ASKS WHY THE MX HAS BEEN SUCH A PROBLEM FOR SUCH A LONG TIME.

The MX has been a problem for a long time because it's relatively large and therefore it's, it's hard to figure out ways to make it survivable. There was such an approach in the Carter Administration. The shell game system, together with the constraints on the Soviets in SALT II which was sort of a grade C solution. It wasn't flunking, but it wasn't...elegant. It worked but it was complicated. I think the problem since 1981 has been that the Reagan Administration in October of 1981 rejected the Townes' committee's recommendation to keep a vertical version of the shell game alive, while a better version of basing for MX was searched for. And by rejecting that they essentially started us on the path that we've been on for the last six years of looking for some survivable way to base MX. That problem was I think virtually insurmountable as long as MX was the single US ICBM or land-based ballistic missile for the future. Is... It may be considerably easier to solve. I think it is easier to solve. If you look at MX and the small ICBM, Midget Man, together. Because the small ICBM, Midget Man, can be made survivable, I think, in a relatively straightforward way. And MX can be given some degree of survivability if one has a reasonable degree of warning.

WHY DO WE NEED LAND BASES?

I think the reason we need land-based missiles of some kind, survivable land-based missiles is because even though today the bombers and the ICBMs lend a certain survivability to one another through the different types of attacks that the Soviets would have to plan...in order to attack the two of them together. If one looks out into the future only a very few years the Soviets will have accurate submarine-launched ballistic missiles, MIRV ones, which would be capable, I think, of simultaneously attacking our silos and our bomber bases with a very short time of flight. And in those circumstances the only really survivable part of US nuclear deterrent would be the ballistic missile submarines at sea. A lot of people say, well, why not just rely on those. I think as far as anyone can foresee now, ballistic missile, submarines, at sea, are going to be as survivable as military systems ever get. But you have to remember that we're not going to have very many of them as we go out into the 1990s and into the 21st century. This is partly because it's expensive to build submarines as large as Trident, and no one ever really conceived of building more than about 20. Which would mean that about a dozen would be at sea at any one time. And these things are the size of a World War II cruiser. But more recently the Reagan administration has started testing more than eight re-entry vehicles on each Trident II missile. They've begun to test ten and soon they may well test twelve. That's a 50 percent increase in the warheads on each missile. Which if you have a ceiling such as say 3600 re-entry vehicles on the submarine force would impose about a 50 percent cut on the number of submarines and missiles that you could have under any of the types of arms control agreements that anyone's being, been talking about. That would mean you might be down in the realm of having a dozen or so Trident submarines with maybe only eight at sea. And having, whether it's eight at sea or twelve at sea, having one's entire survivable deterrent located at that few points, however quiet and deep-running and beautifully engineered those submarines are, is, I think, a very troubling thing. I think it's going to be necessary and important in the 1990s and in the 21st century, to have a highly survivable intercontinental ballistic missile, land-based missile to ... essentially accommodate any problems that might arise in the future with vulnerability of the submarine force. You know, we had a period of time here back some years ago, in which people were very worried about this new fangled idea, of ballistic missile submarines. And they felt that silos in the ground were always going to be survivable because no one was ever going to get close enough to a silo in the ground to blow it up. Well I think it's pretty clear that over the course of the last 15 or 20 years those views have changed a lot. And the silos are now highly vulnerable and people think of the submarines as being highly survivable. But we're very lucky that Admiral Rickover and Admiral Rayburn and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and a bunch of people back in the late '50s and early '60s decided that we were going to have a ballistic missile submarine force because it turned out we needed it, because the ICBMs got vulnerable. Now I think it would similarly be an act of statesmanship for the government to build and maintain a survivable ICBM force, even if it's not very large, as long as it exists and could be expanded if you got into trouble with the submarines. In order to ensure that if you did run into survivability problems with the submarines later, you would not wakeup shuddering if you saw a New York Times headline some morning, five, ten, fifteen years from now, which talks in terms of a radical submarine warfare breakthrough.

WHY DO WE NEED A COUNTERFORCE WEAPON OF OUR OWN?

I think that we might well not need it unless the Soviets had already deployed highly effective and accurate counterforce or counter silo, counter hard target, MIRVed ICBMs. It would be something that one could conceive of both sides agreeing through some sort of an arms control agreement that neither one would put the other's ICBMs at risk. But I think for reasons of being able to maintain the United States' position vis-a-vis the Soviets' in any negotiations or any crisis, it is completely and totally unacceptable for the Soviets to be able to put US ICBMs at risk and the United States not to be able to put Soviet ICBMs at risk. We could have a situation if we wanted to negotiate it or if technology hadn't gone the way it had, in which neither side's ICBMs were vulnerable. We could, from an American perspective, I think, have a perfectly reasonable situation if American ICBMs were invulnerable and Soviet ones were vulnerable. That would make it easier for us to say to the Soviets in a crisis, particularly one in which let's say they were using massive conventional forces in Europe, you'd better not do that. Extended deterrence can be counted on. I think it would be a terrible idea if both sides' ICBMs were vulnerable. But the worst case of all is one in which American ICBMs are vulnerable, and Soviet ones are invulnerable. And that's where we'll be unless we deploy enough counterforce capability to encourage the Soviets to move away from these deployments of things such as SS-18s and SS-18 follow-ups.

DOES BEING ABLE TO HIT THEIR SILOS HAVE A VALUE IN ENHANCING DETERRENCE?

In a sense it does because NATO really rests and I think will for the foreseeable future on the notion that the United States would use its nuclear weapons against even a Soviet conventional attack in Europe. That means that anything which gives us an edge in terms of being able to put Soviet military targets at risk enhances NATO's deterrent. A lot of people like to talk about nuclear weapons as if they were an isolated world onto themselves and nuclear weapons only dealt with threats from nuclear weapons. That has not been NATO's doctrine for 40 years and it's not NATO's doctrine today. And if we want to change that we have to do something very, very major, deploying massive conventional forces, have some unforeseen technological breakthrough which makes it virtually certain that we could deter the Soviet conventional armored or chemical attack in Europe without relying on nuclear weapons, something of that kind. As long as we need nuclear weapons to deter Soviet conventional attack or Soviet conventional and chemical attack, it's going to be helpful, perhaps not absolutely essential, but helpful for us to be able to put Soviet targets at risk. So I think it's a useful thing for us to do and if you ask me a further question, if you say suppose the Soviets go mobile with their ICBMs, should we bankrupt the United States in an effort to try to put mobile Soviet ICBMs at risk, I would say if we can do it for a modest sum, it's one military task that's worth looking at. If in order to do that we have to spend large amounts of money that could be better spent on such things as antisubmarine warfare or improving our conventional forces in Europe or our ability to counter terrorism, no, that's not the way I'd spend the money.

ASKS HOW HE GOT INVOLVED WITH MODERNIZING LAND-BASED ICBMs

I suppose it was when I was a lieutenant in the army. I was assigned to Alain Enthoven's office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1968. And I started out looking at intelligence-related issues but very quickly was put on the job of working on strategic forces and particularly early in 1969 when the new administration came in, working for Paul Nitze, when he was the first Defense Department delegate to the SALT I talks. I served as an adviser to him. And the key problem then, just as now in strategic arms control of offensive weapons, was how to figure out how one could put some constraints on the Soviet ICBM force in order to preserve the survivability of the American ICBM forces. It's been something of a constant for eighteen years.

CITES SOLUTION THEN AS LIMITING NUMBERS.

Well yes. The anti-ballistic missile treaty serves to preserve the ability of both submarine and, launched ballistic missile and ICBMs to penetrate the other side's defenses, and therefore to sort of guarantee or help guarantee deterrence on that end. From the point of view of preserving the survivability of your own forces, that's right, in the interim agreement, connected with SALT I that was signed in 1972, we tried to put some limitations on large MIRVed Soviet ICBMs. They weren't real successful. And we have spent a great deal of our negotiating capital and effort and national energy in the arras control arena for the last eighteen years trying to figure out how to constrain Soviet ICBMs in such a way as to preserve the survivability of American silo-based ICBMs. And we've largely failed. It has not worked for complicated technical and political reasons. And personally I think it's now time to move to preserve the survivability of our ICBM force on our own. And I think the way to do that is to move toward a small mobile ICBM that, the Midgetman and the hard mobile launcher.

ASKS HIS ROLE IN CARTER YEARS.

Not so much. During the Carter Administration I was Under Secretary of the Navy and my only involvement in strategic matters then dealt with Trident and the decisions to continue the Trident submarine program and to recommend the beginning of full-scale engineering development of the Trident 2 missile. Those were ways to both preserve the survivability of the US ballistic submarine force and also to put Soviet hardened targets at risk using that American submarine force. But I didn't have any involvement in either the arms control talks in SALT II or in the US ICBMs programs in the Carter administration.

ASKS HOW HE WOULD CHARACTERIZE REAGAN'S OCT 7, '81 DECISION.

Oh I think it was most unwise for him to cancel the MPS basing for MX in 1981. We had recommended on the Townes Committee not that we go forward with a multiple protective shelter deployment, but rather that we deploy MX in vertical shelters, essentially, in such a way that the number of those shelters could be expanded into a shell game or multiple protective shelter system, if nothing else turned up. And we had some other recommendations. The air mobile system and so on. But those were not even systems that research and development had begun on yet. So the bird in the hand, so to speak, from the point of view of preserving survivability in 1981 was to maintain the possibility of expanding this vertical shelter based MX system into a kind of a shell game. I think that cancelling that was very unwise because in doing so the President and the Secretary of Defense essentially said to the Congress, since they had no other long-term measures toward survivability that were ready to go, they essentially said to the Congress, "We're not all that interested in survivability for the ICBM force." And that was the decision that I think led to the very negative Congressional reaction in 1982, ultimately to the Congressional rejection of the somewhat hastily assembled dense pack basing method that the administration recommended in 1982. And it was that rejection in late 1982 by the Congress of the Administration's I think rather clumsy ICBM plans that in turn led to the, I think, high degree of despondency within the administration about whether or not they would be able to even have an ICBM force or even improve the survivability of the rest of the US offensive strategic forces. Keep in mind that that was at the same time that the American Catholic Bishops pastoral letter that was very negative on deterrence came out, at least in its initial drafts. It was at the same time the Nuclear Freeze movement was doing very well at the polls. The administration had just lost 26 seats in the House of Representatives in November of 1982. And in the winter of '82–'83, I think these factors, together with the great difficulties they had come to face, in part through their own choices in preserving the survivability of the US ICBM force, led them to turn away from offensive modernization in part, and to focus on the Strategic Defense Initiative instead.

ASKS ABOUT DESPONDENCY AT THAT TIME.

No, this is merely a surmise on my part from having been involved in the Scowcroft Commission in 1983 and also from generally observed the politics of the situation in 1983. But I believe that the administration felt in early 1983 that they had to do something radically different, at least the President felt right at the time that he had to do something radically different because the rest of this plan of his to modernize US offensive forces was crumbling like a house of cards.

ASKS CHARGE TO TOWNS COMMISSION

The Townes Committee was convened by the Secretary of Defense in early spring of 1981, very early in the Reagan Administration. As a matter of fact I recall our first meeting was the day the President was shot. And the objective was essentially to find a survivable basing mode for the MX. But I believe that the committee would have been willing to have at that point, still relatively early in the MXs life, I think the committee would have been willing to have proposed scraping the MX and moving to a different type of ICBM force if we had been able to find some way in which it was clear that a smaller or a different ICBM could be made more survivable than the MX. At that point we really could find no such way. There were some highly venturesome ideas, such as basing very small ICBMs on helicopters that were based on ground and would scatter on warning. And other ideas of that sort. But the problem in 1981 was that no one knew, no one had done an experiment or realized that you could have a mobile launcher that was 20 pounds per square inch hard, and therefore you could radically shrink the land area in which one might deploy a small mobile ICBM. That idea didn't really come about until 1983. And so I think in 1981, when the Townes Committee, although we went around the Horn several times in trying to come up with a solution. And we seriously considered a small ICBM. We couldn't find a way, really, to make the small ICBM more survivable than MX unless one was willing to adopt Sen. John Glenn's idea, put it on trucks, similar to other 18-wheel trucks and have it deployed out amongst the population. Although that strategically was something that could have worked and could still work, virtually everyone shied away from it on political grounds.

ASKS HIS IMPRESSIONS ON COMMITTEE

Well no, I didn't really get that idea. If that was anyone's idea of his job, to axe MPS and the rest of us didn't do it very effectively because our recommendation was to keep MPS alive. It wasn't the Carter administration's horizontal shell game that we recommended keeping alive, but it was a vertical multiple protective shelter system. I think we all knew that the Secretary of Defense and the President had expressed publicly their opposition to the Carter administration's shell game. But I think we all believed it would still be possible to deploy 100 MXs and 100 vertical shelters, such as silos, but designed in such a way that one could expand them into a multiple protective system later if the need should arise. We genuinely thought that would be acceptable not only to the Air Force but also to the administration. And the administration surprised us by taking away that flexibility in their final recommendation in October of '81.

WAS HE BADLY ADVISED TO DO THAT?

I think any political candidate is badly advised to come out strongly in favor of a weapon system and simultaneously to come out strongly against the only method that anyone up to that point has conceived of to make that weapon system survivable. It's a little bit like coming out in favor of a new tank gun but opposing tank armor. If one wants to have an effective military system, whether strategically or conventionally, one needs a system that can both survive and do its job. So I think that that was a mistake from the point of view of the Reagan campaign in 1980 and I think that it was one that led rather directly to the difficulties that developed in 1982, '83 on ICBM survivability. We felt on the Townes Committee, at least I felt and I think several of the others felt, that we had given them a way to have something different than that which they had criticized, but still to be able to preserve MX survivability with a vertical multiple protective shelter system if none of these other ideas came along. But the Reagan administration rejected even the long-term option that we had given them by the Townes committee recommendation.

ASKS IF HE FEELS HOPELESS TO TAKE THIS ON AGAIN

Well we felt I think on the Townes Committee that at this point, since the executive branch and the Air Force and the Secretary of Defense particularly had been locked into the horizontal shell game for some years, that something else might have turned up in the meantime. It turned out, I think, that nothing else was really in hand in the same way that the hard mobile launcher turned out to be in hand for the small ICBM in 1983. The people are doing experiments all along. People do come up with new ideas and one shouldn't feel in this business I think that just because you studied a problem 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 years ago that the problem is always going to remain the way you left it when you last looked at it. Things do change and the hard mobile launcher is a good example of that.

ASKS ABOUT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

During the period of a year or so before the Scowcroft Commission began meeting in early 1983, some experiments were done by the Defense Nuclear Agency looking at various types of vehicles and how they might be hardened against nuclear blast effects. I believe the small-scale experiment that led to the idea for the hard mobile launcher was being done with an eye toward how one might harden mobile radars against blast effects. The idea was a very simple one. Some smart engineer figured out that the blast from a nuclear weapon destroyed a vehicle usually by getting under the vehicle and tossing it away. And so a vehicle normally is hardened only to around 2 psi. A blast of more than 2 pounds per square inch is going to turn it over or blow it away. All that was done was in these small models, a system was installed, sort of a simple hydraulic system, that made it possible for the vehicle to move down and be flat to the earth and a simple skirt was put around the edge to prevent the blast from getting under the vehicle. And that alone without fine tuning increased by nearly an order of magnitude up to something under 20 psi the hardness of the vehicle against blast. As soon as one knew that, as soon as someone had that idea, it began to become possible quickly with the mathematics to see that you needed only a relatively limited number of square miles on which to deploy a small mobile ICBM because the hardness made up for the lack of land area. And roughly if you can increase the hardness by a factor of ten or fifteen you can reduce the land area you need by something like a factor of 10 or 15. And that meant that it was possible to deploy these hardened mobile launchers on several of the large Western military reservations and still have them survive. That was a major breakthrough, because that meant that you did not have to get out amongst the public as you would on the roads, and you did not have to even use the government owned but publicly available land such as that which was used for the MX shell game in the Carter administration. You could stay on actual military bases and still be survivable. And there's one footnote to that. One can radically increase the survivability in a sense, the way you would describe that is say, you can radically increase the amount of throw weight or number of warheads of equal size, the Soviets would have to use in attacking the small mobile system, if you are able to leave those military reservations and go to the surrounding land after you've detected an actual launch of Soviet submarine or launched ballistic missile or ICBMs. That's called a flushing on tactical warning. So a system such as a hard mobile ICBM is highly survivable, even if it stays on those military reservations. It is survivable to the point of its being a monk's game even for the Soviets to try to come after it with a barrage attack if it can also flush to these nearby areas once an actual detection of a launch is made.

HOW FAR AWAY DOES THE BLAST HAVE TO BE FROM THIS HARDENED VEHICLE?

The distance of the blast from a vehicle hardened to 20 or 30 psi, is, that is the distance a blast can be...A nuclear blast will destroy a hardened vehicle, one that's hardened to 20 or 30 psi at some point. It's a question of how close. If one has a very high yield Soviet warhead, then clearly it can be further away, than if one has a low-yield one. It turns out that because of the way the calculations work in figuring out what the most efficient way to be would be to barrage a large area. The most efficient thing is not to have either a very large number of very tiny weapons, or a relative few extremely large ones, but to distribute the blast if the Soviets were so inclined, over an area with warheads of the approximate size that they have now. I think you can say that generally speaking a blast that is of warheads of that size that was only one-tenth as far away as a blast that would destroy a building would still not destroy a small mobile ICBM.

ASKS POLITICAL SITUATION WHEN PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION WAS FORMED

I'm not sure exactly when the decision to form the commission was made. I am sure it was made in late 1982, relatively soon after the Congress rejected the, the dense— packed basing method for MX. I got a call from Bud MacFarlane before Christmas, asking if a commission was formed would I be willing to serve on it. And my family and I left the country for a vacation and I really found out that it had been announced and indeed had its first meeting in early January while I was out of town. So I think the decisions were made during, just before Christmas, during the Christmas holidays of 1982. I think they were heavily driven by the circumstances I mentioned before. The recent political reverses the administration had seen in terms of the Nuclear Freeze movement, the Catholic Bishops' letter, the demonstrations in Europe against the INF deployments, the loss of 26 seats in the House of Representatives, and the big loss, even with the lame duck Congress, of the MX and dense pack. So I think the political circumstances in late 82, early 83 when the decision to go forward with the Scowcroft commission was made were circumstances in which the administration felt really very despondent and almost groping about how they would deal with the problem of modernizing US strategic forces for the future.

ASKS ABOUT CONGRESSIONAL FEELINGS

The feelings on the Hill were mixed. I think a number of people who had voted against dense pack had voted against it not because they were against ICBMs but because they a, didn't understand it, and b, it seemed to be a radical reversal of the overall philosophy that they had seen for preserving ICBM survivability before. We had been keeping ICBMs apart from one another before and now putting them together there was confusing about the fratricide arguments which were very complicated to make. And there was a certain suddenness in the timing of the administration's presentation to the Congress which to be fair was partially driven by Congressionally imposed deadlines, but which gave the impression that this was something which was coopered together in haste. And...and it just never got off the ground really at all on Capitol Hill.

ASKS HIM TO CLARIFY

I believe that there were a number of people who were concerned about actually killing a major strategic system and who were still very interested in having a survivable ICBM force for the long run. Who couldn't see dense pack as the way to do this. I think we showed that later by the turnaround from the defeat of dense pack in late 1982, a further loss in seats for the administration, of 26 seats. And then the support that both parts of the, really all three parts I think of the Scowcroft Commission recommendation got in the late spring, early summer in the Congress.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN?

It was fascinating. Basically I think the two key players on this, aside really from the President himself, were Brent Scowcroft and Les Aspin. I think it was the fact that the two of them were able, quite early, to agree that a reasonable solution for ICBM survivability over the long run would be a three-part package of a sort of intermediate deployment of MX in existing silos. A long-term solution by moving toward the hard mobile ICBM, and a restructuring of arms control approaches to encourage both sides to move toward more survivable ICBMs. That three-part package was one which I think the two of them principally worked out. I was involved in some of the early discussions as were other commission members. And I think that the, the solution was one that, that stuck. We spent a good deal of time in February, maybe even as early as January, talking to members of Congress who were likely to be highly influential in the decision. From the beginning I think those of us on the commission understood that the main issue was whether or not an agreement essentially could be struck between the Republican White House and the Democratic House of Representatives. The Senate was still Republican at the time and one might assume, although it wasn't a sure thing, that any reasonable approach which the administration endorsed would have a somewhat easier time there. And I think that it was that sort of brokering function of the commission, members, going back and forth between the executive branch, the Defense Department, National Security Council staff, White House and the Congress, particularly key Democrats in the House such as Aspin and Gore and Dicks and others. That was one very interesting aspect of the Scowcroft Commission. One or two of us talked very early to Scoop Jackson who was still alive at that point, on the Senate side. He thought it seemed like a reasonable solution. Aspin thought it seemed like a reasonable solution. The White House looked as if they would probably be willing to go along and so although we considered other options, that three-part solution was the only one that the Commission ever really wrote up. And it was the one that we were working on rather, rather hard from February on.

DID HE KNOW THEN THERE WAS A DEAL THAT COULD BE MADE?

It wasn't particularly dramatic. But I think the key point was after one early discussion between Aspin and Brent Scowcroft and myself. Aspin said he thought this sounded like an interesting idea and as he put it with Wisconsin metaphor, "I'll run the traps." By which we, we understood him to mean he would talk to several key Democrats in the house and see if that was the sort of compromise that, that had a chance. And we got back together again not too long thereafter. I don't remember whether this was late January or early February. And he said, "I'm not sure but I think this might work. And I thought that was probably the point at which it looked like we had a general direction it was likely to go. I remember also one point, our commissioner, Mel Laird, whose political antennae are superb. In our first meeting said that you are 100 votes down in the House in trying to put anything together that's going to work. And after we'd been working the problem for several weeks and Aspin had had a chance to talk to some members of the House and Mel had taken some of his own soundings, he, he came back and in one of the Commission meetings said, "And think we're about 50 votes down in the House." And I turned to Brent Scowcroft and I said, "We've won." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, I like the trend but I also like the fact that Mel's gone from saying "you" to saying "we." I guess the only other time I remember at George Washington's birthday parade over in Alexandria at a mutual friend's home that was on the parade route, standing while we were watching these people in powdered wigs march by, playing fife and drum, and dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers, standing with Bud MacFarlane and filling him in on what it was likely that the Commission was going to recommend. And his saying it sounded like an interesting and quite possible an approach, quite possibly one that would work.

ASKS WHAT THE SIDES GAVE UP.

The opponents of MX had to give up a great deal. They had to give up the idea that the MX system would be killed. The proponents of the MX also had to give up a good deal. They essentially had to give up the idea that MX was going to be the long-run future of the US ICBM force. And the people I think who felt as if arms control ought to be used simply to drag one's feet or to stalemate relations with the Soviet Union, or whatever, they also gave something up. Because by moving toward a set of proposals which have now evolved in most ways except for one important way, have evolved I think into some reasonable proposals for this 50 percent cut in the IC, in the ballistic missile force. By moving in that direction they pointed toward the possibility that arms control really might be an integral component in an overall national strategy to maintain a deterrent and to use some arms control constraints to help that. Now the way in which I think the current proposal is badly off base is that it still contains the notion of banning mobile ICBMs. I think that I don't know the precise reason for that's being included, bargaining leverage, a different philosophy of arms control, whatever. I do think it's completely inconsistent with the Scowcroft Commission approach.

ASKS HOW HE SEES CRITICS OF THIS SCOWCROFT COMMISSION'S FINDINGS.

Well I think that it all depends on whether or not one looks a part of the puzzle or the puzzle as a whole. I also think it depends on whether or not you believe as I do, and I guess I'd quote Churchill to this end, that politics and strategy are one. Essentially the way we Americans deal with one another over strategic issues, and the way we deal with our allies, are an important part of the strategy itself. Unless you can put together a package that unifies the American government and also makes it possible for the United States to work closely with its allies, however, theoretically sound something might be, you have done a great disservice by coming up with a program that can't be implemented and can't hold the country and the alliance together even if you can get some physicists to support it. The whole purpose was to come up with something which both had a long-term strategic soundness to it. And which kept all of the relevant players on board to get to the next point. And we felt very strongly that if we unilaterally cancelled MX, particularly after the Soviets had succeeded in, through a propaganda campaign essentially, in getting the neutron bomb cancelled. At the time they were engaged in a very vigorous propaganda effort to try to get the INF deployments cancelled in Europe. If we cancelled our only on-going ICBM program unilaterally that would deal a blow to NATO and to the notion of the American nuclear deterrent as part of NATO, that would be absolutely crippling. How in the world could we have asked the Europeans to deploy Pershing IIs and ground launch cruise missiles on their own territory when we would let the citizens of Utah and Nevada and the political support which they garnered in the administration essentially, effectively to stop all on-going US ICBM modernization. We just couldn't do it. So I think that if one looks at nuclear weapons in isolation from other weapons and if one looks at nuclear weapons in isolation from both intra-US politics and, and alliance politics, one can reasonably come to the conclusion that putting MXs in silos is a dumb idea. But if that's part of a package, that moves both the politics and the long-term strategic survivability of a different kind of ICBM force, and arms control, all along a proper path, then it seems to me that it's worth doing.

SUGGESTS AN IRONY THAT THEY ARE BACK STICKING ICBMS IN SILOS.

I wish we had had the wit and the foresight to have come up with as part of the package the rail garrison-basing mode for MX because I think that is definitely a better solution than putting it in silos. The rail garrison method is still not good enough to make MX survivable under any and all circumstances. And therefore it's not good enough to make MX be the sole basis for the US ICBM force for the long run. But in any circumstance in which one has so-called strategic warning, let's say long-term warning, the eruption of conventional hostilities in Europe for example, or a major nuclear crisis, in those sorts of circumstances one can move MX out of those rail garrisons out onto the country's rail system under this new proposal. And so it is really highly survivable except against a bolt out of the blue. I real the rail garrison deployment of MX together with the small mobile system and the hard mobile launchers, as two parts of an overall survivable ICBM program. They are a bit like the non-alert bombers and the alert bombers. If you consider the small mobile ICBM analogous to the alert bombers, systems that can move very quickly and are highly survivable. And the rail garrison Mx as an analogous to the non-alert bombers, the bombers that are in hangars and so forth and are going to take some number of hours to get the crews there and get them ready to take off. Then just as you view the bomber force as a whole as being survivable, I think you can view the ICBM force as a whole as being survivable. But it would have been dumb just as it would have been dumb to have bought a bomber which could never go on alert and which it always took several hours in order to make it possible for it to be launched. I think it would have been dumb to have solely gone with a rail garrison MX and had something that was vulnerable to a bolt out of the blue but which was survivable only after a number of hours.

DID THE COMMISSION CLOSE THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY?

I think the Commission with respect to the window of vulnerability essentially said it's an important problem but you have time to fix it. And the people who before thought there was no window of vulnerability, tend to focus on the fact that we said you have time to fix it, and say, look. They said there was no window of vulnerability. And the people who thought it was very serious tend to focus upon the fact that we also thought it was serious and say, Look, there's still a window of vulnerability. In fact, the purpose in that part of the report was rather carefully put together by the commission as a whole in an effort to bring together people with those very different points of view and to tell both of them that they had a point. But that time was a factor. That the vulnerability of the US ICBM force was a serious problem but it's not one that they needed to panic about. It's one we had time to fix if we fixed it right. And we gave them a road map, a plan to fix it over I think, over the time period in which it needed to be fixed. The problem before had been that people were trying to fix it with a single deployment and trying to fix it right away. And that is one of the things that led to some of the odder ICBM proposals.

ASKS ABOUT MIDGETMAN CONCEPT.

One of the most important aspects of having a small mobile ICBM hardened launchers, Midgetman, is that over the long run it is going to make it possible for the OS ICBM force to be survivable, really against any of a whole range of potential Soviet threats. Now today I believe that if you view the ICBM force in silos, together with the American bomber force, let's set aside submarines for a minute, talk about them later. If you view the ICBM force and the bomber force together....

THEY INTERRUPT HIM.

I think one of the most important aspects of having a small mobile ICBM that would be survivable really against any of a whole range of imaginable Soviet threats, is that it will be able to preserve the survivability of US ICBM force even out in the 1990s and the 21st century, after the Soviets have accurate MIRVed submarine-launched ballistic missiles that can attack both the US silo-based ICBMs and the US bombers. Now why is that important? Today our silo-based ICBMs bombers have a great deal of survivability if the two of them are viewed together that neither one really has separately. Because the only system that the Soviets have that's accurate enough to attack our fixed ICBMs is their own ICBMs, such as the SS-18, accurate enough and high enough yield, one assumes in current strategic planning that any attack on the US ICBMs force is principally going to be from Soviet ICBMs which take about 30 minutes to travel half-way around the world, and which we have warning of their takeoff within a few moments of the time they're launched. On the other hand our bombers can escape, particularly the alert bombers can escape their bases in a very few minutes. In order to attack those systems successfully, the Soviets, most people believe, would have to try to use Soviet submarines carrying either submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the current sort, or perhaps depressed trajectory, even shorter time of flight, submarine-launched ballistic missiles that they could develop, or perhaps Stealth cruise missiles if they develop those. But in any case, missiles launched from close-in submarines and for ballistic missiles those would have a very few minutes of flight time. So under the current situation, the Soviets would principally shoot at our bombers with their submarine-launched ballistic missiles. And at our ICBMs with their ICBMs. So you might have an attack launched on the bomber force that...in which the attacking missiles reach their target in 5, 6, 7, 8 minutes. And one launched on the ICBM force in which it took 30 minutes. Now that creates a dilemma for the Soviets. Because if they launch their submarine attack on our bombers simultaneously with launching their ICBM attack on our ICBMs, the United States would have nuclear weapons detonating on its soil, principally on its bomber bases, within a very few minutes, while the Soviet ICBMs were still 20 minutes or more out, away from the United States. Even if one does not adopt a launch on warning doctrine, it would be impossible for the Soviets to believe that after nuclear detonations had occurred on American soil we would sit there and let our ICBMs stay in the silos for 20 minutes while their ICBMs arrived. So the fact that the Soviets have these different flight times for their attacking systems, means that if they launched the attack simultaneously, probably our ICBMs would survive, survive long enough to be launched. On the other hand one might say suppose the Soviets tried a different tactic and they launched the ICBMs first and let them fly for 20 or more minutes, and then launched the submarine launched ballistic missiles at that point so that everything detonated time on target simultaneously in the United States. Well under those circumstances we would have 25 or more minutes of warning that the... Soviet attack was coming before anything detonated on the United States, and under those circumstances our alert bombers would escape even if we were unwilling to launch our ICBMs before there were any detonations on American soil. Once the Soviets have accurate MIRVed submarine-launched ballistic missiles, so they could pull close to American shores and within a very few minutes attack both our silo-based ICBMs and our bombers, at that point we are relying entirely on our submarines for a survivable deterrent. And it's at that point, sometime, I don't know when it will be, in the 1990s or early 21st century, when I think we would be very, very prudent to have in place a mobile ICBM on hardened mobile launchers, so that the United States had not just 8 or 10 or 12 ballistic missile submarines at sea that were survivable, but also a few hundred small ICBMs. I think that is the only prudent path to take in the interests of not putting all of your deterrent eggs in a very few baskets.

ASKS FOUR ARGUMENTS AS TO WHY ONE NEEDED TO ACCEPT MX.

Well I think first of all it was important to have the MX be part of the package.

INTERRUPTS.

I think first of all it was important to have the MX be part of the package because we were right in the middle of a major crisis for NATO at that point. And if the United States had not been willing to maintain its only on-going ICBM program, and it effectively completely cancelled it because it couldn't find a place to put it in the United States, to ask our European allies at the same time in the midst of all these demonstrations and the Soviet pressure, to accept deployment of the Pershing IIs and ground-launch cruise missiles, would have been ridiculous. We would have been laughed out of the Continent. And I think we probably should have been if that had happened. I think that the impact upon NATO's cohesion and the overall ability for the United States to assure Europe that the American nuclear deterrent was committed to defense of Europe would have been reduced nearly to the vanishing point. So I think that was a first and major reason it was one of the big things that was on our mind. Secondly we all felt it was important also to have a common position between the United States executive and legislative branches, something that both could sign onto. Something which Congress wanted and the executive didn't, or the executive did and Congress didn't, might have been an interesting intellectual exercise but you can get people in universities or think tanks to do that. The Presidential commission ought to help a president and a Congress solve a problem. So that element of politics was present and as I said before, I think implicitly we would have all agreed with Churchill that at the top anyway, politics and strategy are one and those two political issues, one European oriented and the other American oriented, were very much on our minds. Thirdly however, it was important we felt to have an ICBM that could, as soon as possible, put Soviet hardened targets at risk. It didn't have to be an ICBM. If Trident II had been coming along a bit sooner, it could have been there several years earlier, that might have sufficed, for this purpose. But MX was the only way we were going to have available in 86 or early 87 any system that would put Soviet hardened targets at risk. And we felt that in terms of both any sort of crisis stability, being able to convince the Soviets in a crisis that the United States could put at risk those targets which the Soviet Union was most committed to protecting, their leadership, their nuclear storage, their ICBM silos and the rest. In a crisis if we couldn't do the same thing to them, that they could do to us—we felt the United States and NATO as a whole would be very much at a disadvantage. We...I think felt that the flexibility over the long run of having an MX production line going was one which would add to our ability to increase payloads, throw weight, penetration aids, whatever. Might develop to be needed if the Soviets should go very heavily into an area of deploying defenses. Keep in mind the Soviet Union does have a defense system around Moscow and their air defense network and some of their mobile radars are, are programs which have concerned a lot of the American intelligence community for some time, as potentially giving them a breakout capability. The ability to deploy a nationwide ABM defense of some sort. Not a thoroughly reliable or thoroughly effective one, perhaps, but one of some sort. And under those circumstances the United States might well want to be able to add to its offensive capability relatively quickly. I think those are probably the four main reasons, the main things that were on our mind.

ASKS ABOUT MIDGETMAN.

The Midgetman's enemies are interesting. They are both on the left and on the right. And there are some people who are concerned purely because of cost and I think can't be tied to either of those areas. I think some of the costs for the system initially have been somewhat overstated by the Department of Defense in order to make it look expensive. But, and some of the original bids that have come in on the program have been considerably below what has been, what was forecast by the Defense Department. But in terms of the politics of the situation, there are some people who just don't like spending money on strategic offensive forces, period. Even survivable ones. They think there are other things they would rather spend the money on. There are other people who don't mind spending money on strategic forces but since March of 1983 want that money to be spent on defensive systems. So one has a natural confluence of interest between people who might be termed as generally on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and are opposed to offensive nuclear weapons for that reason, and people who are on the more conservative side of the political spectrum and are opposed to offensive nuclear weapons because they want defensive ones instead.

ASKS DOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD MIDEGETMAN.

The Defense Department has been of several minds on Midgetman. In that house there are many mansions. I am afraid to say. The Air Force all along, really from the beginning, has supported Midgetman. It is not as high a priority for the Air Force as MX but they like the idea of having a small ICBM as a follow-on to Midgetman II, and they are willing to have a system that is mobile. They are at the present writing thinking of putting it principally up at the Minuteman sites on its mobile launchers in the northern part of the United States which I think is unwise. One could put a few up there but I think one should always have one of these, at least one of these large southwestern bases constructed to receive mobile Midgetman. But except for that difference, the Air Force has generally been a steady supporter of Midgetman. And it would not have come along nearly as far as it has without this Air Force support. In the office of Secretary of Defense, depending upon who was in the job of Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, or Research and Engineering before that, some of those people have been very much opposed to Midgetman because they wanted a version of multiple protective shelters instead, a version called Carry Hard, in which you have a very hard canister and allegedly very cheap shelters to move them in. The other faction in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, I think on policy grounds has been particularly interested in moving away from ICBMs and spending the money on things such as SDI instead. So there has been a pretty wide spectrum of opinion within the Department of Defense.

ASKS ABOUT THE STRANGENESS OF BUILDING SMALL ONES WHEN YOU CAN BUILD BIG ONES.

Well the Air Force has a big missile under production. And they have MX. And they have generally been opposed to increasing the size of Midgetman because once you start getting these things up to be three warheads or more, not only do you make it harder to move them around, because they're heavier and bigger and the transporters are bigger. And therefore you make it harder for them to be survivable. But you also begin to create a system that looks more or less like a small MX. And therefore people start saying maybe we should just have that. Personally, if there were a way to design and deploy a system that had more than one warhead, and was still small enough to be highly survivable because it was mobile enough to go into many different parts of the country and so on, I wouldn't mind having more than one warhead on the small ICBM. I don't think the number of warheads is nearly as important as the smallness and the mobility.

ASKS FOR ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF MOBLITY AGAINST OTHER WAYS TO GET SURVIVABILITY.

Mobility is the only way to defeat accuracy on the other side in the long run. And accuracy is getting better and better, relentlessly year after year. If anyone in 1968, '69, '70 when we were getting ready to get geared up for SALT I had predicted the kind of accuracies we routinely have today on intercontinental ballistic missiles he would have been told he was engaged in a pipe dream of some sort. I think that there are ways to make it much more difficult with fixed or semi-fixed systems such as MPS systems, for an attacker with accuracy to destroy your system. You can multiply the number of aim points, you can make them very hard, but ultimately a very large number of very accurate nuclear weapons that can be targeted one on one at these fixed points on land is I think going to defeat any system that requires fixed points on land in order to be survivable. And if you're going to be truly mobile, you have to be relatively small. The only thing over the long run we said in the Deutch Committee report two years ago, that might be a threat to a small hardened mobile ICBM, is a Soviet system of intelligence and command and control and communications and targeting, which was so sophisticated that it could not only detect where hardened mobile launchers were, anywhere in the United States, on military reservations or elsewhere if they needed to be, not only detect where they were but continually tracked them and update attacking missiles so that the missile, attacking missile and attacking warhead could also track the moving small mobile ICBM. Now that is not an absolute impossibility in the world of physics. But it is an electronics and engineering and communications and sensor problem of awesome magnitude. And it's one that I believe will get us though at least a couple of decades for the Soviets to try to search for a solution to that sort of strategic problem.

ASKS HIS TO GIVE AN IDEAL PATTERN OF DEPLOYMENT FOR BOTH SIDES.

Well if you make me Czar of the Soviet Union as well as, as Czar of the United States, my ideal pattern of strategic deployments is one in which the Soviets have no nuclear weapons and we have a monopoly, such as existed in 1945. Barring that my ideal one is one in which they are vulnerable and we are not. But if one moves into the real world, of what you might be able to do with arms control proposals that actually might be accepted and with deployments that people in the United States and the Congress might actually fund, then I think a reduced number of warheads, perhaps something down in this 50 percent cut regime, with a relatively large number of ballistic missile submarines on our side, a few MXs in, in the rail garrison mode of deployment, and a few, perhaps 2 or 300, small mobile ICBMs, together with our bomber force, is a reasonable strategic package. If the Soviets had any sense under those circumstances, whatever the agreement constrained them to, or tried to constrain them to, they would point toward a force that was given their traditional interest in ICBMs, perhaps heavier in ICBMs than ours. That is, more ICBMs. But they should also want a force that had a larger number of relatively small ICBMs rather than a few large ones. And they might have a somewhat smaller bomber force and a somewhat small submarine force than we would.

SUGGESTS SOVIETS ARE LEADING IN MOBILITY WITH ICBMS.

I've had a number of members of the Congress tell me that it looks like the Soviet Union opted for the Scowcroft report rather more decisively than the United States did. And I hope that's not true. I don't think the Soviets have any openness or receptivity to the idea of survivable US strategic systems. I think they would very much like for us to stay in fixed silos and stay vulnerable to their SS-18s. But they certainly have moved along rather smartly and certainly not because of anything we said or wrote. They were engaged in this process long before that. They moved along rather smartly toward mobile ICBMs both the larger SS-24s of MX size which they are in the process of putting on rail. And also the smaller SS-25s which they have on mobile land-based launchers.

DO WE NEED THE 100 THE SCOWCROFT COMMISSION RECOMMENDED OR THE 50 CONGRESS WANTS?

I think whether we need another 50 MX depends upon what happens in the arms control agreements and what happens with the small ICBM. Basically these arguments about how large a force is going to be are arguments in which the numbers can change overnight. As long as the production line is still open. Once a system goes into full scale engineering development, nine chances out of ten it's going to go into production. Once a production line stops, nine chances out of ten it's going to stay stopped. So during that period of time, after a system has gone into full— scale development, and before the production line is closed, one can increase numbers, decrease numbers, whatever. And so I think it's, it's conceivable one could have as few as 50 or as many as several hundred MXs if the small ICBM didn't go forward and if arms control failed, and if the Soviets deployed strategic defenses, and so on. I think one reasonable package under these 6000 re-entry vehicle limits that people are talking about, the more or less 50 percent cut, would be perhaps 50 MXs and a few hundred small ICBMs and the rest of the warheads on ballistic missile submarines. But it's quite plausible to go up from 50 to 100. It... I think it really depends on how effective the rail garrison basing mode looks.

WAS REAGAN'S SDI SPEECH A SHOCK TO THE COMMISSION?

Yes we had a meeting, the commission had a meeting the morning after the President's March 23rd, 1983 speech. And we were all quite surprised by this. One or two of us had heard there was going to be something about defensive systems in the speech but we checked with friends in the Department of Defense and had been told that it's just a relatively minor few sentences, it's not a major thing. And it was clear after the speech that it was a very major thing, that he was from his point of view announcing an overall change in American strategy. We didn't know quite how to integrate that into what we were doing with the Scowcroft Commission so we basically sort of shrugged and went on doing what we were doing. It was really a very odd little interlude at that March 24 meeting while we all scratched our heads and tried to figure out what the implications were of the speech the night before.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO ENSURE MIDGETMAN GOES AHEAD?

I suppose there is a chance that with a change of administration or even without a change of administration support of, for the small mobile ICBM, Midgetman, could deteriorate. I think if the program is cancelled, either by opponents in the Senate, this coalition between conservatives and liberals, or by the administration, the House of Representatives at the present writing will refuse to go forward with any further MXs. In a sense the two systems are still hostages to one another, just as they were in 1983. I believe that it is important even though it will be slightly more costly, it is important to try to get at least some southwestern basing for the small mobile so it can be based on a large military reservation and not merely at these Minuteman sites. The system is reasonably survivable at the Minuteman sites because it can move off of them, but it's not nearly as survivable as it would be in the Southwest. I'm glad to see that at least four of the six current Democratic presidential candidates, for example, support Midgetman. And I believe that the two that oppose it have... -seen they get into some fairly vigorous arguments with their colleagues and knowledgeable members of the House and the Senate when they take that position. I think it will be controversial for sometime. But I think if we can make it clear that it's survivable, to me that means putting it on those Southwestern bases. I think it has a good chance of going forward.

DOES IT MAKE HIM UNCOMFORTABLE TO HAVE THEM AS SITTING DUCKS IN SILOS?

Well I don't think that the MXs in the silos are sitting ducks as long as the Soviets can't simultaneously attack silo-based ICBMS and the bomber force, which they really could only do with accurate MIRVed submarine launched ballistic missiles. A lot of people who are opposed to MX call attention to MX being vulnerable in the silos and a lot of people who are, who were trying to promote MX earlier, call attention to Minuteman to being vulnerable in the silos. There tends to be kind of a liberal conservative split on whether or not you talk about the vulnerability of Minuteman in the silos or MXs in the silos. They're the same silos. The silos don't really care what missile they have in them. Basically I think those silos, whatever they have in them, are viewed in the context of US strategic forces as a whole, not all that vulnerable now, but some day in the 1990s or early 21st century they will be. At that point I would start to yes, get very nervous.

HAVE ALL PARTIES LIVED UP TO THEIR PART OF THE DEAL THE SCOWCROFT COMMISSION PUT TOGETHER?

All parties have lived up to some portion of their deal. The administration has proposed a small mobile ICBM, although there is a good deal of guerilla warfare inside the administration against it, and the administration has proposed banning mobiles at Geneva. So I would think that they would get no more than a B-minus, perhaps a C-plus. But nonetheless some of the major elements of living up to the deal are there. The Congress has gone forward albeit rather reluctantly with MX but with only 50 rather than with 100. So perhaps they get a similar grade. Both agreements insofar as there was any formal agreement, let's say both parts of the US government, are still roughly on the same track that the Scowcroft commission recommended, but parts of each branch are reluctant and neither branch is really marching along smartly.

ASKS HIS ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY. DO THINKERS PLACE EMPHASIS THEY USED TO ON THE BOLT FROM THE BLUE SCENARIO?

A lot of people have talked recently about how the bolt from the blue scenario is a ridiculous idea and we really shouldn't be concerned with it at all. People in the executive branch, I think most prominently Freddy Clay, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, strongly believes that that is not a reasonable factor in one's strategic planning. Personally I think that we overemphasized the bolt from the blue notion as the circumstances under which we should plan our strategic forces for a long time, and now we're somewhat in danger of ignoring it altogether. I think the only reasonable way to look at it is that it's most unlikely but if in some political or strategic circumstances, the Soviets felt they could actually win nuclear war by disarming, effectively disarming the United States, there might be some circumstances in which some Soviet leader might consider it. What we want as Jim Schlesinger used to say, is for the head of the general staff, whenever he is asked the question about whether or not a bolt from the blue could work by the Politburo, even by some particularly fatuous and irresponsible member of the Politburo, we want him to have to go back to his staff, come back into the Politburo meeting and say, it just can't be done comrade.

ASKS FOR A TAKE HOME LESSON FOR THE AUDIENCE.

I think the most important thing about strategic systems to realize is that they are not isolated in and of themselves. They are part of the fabric of American military power which has an overall mission in deterring war, not just nuclear war. One of the least attractive ideas that our European allies can conceive of right now is making the world safe for a conventional World War III, particularly since they might be the place where it would be fought. And nuclear weapons, however unattractive they are, and however unusable they are in the normal run of circumstances, still, for historical reasons play an important role in deterring war from beginning. Not only would a conventional World War III be horrible in and of itself, but it would also be the most likely way for nuclear war then to occur. So there are all sorts of reasons for nuclear deterrence until you come up with something better that's in place to continue to play a major role in keeping the peace between the United States and the Soviet Union and essentially between the East and the West. That seems to me to be the central problem and one cannot do that with one's own strategic forces unless they are survivable. And survivability is an extremely important criterion. They don't all need to be perfect survivable under all circumstances. That would break the bank. Everybody always wants whatever he's working on to be perfect. But at least some part of each of the three parts of our strategic forces, the bombers, the ICBMs, and the submarines, ought to be survivable even in the worst circumstances. Now I think that is a reasonable criterion. It's a criterion that's existed for the United States for many, many years. It's one which is not aggressive. It's one which I think the Soviets fully understand and I think they appreciate our diligence in maintaining that survivability if we demonstrate that diligence. I think if one keeps those two factors in mind, the role of nuclear forces in deterring war generally, and the role of survivability in maintaining nuclear forces and being, having them be able to do their job. Those are the two central public policy issues at least from my point of view. It may come that in time one can evolve into a world which is less and less dependent on nuclear deterrence. We may be able to evolve that way by reducing the numbers of systems, but we have to preserve the survivability of those systems while we reduce the numbers. We may evolve that way because the nature of the Soviet state changes, although I think if that happens it's going to take a long, long time. We may evolve that way because President Reagan is correct in defensive systems are going to take over, but I think if that should happen it's also going to take a long, long time. In the meantime nuclear deterrence something that served that West and the causes of both peace and freedom reasonably well for the last 40 years. And before we throw it away, based upon some speculations about space-based defenses or some speculations about the Soviet Union becoming a rough version of a Western capitalist democracy, we ought to be very, very cautious indeed.

ASKS THEN HOW HE FEELS ABOUT REYKJAVIK, DOING AWAY WITH ALL BALLISTIC MISSILES.

I think that Reykjavik was the single worst summit between the United States and the Soviet Union that's ever occurred, replacing Kennedy's performance at Vienna. I think it held up for the world a completely unrealistic view of the possibility of doing away on the one hand with all ballistic missiles or on the other with all nuclear weapons in the very near term. I think it deflected attention away from more useful steps to make nuclear weapons more survivable, to have reasonable arms control connected with them, to decrease emphasis on them. I think that it shook our allies confidence in the judgment of the American president. I think that Reykjavik generally was one of the worst performances in foreign policy by an administration that this country has seen in the nuclear age.