DR. GARWIN, WHAT IS THE RATIONALE FOR HAVING LAND-BASED MX MISSILES? OR LAND-BASED MISSILES, LET'S JUST START WITH MISSILES.

We started long ago with a nuclear force. We had to move them near their targets. The bombs dropped on Japan we delivered by airplanes. When the Soviet Union became the number one enemy, we had nuclear weapons forward based on airplanes in Europe, then on missiles in Italy and Turkey. But that's inconvenient, to put them in the ocean is good for the Navy and a marvelous technical achievement, but it doesn't do much for the Air Force. Early on we could get accurate delivery with ballistic missiles only from silo basing. We could build weapons which could throw nuclear warheads a quarter world away. The ICBM and that's why we had them in silos. Now, why silos? We did not start with silos. We started with the Atlas and the Titan missiles. They were above ground. They were soft, they took much longer to fuel than they did to fly. They had one warhead each and it was a monster with the first hydrogen bomb many megatons of yield. But they were very vulnerable. And obviously even Soviet bombers could come and destroy these missiles above the ground. So after we had deployed them and we learned that we could build re-entry vehicle which were much less massive than we had imagined in the first place, we decided we should improve the survivability of these things and harden them with concrete and steel. Initially to a few hundred pounds per square inch, a few times the pressure in your automobile tire, and now to a thousand or two thousand pounds per square inch hardness. So right now in the Minuteman fields we have a thousand missiles and there are about seven miles centers. Each one requires a direct hit from a Soviet nuclear weapons landing within a hundred or 200 yards too destroy it. And so it would take a couple of thousand accurate, fairly reliable Soviet weapons to destroy our Minuteman silo-based force. It has eleven desirable characteristics which were enunciated by Lew Allen, then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, in response to a 1978 question from the head of the House Armed Services Committee. Among these properties are accuracy, good communications, good control, so they won't go when you don't want them to go, and promptness of launch. There are others. Low operating cost is among them. You put them in the ground and you don't just forget them, but they don't require much in the way of maintenance.

WHAT IMPROVEMENTS WOULD YOU WANT TO MAKE TO YOUR LAND-BASED MISSILES AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

People who are involved with any program want to improve it. It's in the nature of people. And they get paid for doing so. Even when the improvements really don't provide any benefit to the taxpayer, the sponsor, or to national security. So the things that you might improve are to make a weapon smaller for delivering the same yield. The same explosive power. You might make it more accurate, so that it could destroy hardened targets. You might provide earth-penetrating capability. You might add penetration aids so that the weapons could more easily go through a defense that the other side has. You might harden them, the basing system, or the missile itself so as it's launched, the x-rays from a, an enemy nuclear warhead could not destroy it so easily. All of those things. But I suppose capability might be defined as number of targets that can be killed. How long it takes to destroy them. And how hard those targets can be. And that is affected by number of warheads on our side, good communications to them, accuracy of the weapon themselves. And all of those, for instance the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge has the fount of improvement in inertial guidance. But they have also been the ones who have denied our operational ballistic missile forces the benefits of radio navigation which could long ago have improved the accuracy well beyond where we are now with pure inertial guidance.

WHAT WAS THE FLAW IN THE SCHLESINGER DOCTRINE IN 1974?

As I understand the Schlesinger Doctrine and I was quite exercised about it when I first heard of it. In fact, I went over to the Pentagon to talk with Jim Schlesinger. He was on a trip so I talked with Don Cotter, the Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of nuclear energy, those nuclear weapons. They were looking for second-strike counterforce, was a short way to put it. They felt that high quality deterrence, as Paul Nitze used to put it, could be achieved not by destroying or having the ability to destroy Soviet society, factories, ordinary military forces, but one had to be able to destroy the Soviet strategic forces themselves. And of course they could not profess that we wanted a first-strike capability that would not be acceptable in the American doctrine or to the American people or to the Congress. But they wanted to ensure, they said that if a nuclear war started, the Soviets would see that they would lose all of their strategic war making potential and therefore they would be deterred. They wouldn't start the nuclear war because if they did they would suddenly become disarmed. The only problem with that is that it's a lot easier for us to get a first-strike counterforce capability. That is, when our communications systems are intact, when we know that all of their silos are full, when we have the opportunity for months to track their submarines in the ocean, you have to destroy them all out of the blue. That I could build a system to do. At great cost of course. And I don't know how to build a second-strike counterforce capability, for two reasons. One, the Soviets will have launched some of their weapons and not others, so you have the problem of knowing which silos are empty and which to attack. But the bigger problem is that if the Soviets are assumed to have made a first-strike, then they will certainly have put their remaining nuclear weapons on launch under attack. That is, as soon as we launch back at them, they will let fly their remaining weapons. So there is no possibility, since it takes ICBMs 30 minutes to fly and it takes submarine-launched ballistic missiles probably ten or fifteen from their launch sites to the silo fields, no possibility of destroying the Soviet weapons before they can be launched.

DID YOU THINK THEY WERE GOING FOR A FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY AND CALLING IT A SECOND-STRIKE?

I expect some people were advocating this second-strike capability as a cover, or an approach to their desired first strike counterforce, first-strike disarming force. I don't think Secretary of Defense Schlesinger had that in mind. I suppose politically he was required to build a force that he rationalized as aiding deterrence because it provided second force counterforce, even though he knew that a first strike counterforce capability was unachievable and would be very destabilizing. Because a first-strike force has the same problem, that is, when they see it coming, they would be sufficiently alert to launch under attack. The counterforce problem arose later. It reared its ugly head again in 1980, in a campaign letter that I saw from the Reagan campaign. It said that our candidate, Governor Reagan, is committed to a three-point program. First, to build nuclear weapons, to disarm the Soviet Union. Not just to destroy them in retaliation. To disarm them. Second, to get the political benefits from everyone in the world, including the Soviets knowing that we have that capability. And third, in case the Soviets, by dint of hard work, prevent us from getting a disarming capability, they will have destroyed themselves economically. So economic warfare. The only problem logically with that three-point program, aside from a moral or ethical one, is that it cannot be carried through. The Soviets would laugh all the way to the bank because they could just put their weapons on launch under attack if we launched our first-strike attack, the Soviets would launch their weapons. And knowing that, we would be deterred from ever attacking in the first place. The SDI in 1983 filled that logical gap. If it could be popped up, not on orbit all the time, but popped up, at the time that we made this first-strike, then the Soviets would have a dilemma. Either they would launch their weapons at the moment to be eaten up by the strategic or they would allow the weapons to stay in their silos and submarines to be destroyed by our first-strike counterforce. All of this of course in the name of political persuasion and deterrence, but the Soviets wouldn't see it that way any more than we would.

IN 1974 AND '75, WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCE'S RATIONALE BEHIND THE NEW MX MISSILE?

The Air Force was pursuing the line of development, of evolution, just the way the dinosaurs did. Or the boat builders or whatever. People and their contractors just try to do the best they can and things get bigger and more complex and more expensive. In the process they lose sight of the national security. There is a syndrome and it is the commander syndrome. That is, if you are a commander of a ship, you want the world's best ship. And you want to maximize the survivability and the capability, do the best for yourself and for your crew. Never mind that if you had a ship that was ten times less expensive, one could get a lot more of them and overall we would have better survivability and more capability. So that's the direction in which the Air Force was going. Putting more eggs in one basket. Each of the eggs would be somewhat cheaper but each of the baskets would be considerably more expensive. The Air Force was driven also by the 1972 SALT I agreement which limited the size of the missile that we could have. It would be the Soviet SS-11 equivalent and the biggest missile we could make under that rubric of a light missile, the largest light missile, was MX size, 195,000 pounds. There is a saying in arms control that a ceiling becomes a floor, and I never saw it more clearly exemplified than in this case, where the biggest missile you are allowed to make became the smallest missile the Air Force was willing to consider. And in fact a friend of mine, Ivan Getting, head of the Aerospace Corporation, an Air Force contractor, in the mid-'70s, in some exasperation with my arguing in favor of smaller missiles and other basing said, you know, "I just want the biggest missile we're allowed to make. The Soviets have missiles like that, and why can't we have missiles like that!" The best rationale I've heard for the MX came from another friend of mine who said, "Well, you know, the Minuteman won't live forever. We have to have modernization sometime, I don't know whether now is the right time but if not now, five years or ten years from now. And what is it that we should build?" And in fact there is nothing wrong in my opinion with modernizing with continual reductions in cost. For instance, if one considers 35 mm cameras, the cameras remain at the same price in dollars and their functions improve enormously. That's the direction that we ought to take, or we might even turn back some money to the taxpayer and have a finite and adequate deterrent capability. But the problem with the multiple warheads, the ten warhead MX, is that it is self-induced vulnerability. It's not the warheads, our warheads that hurt us, it's the relatively few launchers. If we have the same number of warheads as the Soviets, and we put more than one warhead on a launcher, then the Soviets obviously by attacking that launcher could destroy more warheads than they lose. In the late '70s this was the vulnerability gap, the window or vulnerability. Paul Nitze was a great exponent of this window. And he would show charts which showed a draw down curve that the Soviets by attacking the Minuteman with its three warheads, they would need only two to destroy a Minuteman with high reliability. This was supposed to be an irresistible temptation to the Soviets to nuclear attack in time of crisis. They ignored of course the fact that we had long had maybe 600 submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads in a single port that could have been destroyed with those same two Soviet warheads. So 300 warheads destroyed by one was not an irresistible temptation to attack, but three warheads destroyed by two...was. And the MX, the proposed remedy to this Minuteman vulnerability cured vulnerability alright, but it replaced it by a worse MX vulnerability so that was the origin of the replacement for the simple Air Force desire to build a bigger and a more modern missile. The Carter Administration said, alright, we ought to have some modernization but we insist that it be in an invulnerable, in a survivable basing posture.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH SCHLESINGER'S CONCEPT THAT WE COULD SOLVE OUR MUTUAL VULNERABILITY PROBLEM WITH GREATER ACCURACY?

If one argues that mutual vulnerability could be reduced by greater accuracy in targeting, that's assuming that the Soviets are going to have greater accuracy and will thereby reduce the yields required to destroy military targets. And to the extent that they no longer have the capability to destroy cities. Well, that isn't happening. And it will not happen because in this confrontation, if each side has the ability to destroy military targets, after an ICBM flight time, and one side has the ability to destroy the society, but the other side doesn't, then the destruction of military targets becomes irrelevant. All you need to do is to threaten to destroy the other side's society, and it must capitulate. It's no good for it to say, "But I'll destroy your military targets." In fact, this scenario which I gather you call it a Nitze scenario, goes back in my own experience to a debate I had in 1973 with Richard Perle, who was at that time a staff aide to Senator Henry Jackson. He said in a debate in Washington that once the Soviet missiles became more accurate, the thousand Minuteman missiles we had could be destroyed and the Soviets would no longer be deterred from a nuclear attack on the United States. Why? We would still have the submarines and they were invulnerable. He said yes, but the Soviet leader would tell the American President that he knew that we still had the submarines and that they could destroy Soviet cities, but the Soviets also had missiles left over from destroying our Minuteman silos and they could destroy our cities in return. So the American President would capitulate, wanting more to have American cities survive than to see Soviet cities destroyed. Now Richard Perle was arguing that we ought to defend the Minuteman and build the Safeguard system. But I said to him, "Suppose that we have perfectly invulnerable Minuteman by magic, for instance, and I'll give you perfectly accurate nuclear weapons as well. How will the scenario be different? The Soviets of course can't destroy these invulnerable Minutemen, they will send a nuclear weapon over to destroy an air field or a dam, say, 'We mean business, we know you have' those submarine-launched weapons that can destroy our cities and we know you now have those Minuteman missiles whose warheads can destroy our silos. But we assure you we have put our missiles all on launch under attack, and if we see any warheads coming toward us we will destroy your cities. And the American President, if he was deterred before and surrendered, would have to surrender." Now in fact, the American President will not surrender in either case. Because he knows or she knows that the threat to destroy Soviet cities is enough to keep them from attacking in the first place. And that is the rational...

...NATURALLY GO TO INCREASING ACCURACY. ASKS TO STATE CLEARLY THAT HE THOUGH ACCURACY WASN'T A GOOD IDEA AND WHY.

In the past we had submarine-launched missiles which were not sufficiently accurate to destroy silos and silo-based missiles which were marginally accurate. There was a question about improving the accuracy and I thought that neither the Soviets nor we ought to do that. And I remember writing that the world would be a better place if both of our missiles were inaccurate. But if one side had accurate missiles, then the world would be more secure if the second side did not. And that held even if it were the Soviets with accurate missiles and we without. So the worst would be when both sides had accurate missiles and they would perceive the mutual threat to destroy their retaliatory force. If only one side had the accurate missile, of course it need fear nothing from the other side. And the other side could put its weapons on launch under attack but the first side with the accurate missile had no reason to launch rapidly. But when both sides have accurate missiles and if that were the only kind of retaliatory force, then there would be a hair trigger situation with both sides on launch under attack, each waiting for the other to strike.

DID HE ARGUE WITH SCHLESINGER THAT WE SHOULDN'T RUSH INTO IMPROVING OUR ACCURACY?

It's pretty hard to argue with Secretaries of Defense and Air Forces and think tanks all at the same time. Because you never know who is scheming and at what stage they are in their persuasion. So the best I've been able to do is to publish papers, many of them long in advance of the time when the question had become popular. Or give Congressional testimony whenever invited.

WAS MIRVING THE ROOT OF VULNERABILITY PROBLEM?

MIRVing is a kind of self-induced vulnerability. We MIRVed not to create vulnerable missiles for us, but to increase our capability for a given number of launchers to destroy many more targets on the Soviet side. And of course we failed to grasp the opportunity in 1972 in SALT I to ban MIRVs which later came back to bite us when the Soviets copied us and made our own MIRVed ICBM launchers vulnerable.

WAS THERE A WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY—WERE OUR LAND-BASED VULNERABLE?

In the early '70s the Soviet ICBMs were not sufficiently accurate to make our Minuteman vulnerable. And only in the late '70s was there any argument that they had become vulnerable. Now paradoxically people argue that we must do this or that in order to prevent the Minuteman from becoming vulnerable, when those same people have argued that it has been vulnerable since the late 1970s. If we are satisfied all these years with the vulnerable ICBM force, why do we have to do anything sudden about it now?

IS THE MINUTEMAN VULNERABLE?

The Minuteman is not vulnerable in the sense that no Soviet leader is going to launch an attack which will destroy the Minuteman. Every rational Soviet planner is going to judge the United States capable of launch under attack so that the Minuteman silos might be destroyed, but not the missiles. But furthermore, the Minuteman will not be destroyed because it is embedded in the submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bomber forces. The one which is not vulnerable at all, and the second which can get off the ground before it is destroyed. So the Scowcroft Commission in 1983 and 1984 gave those answers, which I believe.

WHY DID WE HEAR SO MUCH ABOUT THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY IN THE LATE 1970S?

We heard a lot about the window of vulnerability in the late '70s because it is a selling point for a program. In fact, it was not a reason to build MXs and to put them into silos, which is what the Air Force wanted to do. But it got people's attention and it motivated them to do something. So it is propaganda, advertising. In 1973, Richard Perle made the same argument but it was perfectly clear that if I gave him invulnerable missiles and perfectly accurate ones to boot, they would not remove the frightening scenario, the result that he feared, namely that the Soviets would threaten to destroy US cities unless we surrendered. And it's pretty hard to eliminate that threat from the Soviet capability.

IS IT NOT DANGEROUS TO RELY ON LAUNCH UNDER ATTACK?

Well it wouldn't be a complicated decision to rely on launch under attack. It's only yes or no. And one should not plan to rely on launch under attack. However, if the submarines were to suddenly and unexpectedly become vulnerable, if the Soviet missiles became more accurate than we thought, if an attack were imagined to be on the way, then you would be better off having a launch under attack capability to deter that Soviet strike than having the missiles locked up so they could under no circumstances be launched until an hour after they were commanded to go. So, as a last ditch capability not to be used necessarily but to be depended on if all else fails, launch under attack is very valuable. I would hope that the Soviets have a launch under attack capability because if they don't, then they may argue that they have to go first. And I don't want the Soviets feeling that they must launch before we launch. I would a lot rather have the Soviets feeling that they can allow the US to launch our missiles and they could still retaliate and therefore the United States, seeing this, would not attack the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union would not attack the United States. So I think launch under attack is a stabilizing capability on both sides. It would be better if the strategic forces were not vulnerable so one did not have to rely on launch under attack. But if one has vulnerable forces, then it's a good thing to have.

WHY DID AIR FORCE ARGUE WE NEEDED MX TO CURE VULNERABILITY OF LAND-BASED FORCE?

In arguing tor a program you don't want to be too complicated. You want to scare the hell out of people because that gets their attention. And then you want to give them a solution whether or not it solves the problem. And that's what the Air Force was doing. So, assuredly the Minuteman could not be proved to be invulnerable and so that was a good premise. Now the solution, the MX in fact was not a solution to the Minuteman vulnerability, replacing it for the most part with MX vulnerability. And insofar as it was a different basing mode, the Minuteman could have been re-based much more quickly at much lower cost. That was never candidly analyzed. In fact, it was misrepresented by Air Force general officers to the Congress and to the Governors. I remember one case in which a general officer explained to Congress and then later to Governor Matheson of Utah, that it would cost much more to redeploy the Minuteman missiles, Minuteman III, than to build MX in multiple protective shelters. His argument was that it would take vastly more Minuteman shelters than the 4,600 that were due to be built for the MX. But he had carefully and not very candidly assumed that he would start with 1,650 Minuteman warheads. And he would start with 2,000 MX warheads. So he could afford to lose a lot fewer Minuteman warheads. Had he used 2,000 Minuteman warheads, which we had on a few less than 700 Minuteman missiles, the Minuteman redeployment would have been a lot cheaper. But the Air Force didn't tell us that because it would have interfered with their game plan, which was to push the MX through development to manufacture and deployment.

WAS THE AIR FORCE EXCITED ABOUT THE MX BECAUSE IT WOULD PUT SOVIET TARGETS AT RISK?

There are different parts of the Air Force. There is the development part of the Air Force and they were excited about the MX because it was the next strategic program. And Air Force officer told me once we have been working on this two years now, it's time for it to move into the next stage. Well, when I have directed industrial research programs, I was careful to have two or three competing programs that I sponsored, so that at least one and maybe two or three of the groups would realize that they could not go into full-scale development and production. Sometimes you say, "Very good technical work. There is no need for this in the marketplace. Let's go on to the next item." But that doesn't tend to happen in the military where there is no test of the marketplace. Now the operators, of course they have an unfilled target list. There are people whose job it is to identify targets, to be struck by nuclear weapons if war comes. Since we get new, new nuclear weapons every day, they have to have a list that is somewhat bigger than the number of weapons that we have. And so they would like to make more and more effective weapons. And the MX was a cheaper way to add nuclear warheads than the other ways that we had. Bundling ten of them to a single guidance system. Incidentally, since 1982 or 83, it is no longer cheaper in my opinion to use multiple warheads, MIRVs, for accurate delivery, than to use single warhead missiles, because the cost of guidance systems has come way down. And so one can afford to have a guidance system per warhead without running up the cost too much.

WAS THERE REALLY A CONFLICT BETWEEN ROLE OF MX AS COUNTERFORCE MISSILE AND ONE THAT WOULD BE SURVIVABLE?

Well the conflict between capability, the ability to put Soviet hard targets at risk, and survivability was muted. The Air Force wanted capability, the Carter Administration wanted survivability. And they sort of didn't poach on one another's territory. But the Carter Administration went to extreme lengths, and President himself was involved as was Bill Perry, Undersecretary of Defense. Very much in the choice of the basing modes. It was unfortunate in my opinion that we had so many modes which were considered, came to light, were advocated by the Administration, were later found to be technically inadequate and were replaced by other inadequate modes. In fact, there were two approaches which were never really considered. One was to put the MX missile, if you believe you have to have the MX missile, and not waste all that development cost, put it on submarines. Put it lying down in the water on submarines, two or four, to a small submarine. That could produce a lot of aim points. You would have at most 40 warheads to a submarine compared with a couple hundred now, and the submarine carrying a true ICBM could stay fairly close, a few hundred miles from US shores. So Sidney Drell of Stanford University and I proposed it. We worked on it for the Defense Department. The Defense Department then studied our report, criticized it in a systems planning corporation study. And we responded to that. If you want the MX missile in my opinion that is the right way to deploy it. Unfortunately, it does not give the Air Force what it wants and forget to say what was essential, namely a land-based replacement for the Minuteman.

WHY DIDN'T THE AIR FORCE OR NAVY WANT TO CONSIDER YOUR SMALL SUBMARINE IDEA?

The Air Force never really had the competence to analyze it, they told us. But in any case it wouldn't be their responsibility. And they hadn't created Minuteman vulnerability in order to give the Navy another operational system. The Navy didn't like it because to even consider small submarines would show a lack of faith in their Trident program which has always had very tough sledding. And so they didn't want to imperil the continued funding, the contractors knew where they stood with Trident, and they didn't know where they would stand with the small submarines. And so there was no interest on their part. It is a very important program in my opinion. If we go too much smaller numbers of nuclear weapons and ought to be considered seriously.

WHY WAS IT AN UNSTATED OBJECTIVE THAT IT BE LAND-BASED?

The Minuteman replacement, although the condition was unstated, had to be land-based in order to be an Air Force responsibility. It was the Air Force that wanted a replacement for its Minuteman. If the Air Force had been told that the replacement to the Minuteman will be sea-based, the Air Force would have had big programs, geriatric programs, for preserving Minuteman into its 30th, 40th, and 50th year. And they would have done a good job about it. But with the possibility of an Air Force replacement, with better technology and higher costs, it was clear that that was what they wanted.

ASKS HIM TO REPEAT.

You might imagine that a sea-based replacement for the Minuteman so the Trident programs, air-launched cruise missiles, and still another sea-based program, would have been the strategic choice. And I think it might have been but it was not an Air Force choice because it would have escaped the responsibility of the Air Force bureaucracy. Bureaucracies do not exist in order to put themselves out of business or to split off a large part of themselves. If the Air Force had known that the replacement to the Minuteman would have been sea-based, they would have had geriatric care for the Minuteman and preserved it for 20 or 30 years longer.

WHY DID HE GO TO UTAH AND NEVADA TO SPEAK WITH CITIZENS ABOUT THE CARTER BASING MODE FOR THE MX?

The national security is an orphan, just like so many of public interests. There is a kind of mercantilism where the people who make shoes have a lot more influence on trade legislation than the people who wear shoes, and the people who grow food have more influence. And the people who make weapons have more influence than the people who pay for them or who will die from them. And it seems to me that the national security requires in a democracy that the people understand these questions. So that's why I try to testify whenever invited. And in this case the local people, some of them were in favor, some of them were opposing the MX deployment. But in some cases it seemed to me for the wrong reasons. And so I thought I would go out and tell them how I saw these things and explain to them that no, you really could deploy the Minuteman in the same shelters for a lower cost and that the MX deployment proposal really would not provide a survivable basing. In some cases, it would provide only a launch under attack. And it was a very expensive way to do a job that could have been done much more cheaply. So why should we spend the money? So I went to tell the people what I thought about it.

WHAT ARGUMENTS DID YOU MAKE TO THE PEOPLE OF UTAH AND NEVADA WHEN YOU APPEARED THERE WHY THE CARTER BASING MODE WAS A BAD IDEA?

The Carter basing mode which had 23 shelters per MX would either have the MX permanently in the shelter or it would have a kind of scramble on warning. It seemed to be really very difficult to preserve location uncertainty, as they called it. With free public access to the roads, adjoining the shelters. And the Carter Administration response to that was well, OK, if we're worried about it, when there is a Soviet launch we will have these missiles out on the road and they will dash into another shelter. Well, you're going to do one or the other. You're not going to say, well scramble on warning if you are confident that you can preserve location uncertainty. Scramble on warning is it's own vulnerability and we pointed out that if you waiting 30 minutes, if you have 30 minutes to scramble into another shelter, then a submarine-launched ballistic missile which gets there is 7 minutes, will destroy the weapon, the MX, before it has found shelter. And the Carter Administration hadn't thought about that. So here, the worst thing they could imagine, the other side finding out where the weapon was, they say, easy, we'll scramble on warning. But they had forgotten that there are SLBMs to attack also. And the SLBMs need have no particular accuracy. So it really was a system half thought through, it would have been better with vertical shelters for the MX missiles. But it would have been far better redeploying the Minute man or even better to put a single warhead missile in a silo and give up all of this uncertainty in position because it is self-protecting, it cannot be destroyed warhead for warhead by the Soviet Union.

COULD THE SOVIETS OVERWHELM THE MPS SYSTEM?

The Soviets could have overwhelmed the MPS system but that would not have been their choice. I think it would have been a lot easier with sensors to find out where the missiles were and to attack them. But, those missiles were unnecessary. That's the point. And if it's not necessary to build them why build them? If you say it is necessary to build them, then you have to take seriously the promise that they are going to be invulnerable, and if they can be shown to be invulnerable, then you shouldn't build that system.

WHY WERE THE MISSILES UNNECESSARY?

The missiles were unnecessary because we had plenty of deterrent capability on the submarines, because we could have in a last ditch launched under attack, to protect ourselves if all of the weapons became vulnerable, and finally, because the accuracy of the weapons submarine-launched or silo-based, or mobile, could have been improved to any desired level, considerably better than the current MX, by adding ground beacon systems, radio systems, in the launching fields. So there was no need to build new weapons and this was the wrong one to build if one were looking either for additional silo killing capability or survivability.

WHY DID HE CHOOSE TO FIGHT THE BASING MODE RATHER THAN THE WEAPON?

Well the weapon wasn't in question and the basing mode was. So I said what I thought about both weapon and basing mode and people took that argument and used it in respect to the basing mode.

AIR FORCE SAID YOU WERE ARGUING DOWN THEIR BASING MODE IN ORDER TO KILL THE WEAPON.

Well, General Hecker stated out in Nevada or Utah that "those people," Sid Drell and myself among them, who were opposing the MX basing, had opposed every strategic system. And they were just trying to kill the MX. I thought that was a low blow since we had worked really very hard on the small undersea mobile submarine-basing of the MX and I have not wavered in my support of that. But furthermore, I've been largely responsible for the air-launched cruise missile, one of our primary strategic weapons, and a lot of other contributions to strategic offense and strategic defense. But it's pretty hard, I suppose, even for a military officer to keep a cool head when in an argument.

WHAT WAS ATMOSPHERE LIKE OUT IN UTAH AND NEVADA?

The atmosphere in Utah and Nevada was marked by a decided absence of Air Force people. Whenever I went, even though people tried to get the Air Force on the same platform, they always declined. They would come out the next day but they wouldn't show up for a debate or even for a discussion.

WHY?

I suppose they felt that they would do a better job on selling their program if they could make their statements without somebody nearby who was familiar with them, and had some perceptions or arguments about them.

SOME DISCOUNT PUBLIC PROTEST'S ROLE, THAT IT WAS REAGAN WHO KILLED THE MISSILE. WHAT WAS ROLE OF PROTEST?

Oh I think the public protest in Utah and Nevada and the Mormon Church position had killed the deployment in those states. Of course, when the Reagan Administration came in, they opposed the MX basing, maybe even the MX missile for a while, as a Carter Administration program. And then found they had the Air Force to reckon with. So...the Reagan Administration had its own MX missile basing follies started with super hardening, which appealed to the President and the Secretary of Defense, but they should have checked it out with the Defense Department first, which they didn't, and which didn't like it, and then the dense pack, in which the hundred weapons were to be based so close together that they could not all be destroyed simultaneously because the silos were harder than the incoming warheads. And if one warhead went off first, it would destroy the other warheads nearby while the silos, except for the closest, would not be destroyed. That turns out to be launch under attack in another guise, a very expensive launch under attack. Because by the assumptions that the Reagan Administration published, the Soviets could destroy ten percent, that is ten of the missiles, without mutual interference of the warheads coming in. And then half an hour later, another ten. And so in a few hours everyone of those missiles would be gone unless it would be launched before it was destroyed. So it is launch under attack, it is not enduring survival such as was hoped for by the mobile missiles of the Carter Administration and such as would be provided by single warhead missiles based in silos.

COULD RUSSIANS LEARN TO OVERCOME DENSE PACK?

The Soviets could have overcome dense pack in two ways. One, by destroying ten percent and ten percent and ten percent and ten percent, with half an hour for each ten percent. Or another way, giving them credit for the accuracy that the Administration credited them, they could have had totally simultaneous detonation so all of the weapons arrived, each at their individual targets, and detonated simultaneously to within a millionth of a second. Easy enough to do by communication among the warheads. Yes, either one of these would have been a reasonable approach to overcoming dense pack.

CRITICS SAY SURVIVABILITY MASKS REAL DESIRE FOR FIRST-STRIKE. IF WE WAITED FOR AN ATTACK, WHAT WOULD BE THE ROLE OF THOSE MISSILES IN A COUNTERFORCE ATTACK? DOES HE THINK SO?

There are many people in the military with different views, some of them are fixed on capability, others like Glenn Kent are interested in survivability. And the problem is they are likely to compromise, to try to get survivability plus capability. And so it's hard to say what that program had as a goal, backed into a corner one could always say it's a bargaining chip. If the Soviets don't like all of this accuracy and these warheads being added to our stockpile, maybe they will be willing to give up some of theirs in return. So unfortunately, there are many arguments which are offered, some of them candidly and some of them dishonestly.

WOULD A SOVIET PLANNER BE WORRIED THAT WE WERE PLANNING TO GET FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY?

Whenever the question of first-strike capability was raised of the 200 MX Carter deployment or 100 MX Reagan deployment, the answer would always be, "This isn't enough warheads to give us a first-strike capability." But my response to Harold Brown and others was that if the Soviets began to build missiles at that rate, and the build 4600 shelters, and they said, "We're only going to put 200 missiles into them," we would say that was laying the basis, laying the groundwork, the care and feeding of a vast force of missiles. And we would worry that they were getting closer to a first-strike capability. No, the Soviets, weren't worried too much about a first-strike capability because they had their submarines as well, and they have launch under attack, but they didn't like it and it didn't drive them either into reductions of warheads in my opinion.

WHAT ABOUT COLLATERAL DAMAGE?

In 1974, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there was a, perhaps danger of a surgical strike from the Soviet Union against our strategic force, against the land-based missiles, against the air bases, the submarines in port. And that perhaps not enough Americans would be killed in such an attack for us to think retaliation was necessary. Perhaps as few as 80,000 or 800,000 Americans. Another study by the Office of Technology Assessment led to more testimony from the Defense Department and the number became 5 to 20 million Americans killed by a militarily significant attack on the strategic forces. And later in the MX debates, the Air Force said 40 to 50 million people would be killed if the Soviets attacked and destroyed all of the land-based forces. I think the people did not like being near what was in, indelicately called by the Administration as a "nuclear sponge," to soak up Soviet nuclear weapons because people know that these nuclear weapons give rise to fallout and so they were unhappy about that. But I'm no expert on the public view of MX deployment.

IN UTAH AND NEVADA THERE WOULD BE LOSS OF FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. WAS THAT A REALISTIC FEAR?

The Air Force maintained that they could have position location uncertainty with only point security that is keeping people away from the shelters, maybe just a few hundred feet. But at times the Air Force did consider the requirements on the simulators which had to be carried so that the transporter would sometimes, would be carrying a missile, sometimes a simulator. And at various times there were arguments that the simulators would not work unless the roads were secure as well. Because there could be sensors implanted in the roads. So, certainly people were worried and I think rightly so, that the taking of public lands for this purpose would be a continual, continual one-way street. And there are ...lots of reasons for that.

HE ARGUED THEN THAT MINUTEMEN WERE MORE SURVIVABLE THAN MX IN THIS BASING MODE?

Yes, it's possible that the Minutemen in silos are more survivable than the MX. The Soviets could feint and provoke all the MXs to come out of their shelters and then with the other hand, with the SLBMs, destroy them. And that wouldn't happen with the Minuteman. Certainly Minuteman redeployed would have been better than the MX, and small missiles, single-warhead missiles deployed in small silos in the Minuteman field, even better. There is a big misconception about mobile missiles. People imagine mobile missiles are moving around. But really mobile missiles are capable of being moved. It's a mobile missile if it sits in one shelter of 23 and every few months is shuffled in an uncertain fashion to another one of those shelters. So that kind of mobility with empty shelters is a reasonable thing to consider for single warhead missiles, not at a ratio of one full shelter to 22 empty shelters. But at a ratio of 1-to-1, that is every shelter full, or maybe one to two or one to three, if one gets into a warhead race.

WHY DID CARTER ADMINISTRATION GO AHEAD WITH SUCH AN ILL-ADVISED SYSTEM?

It's pretty hard to have informal conversations with people with whom you disagree when you, that is I, am about to go to Congress, and tell them what I know and what I think. Because if people say to me one thing in private, public officials, and another thing in public, I can't conceal that. So for the most part I have solved that problem by not talking to my friends privately when they get into government. I will send them papers that I have written, I will give them my testimony, and I will argue with them when their public testimony on two occasions is inconsistent. Cy Zeiberg and I, and Sid Drell, were at a hearing chaired by John Seiberling, House Public Lands Subcommittee. Zeiberg came in to give Defense views about the small submarine. He started with a 20-minute film on the Van Doren effect when the submarines are in a sloping beach, then they can be overwhelmed. Seiberling asked him what was the relevance of this film because we did not propose to put the submarines where they would be vulnerable, and Zeiberg said, "No relevance, just thought you might be interested." But obviously he showed the film because it denigrated the small submarine. He had also present, numbers in the presentation which were not the result of study but were in there simply because they made a good case against the small submarine, cost numbers and what not. Antonia Chayes it seemed to me during her tenure as MX honcho concealed deficiencies in the Administration program for basing the MX. And she allowed the people in the Air Force to say things which were not true, negative arguments against alternative basing modes. I wrote her once and I explained to her that she was doing only half her job. She was doing the part of her job, carrying out the law, building things that the Congress had passed into law. But the other part of the job, having sole stewardship in the Air Force for providing information to the Administration and to the Congress as to the possibilities for missile development, MX basing and so on, she was not doing. And she wrote me. She said yes, I do regard myself as the lawyer for the MX and if there are to be alternatives, then they have to come from you. Well, I'm only one person and I have to worry about a lot of other things, I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to study these things. And I think that it is essential that the Congress hold the Administration to the standard of providing analyses and not propaganda. Of giving options and not throwing cold water on everything which is not the chosen program.

ASKS HIM TO SUMMARIZE HIS OBJECTIONS TO CARTER BASING SYSTEM FOR MX.

The MX missile in the Carter Administration was unnecessary, was the wrong missile. The basing system was inadequate in my opinion. The Soviets could not be proved to remain uncertain of the location of the missile, either through sensors implanted or through spying. But the biggest argument in my opinion was that this was unacceptable, we would have been very unhappy if the Soviets had proposed such a system, because even if they had built 4,600 shelters and only 200 missiles, we would have seen the infrastructure, the basis for an enormous force. And it would have driven us up the wall.

WHY WAS SMALL SUBMARINE IDEA NOT ACCEPTED?

The only satisfactory basing for the MX missile is the small submarine, two or four missiles to the submarine. But it's unacceptable to the Air Force to put its missiles in the water where it couldn't possibly operate. It would give them to the Navy or maybe to the Coast Guard, which is the Treasury Department. The Navy didn't want the MX missile, an Air Force missile, because even to look with curiosity on it would have meant a lack of faith in the Trident submarine program. And brought that program and the contractors to a crashing close. So, the small submarine carrying MX missiles is a good solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

ASKS HIS ARGUMENTS WHEN HE MET WITH THE SCOWCROFT COMMISSION.

The Scowcroft Commission, January 1983, was established by President Reagan to find a way to persuade Congress to deploy the MX missile. And I testified January 17,1983, to the Scowcroft Commission. I said, look here, you are going to have to go beyond the MX missile. Here is what we ought to do in the long run. Clearly we cannot have limited numbers of weapons if the Soviets are allowed to build ballistic missile defense. Therefore we must not have ballistic missile defense. Next we could have single warhead missiles in silos, the Midgetman. And if it later proved to be cheaper to build a mobile system to provide survivable basing, we should move to that, but we ought to develop and manufacture Midgetman, replace 450 old Minuteman with them, and develop a rapid capability to make new silos in the Minuteman fields. They would be self-protecting. Finally, big submarines with 200 warheads each are too many eggs in each submarine basket. We ought to have little submarines with maybe eight or so warheads each. And we ought to have smaller airplanes eventually with perhaps two air-launched cruise missiles each. That will make bigger problem for the Soviets in destroying these forces on the way to the target, allow us to have fewer warheads in the long-term future. The Scowcroft Commission report supported the single-warhead ICBM in a survivable basing mode, although that's always reported as mobile, they didn't say only mobile. It supported the small submarine which sank without a trace in the swamps of Washington. And it reinforced the air-launched cruise missile and the absence of defense against ballistic missiles. So I think the Scowcroft Commission and I agree about just about everything except that to pay their dues to the President, to get him to consider their other recommendations, they had recommendation to deploy 100 MX missiles in Minuteman silos. There's nothing wrong with that. They are just the first missiles to be destroyed in case of a Soviet strike.

WHY IS THAT?

The MX is the first missile to be destroyed in case of a Soviet strike because ten warheads can be destroyed by the explosion of a single Soviet warhead nearby. Whereas with a Minuteman III as target, only three warheads would be destroyed. So you take your choice. Which would you shoot at? You'd shoot at the MX. First because it's most valuable, second because it's most threatening.

CRITICS SAY SCOWCROFT FOUND THE SURVIVABILITY TOO HARD TO SOLVE, AND SWEPT IT UNDER THE RUG. THAT SOVIETS COULD ATTEMPT A FIRST-STRIKE EVENTUALLY.

The Scowcroft Commission said that the strategic force as a whole is not vulnerable and therefore no part of it would be destroyed by the Soviet Union initiating a war. They depend primarily on the submarine-launched ballistic missiles and no one suggests that there is any great threat to those right now. It is a threat of a totally different kind. It would be a tracking threat, it would be a slow attrition over a long period. Something that doesn't threaten the ICBMs or the bombers at all. So the submarine leg is the one which is very different from the land-based legs. Now, it's true that submarine-launched ballistic missiles may pin down ICBMs. I've published papers on that. It's true that they could catch some airplanes on the ground. But we can move our airplanes if there is a real threat, to interior bases in the United States. We can build rocket assisted takeoff kits for our strategic bombers which we have not built. We just don't believe there is a problem. If we believed there was a problem, we could solve the problem in simple ways without going to whole new systems for deployment of land-based missiles.

SO AFTER YEARS OF WORRYING ABOUT VULNERABILITY, THERE WAS NO WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY AT ALL?

People are rather concerned that the Minuteman was vulnerable so that we had to build the MX. And then the Scowcroft Commission says the Minuteman is invulnerable. And therefore we can put the MX where the Minuteman was. So you might worry about consistency but in my opinion the problem is not now, the problem was with the argument that Minuteman is vulnerable and something ought to be done about it. In fact, what is true is that US cities and allied cities are vulnerable. And until you can change that fact, whether the weapons are vulnerable or not, has very little to do with the national security.

ASKS HIM TO CLARIFY, ILLUSTRATE.

So long as there is a rational planner on the other side, and here you have a whole set of people for and against MX and ICBMs, all of whom assume there are rational planners on the other side. In order to deter an attack on the United States which would destroy the country, you pose a threat to the survival of the Soviet Union, not to their ICBMs, but to their industry, to their people, to their conventional forces. That's really all you need. If all of your strategic weapons are vulnerable, then you can put them on launch under attack. You still have the same retaliatory capability. You are driven to make decisions faster than you would like to make. And that's why the Soviet Union should not see it in their interest to render our strategic forces vulnerable. We should not see it in our interest to render their strategic forces vulnerable. Because we make the decision process more difficult, more hair trigger. Now, if the Soviet population is not vulnerable, if they had a perfect ballistic missile defense and a perfect air defense, and our population were vulnerable, then it doesn't matter whether our forces are vulnerable. They could threaten the survival of the United States and it would do no good for us to say, "And in return we will destroy your nuclear weapons if there are any left. "So the fact of the matter, and the overriding influence is the vulnerability of population and industry. And not the question of vulnerable or invulnerable nuclear weapons.

SHOULD WE NOT BE WORRIED THAT THE SOVIETS HAD LARGE, ACCURATE MIRVED MISSILES AND WE HAD NO SIMILAR MISSILES?

What should concern us is the number of Soviet warheads, their yield and accuracy. What should not concern us is how they are bundled. For instance, I like to talk about a strategic future in which we have only 1,000 nuclear weapons instead of the present 25,000, and the Soviets have 1,000 also. My warheads would go one each on 400 ICBMs, 8 each on 50 submarines, 2 each on 100 airplanes. If the Soviets wanted to put their warheads 100 each on ten missiles, be my guest. I wouldn't mind. I think it would be very foolish for them to do so, because that would mean that ten warheads from our stockpile could destroy 1,000 on theirs. So the fact that the Soviets have ten warheads on a single missile does not make those warheads any more of a threat, in fact, less, than if there were ten warheads, one each on ten missiles. If one has multiple warheads on a MIRVed missile that is considerably less useful militarily because it means that ten targets must be selected simultaneously. And that they must be within 100 miles or so of one another in order to spread out the warheads farther than that from a single missile takes too much fuel and reduces the number of missiles that can be carried.

ASKS ABOUT SCOWCROFT ARGUMENT THAT PERCEPTION IS MORE IMPORTANT. WE NEEDED THE MX TO DETER.

The argument that perceptions are important is an argument of desperation. I remember discussing such things with Henry Kissinger and Paul Nitze and I say, if you think that perceptions are important and people don't have a good perception of reality, you know there is a remedy for that, we call it education. Why don't you explain to them in a coherent fashion what we believe and why we believe it. But without trying to do that, you use perceptions as an argument for doing something that we should not otherwise do. And I'm against it. So only when people's perceptions are immutable and they persist in it in the face of whatever we try to tell them, should we take them into account. I can give you an example on perceptions. In 1979, Paul Nitze had resigned from the SALT II delegation and was campaigning against ratification of SALT II. He opposed the treaty, he said. He had numerical calculations. In 1985, at the end of the SALT II period, the Soviet Union would have a preponderance, a superiority over the United States in time-urgent hard target kill capability. And he showed the figures to prove it. And I said, you know, if you worry about that and you say, Paul Nitze, you say, that it is a political perception problem, not a military problem, simply by increasing the accuracy of our land-based missiles and our submarine-based missiles, with this radio navigation system, ground beacon system, we can swamp the Soviet Union in a couple of years and a couple of billion dollars in that category. And after some argument he agreed. The Defense Department figure was $4 billion in four years compared with numbers like $40 billion for the MX program. But he said the real reason he opposed SALT II was that it would lull the American public into a false sense of security. So he was using perceptions, not trying to educate, but it was our perceptions he was playing on, our fear of the Soviets, concealing from us that there were things we could do to remedy the problem that he, he saw, simply because he thought if the Americans saw this correctly they would do the wrong thing. They would be lulled into a false sense of security.

ASKS IF NITZE HIMSELF WERE NOT THE PROBLEM IN GOING AROUND SAYING THAT WE ARE VULNERABLE?

Not only don't people do their job in educating the other side, they actively manipulate perceptions by saying that we are vulnerable. The Soviets don't rattle their missiles. It's we who popularize whatever number of missiles, too many of us think will support the programs that we want to have funded.

AIR FORCE HAS TO TALK ABOUT THE THREAT TO SELL THE PROGRAM, BUT THEY ARE UNDERMINING DETERRENCE WHEN THEY DO THAT.

Well deterrence depends on the Soviet Union believing that they will be severely injured in case they do the thing that we are trying to deter. And yet, too often, the Administration, the Services, the contractors, argue that our capability is inadequate to deter the Soviet Union. Now they do this only to get new systems, new money, or whatever. But by doing so they weaken that deterrence which they are proposing to strengthen. It is they that weaken deterrence, it is not that deterrence is inadequate. It's that people talk about it, they create over here a perception. And it's ironic that our security depends on the Soviet Union being able to look more deeply into the reality than the American people are supposed to do.

ASKS ROLE OF CONGRESS.

The Congress should have the role in new systems of insuring that the homework has been done, that the Congress itself is provided with analysis, a whole spectrum of things that have been considered. And a reason why one particular program has been chosen. You know, you can drive on the right side of the street or the left side of the street, and sometimes the Administration can say, we flipped a coin and we went this way. Instead the Administration deluges the Congress with propaganda. The Congress therefore tries to analyze more deeply, micromanages, and then the Administration attempts to manipulate the Congress because it is overwhelmed, it doesn't really have the competence to do this. So the role of the Congress should be to tell the Administration no money, at all, until you provide us with real analysis and not propaganda.

ASKS ARGUMENT FOR BUILDING MIDGETMAN AND PUTTING THEM IN SILOS.

Silo-basing has very low operating costs. It is totally immune if every silo has a missile in it, to question of spying, finding out where the missiles are. You know where they are. If the silos are spaced a mile apart or more, then even a moderately hard silo like the Minuteman can be destroyed only one, by a single accurate Soviet nuclear weapon. And so the advantage is cost and certainty. Furthermore the missiles can be very accurate but that problem can be solved now by the ground beacon system, a radio aid to the navigational system. So, predictable, survivability, controllability, easy command, no missiles getting lost or off the reservation. Those are the benefits associated with single-warhead missiles in silos. Now the minute you put two or three or ten warheads on your missile it becomes a relatively attractive target, and you scare yourself into believing that the Soviets have very great accuracy or reliability and they can destroy two or three or ten warheads on your missile, it becomes a relatively attractive target, and you scare yourself into believing that the Soviets have very great accuracy or reliability and they can destroy two or three or ten of your warheads for every one of theirs. But the single-warhead missile in silo has the virtue that it is self-protecting, because even if everything works perfectly for the Soviets, it takes one warhead to destroy one of ours. Sometimes people talk about... Sometimes people talk about non-nuclear strategic weapons for the future. Long rods which flash down out of space and strike through the silo cover. Well, one could do that but it's very easy to protect against that kind of attack on a silo by passive concrete and explosive. To protect against nuclear weapons you have to make sure that you stop them a couple of hundred yards away.

ASKS FOR CONCISE STATEMENT OF RATIONALE FOR SINGLE WARHEAD MIDGETMAN.

If we're going to have about the same number of warheads as the Soviets, we ought to put most of ours on single-warhead missiles in silos in the Minuteman fields. Because if the Soviets were to destroy one of our missiles, they would have to dedicate very likely two of their weapons to do so. They would destroy one warhead, they would have spent two, maybe three. They would disarm themselves relatively to where they started. No incentive for them to strike.

THIS MEANS WE HAVE TO RELY ON ARMS CONTROL.

If there is not arms control, they we might imagine that the Soviets are building as many warheads as they can. How should we base our warheads? We should have about as many warheads as the Soviet Union because there are many more uses to nuclear weapons, not very good ones but many more than to attack our strategic forces. I would base my warheads for the most part on single warhead missiles in small new silos in the Minuteman fields. I could put 30,000 new silos in the existing Minuteman fields on one-mile spacing. If the Soviets aren't tired after building 30,000 warheads, which will cost me about as much on my small single warhead missiles as it costs them on their big multi warhead MIRVed missiles, then I can build empty silos and have a deceptive basing scheme, with an empty silo for every full silo, or maybe two empties. And go to many tens of thousands of warheads. But in any case this is a reasonable way to go. It is not vulnerable to the Soviets or to our fear that the Soviets some time in the future find out where relatively few launchers are moving around the public lands of the United States.

WHY IS THE AIR FORCE NOT ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THE SMALL MISSILE PROGRAM?

The Air Force feels that they want to deploy the MX. They have spent a lot of money and time, many peoples' careers involved, a lot of contractors, in building the MX missile. So they see the Midgetman as the next generation which has come too soon. It has come out of the normal course of events. It is encroaching on its older brother and shortening his lifetime. In fact, when I found the Midgetman missile at Boeing in January of 1983, they were very candid about its capabilities. The Air Force monitor was there. Everything except its cost. And when I asked about its cost, they said, "Don't make us tell you that. If you want an expensive missile, we can make it sound expensive; if you want a cheap missile, we can make it sound cheap. Why don't you price it per pound? And you won't go far off." And so that's what I've been doing. But when the Scowcroft Commission a couple of months later said we ought to have a small single-warhead missile in a survivable basing posture, the Air Force immediately said, "That means a mobile missile and it will cost you $44 billion for 500 warheads. It doesn't mean a mobile missile, it means mostly a small silo-based missile, and it will cost you about $10 billion for 1,000 warheads, not $44 billion for 500.

WHY IS THE AIR FORCE PUSHING THE HARDENED MOBILE LAUNCHER?

The hardened mobile launcher is being pushed by the Air Force for the MX. And that's because the MX is such an attractive target in a silo that is not self-protecting. It would be destroyed by a much smaller number of Soviet warheads. And so it must have some way to generate enough uncertainty in its position to require many more than 10 warheads to destroy a single MX. And the hardened mobile launcher, hardened to 30 or 40 pounds per square inch over pressure, is how it generates uncertainty in position. Supposedly. Even if the Soviets knew where the HML was when they launched their ICBMs, 30 minutes later it could have moved. Maybe 15 miles or so. And a single warhead could not attack it. I don't believe that. I think by the time a mobile MX were deployed we would be confident that the Soviets could, by space-based sensors, or by espionage or by putting a radio transmitter surreptitiously on this hardened mobile launcher, be able to find out where it was in real time, and certainly one can maneuver an incoming ICBM warhead by command if you have made provision to do so, accurately enough to destroy this hardened mobile launcher. So my objection to any of these systems of survivability by mobility on land is that we will worry by the time they are deployed, that the Soviets can find out in real time where they are and destroy them. And that's no way to sleep well at night. You shouldn't base your security, in my opinion, on hiding things in a free society.

IS THE AIR FORCE JUST TRYING TO MAKE YOUR PROPOSITION MORE EXPENSIVE?

I think that the Air Force responded to the Scowcroft Commission report with the $44 billion for 500 warhead Midgetman proposal in order that there should not be an attractive, low-cost survivable alternative to the MX.

ASKS ABOUT THE RAIL GARRISON TO PROTECT OUR MX?

If a bolt out of the view is highly unlikely, what is being done in the rail garrison is to try to deter that bolt out of the blue. Not to try to respond. We have plenty of ways to respond to a bolt out of the blue. We have all of the submarines, we have the Minuteman which will undoubtedly survive a real attack. We have the aircraft and so on. So it's hard to believe that the rail garrison MX will deter this bolt out of the blue. If it comes through irrational planning, we are no better off with a rail garrison MX than with no MX at all. Because the problem will the destruction of the United States and much of the weaponry, conventional and nuclear. Which comes from that attack. The solution is not to have a few missiles left. The solution is to have enough strategic weapons so that the Soviets cannot make the mistake of attacking and thinking that they will escape Scot-free. I worry about the rail garrison, that it is all too easy to sabotage a rail line, especially in the United States. And so at the same time that the Soviets launch their attack, they can detonate explosives, they can set off mines, artillery-launched, mortar-launched mines, which will sit on the railroad track and wait until the launcher comes over it. And keep the uncertainty from being generated, stop the thing dead in its tracks, right there in the open. So I think that is another one of those security by mobility systems which just will not work on land in the United States.

ASKS ABOUT CARRY HARD PROPOSAL.

I don't understand the carry hard proposal.

THE IDEA OF COMBINING A MULTIPLE AIM POINT WITH A MOBILE LAUNCHER...

There is another proposal and that is if one needs more shelters than one has a need for warheads, is to move the missile in a capsule which has most of the support equipment, as was proposed for the MX in the multiple shelter system. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to go with a single warhead missile. With small vertical silos. I would redeploy the missile by helicopter and the missile in its capsule might be called carry hard. It's not really, it's supposed to survive only when it is in a shelter.

ASKS WHAT HE THINKS IS NEEDED IN ARMS CONTROL TO AFFECT THIS ISSUE OF MISSILE VULNERABILITY.

Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Reagan have agreed on 50 percent...

DISCUSSION. WHAT KIND OF ARMS CONTROL REGIME COULD SOLVE THIS PROBLEM OF MUTUAL VULNERABILITY?

The problem of mutual vulnerability of societies will not be solved without some great social invention. Because it is such a powerful tool of survival that one will not give it up. So long as one can hold the other society vulnerable. The problem of vulnerability of the retaliatory force can be solved by unilateral means. And that is the single warhead missile in silos, the small submarine, the small aircraft with just one or a couple of cruise missiles. Strikingly, these solutions, these unilateral solutions to the strategic vulnerability problem also open the way for deep reduction in strategic forces. If one has an absence of defense against the strategic weapons on the way to the target, then one doesn't need more than a few hundred, let's say a thousand which is a lot less than the 10,000 strategic, 25,000 total weapons we have now. And so I see that by going toward single warhead weapons, we can very quickly and at no cost achieve massive reductions with great improvement in strategic stability. The 50 percent reduction of Reagan and Gorbachev can be achieved simply by taking half the weapons off each of the existing launchers. Now we can demilitarize those warheads, we can replace them with dummies. This requires a lot of cooperative inspection. This requires a lot of cooperative inspection. But that is what has been agreed and in being implemented in the INF treaty. In fact, if we take all but one of the warheads off the ICBMs, and the SLBMS, and all but two of the cruise missiles off the bombers, we end up with about 2,000 warheads on either side. Five times fewer than we have now. Beyond that we could get down to a force of 1000 warheads, simply by destroying half the launchers. Not half the submarines, just perhaps eight of the missiles or twelve of the missiles in a 24 tube Trident submarine. And then we would have 1,000 weapons on either side and we could run that way for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years. The replacement systems then would be small submarines, only big enough to carry the eight warheads. And missiles, only big enough to carry the one. So we would diet first, and then we would have a large shell with very little weight. And gradually over the years, optionally, we would replace the large shell by something which just fit the warhead. So we would end up with small single warhead missiles in silos, eight warheads, eight single warhead missiles on a little submarine, 50 of those little submarines. A hundred airplanes with two air-launched cruise missiles each.

ASKS HIM TO SUMMARIZE.

To improve stability and security both, the way is clear. It depends on cooperative verification and it is de-MIRVing. Just as MIRVing raised the level of instability and insecurity, de-MIRVing can bring us with those very same weapons, down to a level where the number of launchers is the same as we have now, but the threat to the launcher on the other side is much reduced. And that's what we ought to do. We can do it very quickly, it won't cost us anything, and it will open the basis for future systems. We can do it very quickly, it won't cost us anything, and it will lay the basis for a future in which we could, if we want, reduce the number of nuclear weapons even below this 95 percent reduction that can be accomplished in this way.

WHAT IF THE SOVIETS DON'T GET A LAUNCH? WOULD WE ALLOW THEM PUT OUR WEAPONS AT RISK AND NOT THEIRS?

If the Soviets don't reduce the number of weapons, then obviously we can't reduce very much below the number they have. It's just not humanly possible to do that. There is a bigger problem and that is what if the French or the British or the Chinese insist on going ahead with a modernization program. They have a few hundred nuclear weapons each, and they could build 1,000 or 2,000. That would just spoil things. The United States and the Soviet Union would not reduce to 1,000 if the French have 1,000 or 2,000. And for that reason one has to call on the better judgment of our French friends. They could build more weapons and they will preserve a world in which there are tens of thousands of US and Soviet weapons. Or, they could urge the reduction to 1,000 each if they reduced their own to a couple of hundred. And I think that is a better future for the French and the British and the Chinese, and for the Americans and the Russians as well.

ASKS IF THE MX SOLVED THE PROBLEM.

Just as the MX in Minuteman silos didn't solve the Minuteman vulnerability problem, so the MX missile itself wasn't going to solve the lack of extended deterrence. People said Minuteman is not good enough. We need a more accurate missile so as to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe. Well, if it were only one target we were going to destroy we had plenty of weapons to do it. Might take two warheads or three warheads. And in fact, we could have improved the accuracy of the Minuteman warhead. The Soviets are deterred from doing something because they judge that after they do it and we respond they will be worse off for having done it. And so any weapon that we have used on conventional forces inside the Soviet Union, used to destroy a dam or a marshaling yard, would show the Soviet Union that it's not worth pursuing a conventional attack in Western Europe. Now, would we be willing to do that? Yes, I would. Why wouldn't we? Because the Soviets might attack our cities. The Soviets can attack our cities any time they want. And whether we attack a marshaling yard with a nuclear weapon or two, first use of nuclear weapons has nothing to do with that. And the accuracy of an MX missile has nothing to do with it either.

ASKS DIFFERENCE IN WORLD VIEW BETWEEN THOSE WHO WANT A MUTUAL STABLE FORCE STRUCTURE, AND THOSE WHO WANT TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE TO APPLY SOME COUNTERFORCE EDGE.

I would prefer not to have the United States as vulnerable as the Soviet Union. I would prefer to be able to cause them more damage than they can cause us. I would prefer to be able to disarm the Soviet Union rather than just to retaliate after having been struck. But the dynamics of the situation are such that if I try to achieve the superiority, my situation will become worse. I will become less secure even though I will make the Soviet Union still less secure. And there is no merit in my opinion in, in making the Soviet Union totally insecure if I become quite insecure myself. I know people for instance who rather than earn more money on an absolute sense, would rather earn more money than their neighbor even if it requires taking a cut in salary just so the neighbor is pushed down further. And there are people like that. I don't think it's a sensible way to behave. But perhaps we're seeing some of that in people who want a strategic edge over the other side, even though it may result in lessened security for ourselves.

IS THERE A LESSON IN THE STORY OF THE MX?

The lesson to be learned from the MX in my opinion has not so much to do with the MX itself as with weapons and government programs in general. They do not have to meet the test of the marketplace. They do not have to be competitive. You do not have truth in advertising about government programs. When too many people wrap themselves in the flag of patriotism and use arguments which are not true or which conceal relevant information. But in fact our national security is impaired, not improved, by lies and misrepresentations. And starting programs which are going to become more costly than predicted. If I go up to somebody on the street and I say, "I have a gun give me a hundred dollars or I'll shoot you dead," and they catch me at it, they'll put me in jail for armed robbery. If I go up to somebody on the street and I say, "Give me my hundred, a hundred dollars, my brother has a gun and he'll shoot you dead," they will get me for extortion. But if I go up to somebody on the street and I say "Give me $300 billion or the Russians will shoot you dead," I am a great patriot and I may be elected to high office. Now, if it is true that without the $300 billion the Russians would shoot us dead, then certainly we ought to be willing to spend it and to spend it in the very best way possible. But if it is not true, if this is an exaggeration, then I suggest that armed robbery or extortion are a better adjective than... Then I suggest that armed robbery or extortion are better terms than patriotism.

WHY IS OUR SYSTEM VULNERABLE TO THIS?

Our system is a democracy to which we have given too little care in recent decades. It is not something that one winds up and allows to run without maintenance or adjustment. The Founding Fathers gave it, us this system and too many of us believe that it's going to take care of us in the future. What we have to do is to judge our leaders, judge our people in Congress, and hold them to the standard that is required to make the system work.

IS THE WORD DETERRENCE MISUSED?

Deterrence is an OK word and therefore it is tempting to cast whatever it is one wants into the form of deterrence. High quality deterrence as Paul Nitze put it once, extended deterrence, deterrence by defense which may not deter at all. Deterrence ought to be reserved in my opinion for something which is close to the ordinary meaning of the term. That is, to affect the mind of another side by their judgment of the outcome of a decision that they might take.

ASKS IF HE THINKS A STABLE SYSTEM MIGHT BE SEEM AS MORE BORING TECHNOLOGICALLY.

There is an impediment to a regime of sufficiency, of technology no better than it has to be. Costs no higher than they have to be. And that is that the most interesting problems lie at the frontier. The frontier of accuracy, the frontier of hardening, the frontier of getting there quicker, even though it makes no difference to the effectiveness. And there is a general lack of recognition that however much money we have, we have more uses for that money than we have money. And so people tend not to save on programs until they see the bottom of the barrel. Instead, what we ought to do is to spend as little as we can to solve a problem, so that we will have more flexibility to solve other problems which have not yet come, not yet been brought to the front of people's consciousness. We have many problems in national security. We have many problems in society. A lot of these can be solved by deploying the same talents that we have working in the military. I told Mr. Gorbachev early in December 1987 about some Soviet ...physicists who had visited our laboratory. One of them said that the American could never disarm because of the strength of the military-industrial complex. So I said, "Let's look at the fundamentals, and then we'll talk about perceptions." The fundamentals are that we make all of these weapons, missiles, nuclear warheads, and so on. And under the best of circumstances they are not going to be used. Under the worst we are going to send them all to you and we won't charge you for them. Now suppose that we disarm and you disarm to a certain extent. We can continue to make half-missiles. We'll use exactly those same talents. Under the best of circumstances they won't be used, under the worst of circumstances they won't be used either, because they won't work. We can do better. It's not beyond the mind of man or woman to do better. We can make automobiles or small computers or whatever. And we can give them to you free. It would be the same for us in manufacture and it might even do you some good. Of course we could do still better if we looked at our problems and we used those same talents to solve some of our problems. But if you believe that's too upsetting to our economy, why don't you go back to either the second or the third proposal, either the half-missiles or the things that we ship free all over the world to solve problems that aren't being addressed right now. And Mr. Gorbachev said, I don't know that the really understood the details, he said, "Yes, we will destroy your military industrial complex by contracting with it."

ASKS AGAIN ABOUT MX AS A FIRST-STRIKE OR A SECOND-STRIKE WEAPON.

The MX can be a second-strike weapon only if it is survivable. And if one is building a weapon for that function, one has to compare it with Midgetman or alternatives. So some of the MX basing schemes fail because they weren't survivable. Others failed because they were more costly than redeployment of Minuteman. Others failed, for instance dense pack, since one could pin down the entire dense pack, 100 missiles, with a very small number of nuclear explosions from submarine-launched ballistic missiles. You had to ask how a war would start and when you looked into the details of it, the Minuteman would carry out the initial strikes. Retaliatory strikes. And the MXs would be use only later after the Soviets had run out of submarine-launched ballistic missiles to pin it down. Now that makes no sense at all, to depend on the Minuteman for retaliation so that the MX could then strike later. So the problem with second-strike counterforce is ultimately that first-strike counterforce is easier. You may say you're building a second-strike counterforce system, but the other side can see that it would be much more useful to you as a first-strike counterforce.

HOW DOES THE MILITARY GET AWAY WITH IT?

Well perhaps an analogy will help. If I go up to somebody on the street and I say, "I have a gun, give me a hundred dollars or I'll shoot you dead." And they catch me and they'll put me in jail for armed robbery. If I go up to him and I say, "Give me a hundred dollars or my brother will shoot you dead," and they catch me. They'll put me in jail for extortion. But if I say "Give me $300 billion or the Russians will shoot you dead," that's called patriotism and I will be elected to high office. But if you're not quite sure that the Russians will really shoot you dead, then I think that extortion or armed robbery are closer to the mark than patriotism.

HAVE WE LEFT REALITY WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FIRST-STRIKES, ETC.?

It's necessary to think about these things and to do analyses but too often these artificial scenarios are picked up and used for decision making. Taken out of context, stabilizing influence is ignored. And the argument advanced by this system because you have this problem. Too often the system doesn't cure the problem. Too often the chain of reasoning is carefully cooked up in order to lead to the desired conclusion. For instance, the B-1 bomber was advocated by the Ford Administration in 1975. I was proposing the air-launched cruise missile. It turned out that their analysis was based on the assumption that it would take an airplane an hour or two hours to launch its load of cruise missiles. It takes in fact 37 seconds for the B-52 to launch its load of cruise missiles and it wasn't even built for the purpose. But that's an example of cooking the argument because you're absolutely sure you know the right answer and you don't trust other people enough to give them the information and let them decide.

WAS WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY COOKED UP TO SELL THE MX MISSILE?

Certainly the window of vulnerability was arranged ...The window of vulnerability was primarily popularized in order to have a reason to sell the MX missile.

THERE WOULD BE NO OTHER REALLY GOOD REASON?

The other consequence of touting the window of vulnerability was to reduce the confidence of our allies and our citizenry in deterrence. And it was presumably only because the Russians knew better that they didn't feel less deterred during that era.