's the dilemma of our time. And it's particularly true in the area of those that are responsible for nuclear weapons. They've got to think about nuclear war, and they've got to think about how best to keep the other side convinced that it can't succeed.

GENERAL DOUGHERTY, HELP US UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH — TOMMY POWER, THE COMMANDER OF SAC'S MIND WHEN HE WAS ASKING FOR WHAT A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD THINK OF AS AN EXCESSIVE NUMBER OF MISSILES IN 1962?

I don't know what was going through his mind. But I know that I made similar requests for weapons that some people found excessive. I think they don't understand that you can't be 100 percent --

LATER ON IN THE '70S WHEN I WAS COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF STAFF THERE...

Later on in the '70s when I was Commander in Chief of SAC, I suppose I made requests that people found excessive. At least they didn't comply with them. Ah, because they didn't understand the perspective in which I made the request. Military targets are not susceptible to completely analytical techniques. Ah, you can't always equate one for one. Weapons are ineffective, people are ineffective, though I don't think many of SAC's people will be very ineffective. But things don't go like you would have them go. I don't think anybody has to be told that computers are not totally reliable that's used a telephone recently, or that's tried to get their bank account, or that's tried to get a seat reservation on an airline. As precise as those things are in theory, they're just not precise. Ah, and then you can't precisely apply exactly the right amount of potential of a weapon to destroy a target and not have any excess. Ah, nuclear overkill is a buzz phrase. It has no meaning at all in actual targeting and applying of weapons to targets. Because you're bound to have overkill at point zero. You can't diminish that. You can't take excess kill factor of a weapon from Target A and apply it to Target B that's a thousand miles away. It just doesn't lend itself to that. I use the classic illustration and I think it has application to General Powers' problem when people didn't understand him, of a shotgun shell going duck hunting. Number six shot. Take a shotgun shell, open it up, 300 BBs in there. Each BB has more than the kill factor to kill a duck. And yet you wouldn't go hunting for 300 ducks with only one shotgun shell. Nor would you take one shotgun shell and expect to get 300 ducks. But that's a perfect analytical application of the K factor. One shell - 300 ducks. The ducks don't line up that way. The targets don't line up that way. Destruction of a target may require multiple weapons. Or, if you lose some of those weapons in an initial attack, you still want to be able to respond with surviving weapons and do the job. And that's one of the difficulties of the American planner. The American nuclear planner has to be prepared to experience an attack and still respond reliably, with enough weapons to be able to countervail an enemy's attempt to use his force effectively. That's very difficult. It's very imprecise. It's not capable of being calculated. No one can tell you what an enemy attack is going to do to you. You can do a lot of calculations that help, but in the final analysis you have to have what appears to be excess weapons if you are to sit there and not first strike. If you are to be able to retaliate from a first strike, or if you're going to be able to convince an enemy that you really can put him at risk to the point that he won't move. I listened one time in 1960 when General Power was testifying in front of the Senate. It stuck with me because it was... it was... it was a synthesis of all these things. Ah, I've told you know, I hate simplistic bottom lines because they're inaccurate. Well, this is a bottom line. Let me give you the little vignette. One of the Senators said, "General Power, why don't you tell us just what you do out in Omaha..."

START THAT AGAIN. "I LISTENED TO HIM IN..."

When I was a student at the National War College, I went over into a Senate hearing one day that was open and listened to General Power's testimony because I was very concerned with the testimony of all of our senior military commanders. And one of the Senators asked General Power, "General, just what is it you do out there at Omaha?" And the General said, "Well, the problem is very complicated, and I could spend hours answering that question, but let me just give you the bottom line. What I do out there at Omaha is make sure that on every morning when the political leaders in the Kremlin get their morning briefing, that the briefing officer conclude his briefing with a statement 'Not today, Comrade.'" Simplistic, but that's what it's all about in this game of trying to plan a military capability that is so consequential and so diverse and so effective under all conditions of war initiation that he can't be sure of succeeding and he must come to the conclusion "Not today."

SO THAT MEANS MORE WEAPONS, NOT LESS?

It might or it might not. It might mean different kinds. It might mean different posture. It might mean different basing. For instance, a question, had you rather have a single-tipped missile or a multiple-tipped missile? If I were an economist I would rather have a multiple-tipped missile. If I were a war planner I'd rather have a single-warhead missile. If you'll give me enough of them. If you will give me a basing diversity that I can base them. If you make me put them all in one basket, you know, that's bad. Ah, Paul Nitze asked me one time, hadn't you rather have a single warhead missile than a MIRV missile? And of course, the answer is yes, if you give me enough of them. If you won't give me enough of them, as they didn't in the '60s and the '70s, then make a MIRV. By all means, let me have enough warheads. Because there's so much of the Soviet target system that is not now put at risk, or it's put at risk with the wrong weapon. You know, people think of nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon, and that's not so. There's little bitty nuclear weapons like peas, and there's great big nuclear weapons like cannonballs. They're all nuclear weapons and they fit the description of a warhead that's used loosely, but from a planner's point of view, it's either a pea or a cannonball, and it does different things. And it's no good to go after a hardened Soviet command and control bunker with a weapon that does nothing but blow down trees for ten miles. That doesn't attack that bunker. You've got to have a weapon that's suited to the target, suited to its characteristics and its capabilities and with an accuracy and a yield combination that will destroy the target. If not, you've wasted your bullet. And we have a lot of weapons like that. You see we've got a... a nuclear arsenal that extends over 30 years of age. Maybe even longer. And we've got all kinds of weapons. And they're not all accurate to get hardened weap -- targets. Ah, they may be accurate against only a... above ground build-up that cause urban destruction but don't destroy the target. And that's why a military commander is always trying to get weaponry that will be relevant to the targets that he must attack. And it's not enough just to use gross numbers of weapons, and to use what I call PR charts, that equate weapons and numbers and do silly balances. You know, you've got to have weapons that are relevant to what you're attacking. And you need multiple modes so that you don't get vulnerable to a breakthrough that absolutely puts you out of business.

BUT A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE CRITICIZED THE COUNTERFORCE NOTION BY SAYING THAT THE LOGIC OF IT LEADS TO AN ENDLESS ESCALATION OF THE ARMS RACE OR ENDLESS PROCUREMENT REQUIREMENTS. HOW DO YOU ANSWER THAT?

Those who would argue that to do this is endless, no xerxes. It leads you into a constant race, a constant evolution. You know, you would have to come back and say, well, what's your alternative? You can't control the other side, what is your alternative? Now my mother's alternative was prayer, you know, and that's -- that has a place in my life and hers. But it will not reduce the Soviet arsenal. Ah, we've got a political... I suppose that what was in General Powers mind in the days that he had those requirements that some have deemed excessive was that he was the military commander and chief of SAC. He was the director of strategic target planning for the United States. He was looking at an enemy that was growing... it was growing and it was changing in characteristics. And he looked at the weaponry he had and it wasn't enough to cover that target system. And in the final analysis we charge our military with countering the military forces of an enemy. And if it can't do that it can't serve its purpose in our nation. And as the military force of an enemy grows you've got to stay relevant to it, if you expect to counter it. That's his job. If he can't do that, he can't serve his purpose to you. It's continued to grow and it was growing in those days when General Power was addressing it. Ah, in the final analysis that's what you want a military force for and it isn't enough if that military force is inadequate or second best.

COUNTERFORCE LEADS TO ENDLESS FORCE REQUIREMENTS, IS THAT BAD?

Ah, I don't look at it as leading to endless force requirements. You've got to stay relevant to the forces of an enemy. If the forces of an enemy continue to grow despite all your political efforts, despite moralistic arguments, despite all your attempts to constrain them some other way, then in the final analysis I think it's incumbent on the nation's military to address it in a military way that's relevant to the consequent size and composition of that force. I think that's the military's task. I think that's what General Power was doing.

IS IT BETTER TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF MORE THAN LESS?

I think the stakes were so high, what you're doing is so important — you're not playing some game, you're not in some artificial analysis, you're betting your nation. And it's very fickle. It doesn't lend itself to precise analysis, and if you're going to err, then I think the err must be more and not less. The stakes are too important. Also if there's something you don't want the military commander to do, he's got a legitimate question, what is it I'm doing, you would not want me to do? What is it I'm addressing that you do not want addressed? What threat is there that you don't want responded to? Or you don't want me to develop a capability? Ah, I think those are legitimate questions and I don't think that kind of guidance was ever given General Powers. He was just condemned as being excessive and written off for that, and I think that part of the irritation from that period is occasioned by that kind of response. Ah, I don't know that you want the military to do that but the nation does in its composite mind. That's what it's been charged with. If you're going to change its tasking then you... it'll change its requirements. But until it does -- until we find a better handle, I think we've got to stay relevant.