ASKS HIM TO REVIEW IMPROVEMENTS IN ACCURACY IN ICBMS AND HOW THAT AFFECTED STRATEGIC BALANCE AND PROBLEM OF SURVIVABILITY.

When the Minuteman silos were designed and constructed in the late 1950s and early '60s, they were for all practical purposes invulnerable to Soviet forces at that time. The silos were spaced roughly five miles apart. They were hardened to a certain level and there was simply no way that the Soviets with the accuracies that they had at that time could launch any meaningful attack against that silos. As time went on and the technology of guidance improved, and as we were able to make observations on, on what the Soviets were doing in their missile development programs, a great deal of concern arose, of course, about the survivability of the Minuteman silos. This concern really started in the late 1960s, and around 1970 the Air Force started an upgrade program of the Minuteman silos. Then in the late 1970s, 1978, I think to be precise, the concern intensified tremendously. That within a period of a few years the Soviets would have missiles accurate enough to be able to destroy a very large fraction of the Minuteman silos. In one wave of an attack.

WHY DID THAT HAPPEN IN 1978?

Because we were able to obtain… In, in 1978 a lot of information came together about what the Soviets were attempting and were able to accomplish in their missile development programs.

AND WHAT WAS THAT?

They were able to achieve accuracies that would allow them to destroy a large fraction of the Minuteman silos in one attack.

WHAT SHOULD OUR RESPONSE BE TO THAT?

We felt very strongly that it, that the strategic triad of forces of the ICBMs, the submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and the air-breathing leg of the triad, the bombers and cruise missiles, that that triad should be maintained. There were many very important benefits to the United States of having three different types of forces which depended on different technology, and which had to be countered by the Soviets in completely different ways. Therefore we started an intensive effort in the mid-1970s and the effort grew tremendously year by year to develop a new ICBM system which would be able to withstand the ever improving accuracies of Soviet missiles in the future.

WHY WOULD WE ASSUME THEY WOULD AIM THEIR MISSILES AT OUR MISSILES?

It is of course a subject of continuing speculation among strategic analysts how a nuclear war might start, if heaven forbid it ever did. But certainly the most stressing case for the United States would be a surprise attack, a bolt out of the blue if you will, against, certainly the first wave would have to be launched against all of our strategic forces, to try prevent us from retaliating in any way. And in order to deter this most stressing case, the absolute ultimate catastrophe for the United States, to prevent the Soviets from ever doing such a thing, we would have to maintain the survivability of this triad of forces so that they would know we could always retaliate if we chose to.

WHY MUST ICBMS THEMSELVES SURVIVE?

It is very, stressing to the Soviets in their development programs, in their acquisition of new forces, to have to counter different types of possible retaliation by the United States. It is difficult to attack well-designed survivable ICBMS. It would take a large fraction of their strategic forces to do that. And of course we were always concerned, we still are concerned about the long-term survivability of both the submarine forces and the bombers with their cruise missiles. The subject of the long-term survivability of the submarines has been argued about for many years. I would like to stress that we still have no positive identification of any foreseeable end of the survivability of the submarines. The survivability is great now and will be great for a long time, we hope. However, we cannot bet the country on that. That would be a very imprudent thing to do. Bombers of course can be defended against. The Soviets have invested tens of billions of dollars, perhaps hundreds of billions, I don't know, in air defenses vastly greater than our air defenses. And so we have to be concerned over the long-term about whether bombers or cruise missiles can reach their targets. Now we do things to try to improve their survivability, like Stealth. We have to also do things to improve the survivability of the ICBMs. So that the Soviets would know that at all times, under any circumstances, whatever they did, we would be able to respond. That I believe, and I think most people believe, most American citizens believe, is the surest way to deter the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear war.

ASKS ABOUT MID-70S CONFUSION ABOUT HOW RAPIDLY THE SOVIETS WERE INCREASING ACCURACY. WAS THERE A TURNING POINT WHEN THAT WAS RESOLVED?

There was a turning point early in 1978. About...[RESTARTS HIMSELF] Certainly there were many arguments during the 1970s, in the mid-1970s particularly, about how rapidly the Soviets were progressing in accuracy of their ICBMs. There were arguments about how possible, how accurate it is possible to make an ICBM, whether it's ours or -- In 1978 a lot of information just happened to come together to prove to the minds of prudent decision makers that there was a very serious problem that the nation had to address.

WAS THAT A SURPRISE THEN?

The rapid increase in accuracy of the Soviet ICBM force was a surprise to some people who were not deeply involved in the technology developments on the American side. For Americans who knew the technology, knew how rapidly we were progressing, there was no surprise that the Soviets were able to do similar types of things. Perhaps not as well as we do them but they were able to approach our technology.

ASKS ABOUT IMPROVING OUR TECHNOLOGY.

We believe that the best deterrent the Soviets in initiating any form of hostilities is to give them confidence that our forces are very capable and very strong, and certainly capability means survivability. And that we can accomplish whatever we need to do. Accuracy is also a very important part of that capability. They have to understand that we can, if it is necessary, destroy the targets that are most important to them. And accuracy is necessary.

WHAT IMPROVEMENTS CAN HE TALK ABOUT? WHEN WE HAD TO DEVELOP A NEW GENERATION, WHAT WERE THE REQUIREMENTS? WHERE DID WE WANT THE TECHNOLOGY TO GO?

When we started developing a new missile to replace the Minuteman III, the missile that became the MX and is now called the Peacekeeper missile, we started down the road of making it as accurate as possible. I believe that that was the right decision. It still is the right thing to do. Because it is very important for the Soviets to understand that we can destroy the targets that are most important to them under any circumstances if they force us to do that. In the 1960s actually the airs guidance system which is at the heart of the Peacekeeper missile was initially developed by the Draper Laboratories, and successive developments improved the accuracy of that guidance system which was based on an entirely new concept. And actually the accuracy of the missile as it has been proved out in flight testing in the past few years is far better than most people believed just six or eight years ago would ever be possible for production missiles.

SO BOTH SIDES WORKED ON IMPROVING ACCURACY, AND THIS RELATED TO SURVIVABILITY ON BOTH SIDES?

The accuracy of a missile when it is going to attack a hard target of a very small size, such as a missile silo on the other side, the accuracy is the most important factor in making such an attack successful. It certainly is far more important to have a high degree of accuracy than it is to have a high yield of the nuclear warhead. You could destroy a missile silo with high explosive, without a nuclear warhead at all, if you could land the explosive right on top of the silo. So the Soviets through ever improving accuracy throughout the 1960s and '70s and continuing to the present time have posed an ever more severe threat to the Minuteman system which, along with the submarines and the bombers, formed our strategic deterrent. And still, this Minuteman system still does to a very large extent.

ASKS EARLY IDEAS WHAT WE SHOULD DO.

The first studies on what to do for a replacement for the Minuteman system were actually carried out in 1966. There was a major study effort that was based in the Washington area throughout 1966. My recollection is that it went on for about a year, with experts drawn from all over the country. The big part of that study was to look at what to do if the survivability of Minuteman ever became a serious concern. That STRAT-X study looked at 30 or 40 different concepts. The, the stack of reports is about three feet long, I think, and they, they thought about, about everything they possibly could think about, and analyzed most of those ideas in great detail. And it was a tremendous job. It was a tremendously capable job that has actually formed the backbone of a lot of what we have done since then, because they kind of thought of every idea that existed. The, certainly one of the most attractive options at that time appeared to be active defense, that is an ABM system which could be located in the areas of the Minuteman silos and defend against incoming Soviet warheads. That idea has of course never died out. It has been studied many times with different approaches to land-basing and that idea is still a subset of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

ASKS HIM TO CONTINUE DISCUSSING USING ABMS.

We actually did implement that plan and the Safeguard ABM system, consisting of two different types of ABM interceptors, a high altitude interceptor and low-altitude interceptor, was actually built, was fielded at Grand Forks, North Dakota, in the Minuteman wing there. And, but the ABM treaty of 1972 which President Nixon signed with the Soviets, prohibited further effective development of that system. And after it had been in operation for a few months, actually, the decision was made to, to stand down with that system because the ABM treaty limited the effectiveness of it so much that the US decided it was not really cost effective to keep it going. And some of the radar components, for example, were used for other purposes. But the ABM system and its interceptors were taken out of the field. But we understand now and by the time Safeguard was built people understood pretty well that the Minuteman system as it is built is a very difficult thing to defend with ABMs. When you have a thousand missiles separated by a minimum of four to five miles and the entire thousand spread over a vast geographical area, I think something like approaching a million square miles, that's a very, very difficult job to build an ABM system. Certainly in the 1970 time frame it was almost impossible. We could do it better now but still it's a very difficult thing to defend. If you want active defenses, it's better to start with a new basing plan.

ASKS ABOUT SUPER HARDENING SILOS.

The idea of superhard silos was really first generated in the late 1970s and the superhard silos that we know now were actually invented in 1983. The term superhardening has been applied to two generations at least of silos as the technology developed. Just a few years ago, superhard meant 5000 to 10,000 psi, pounds per square inch of hardness. Now it means 50 or 100,000 where the technology has developed so rapidly. The superhard silos were of course considered in the discussions in the early 1980s, the decisions that were made then, at the time when the initial decisions were made on what to do to replace Minuteman, to supplant and upgrade Minuteman. The superhard silos didn't exist. Nobody knew what they were so they were not considered.

THE TECHNOLOGY DIDN'T EXIST?

That's right.

ASKS OTHER EXOTIC IDEAS THAT CAME OUT OF THE STRAT X STUDY.

The STRAT-X study in 1966 considered a great variety of ideas, deep underground basing was one that was studied very extensively. Basing on surface ships. One of the concepts that, that the STRAT-X study explored in depth, if you will, was a very large submarine for carrying ballistic missiles and that was actually built. That was the genesis of the second and third generation submarine missile systems, the Poseidon and the Trident systems. The STRAT-X study also considered road mobile, rail mobile, and so forth. And let us remember that a rail mobile prototype was actually built around 1960 for Minuteman, that the Minuteman program got to the point of building a prototype train which I understand still exists although I haven't seen it.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE IDEAS? WHY WEREN'T THEY IMPLEMENTED?

One of the, of the most important outputs of the STRAT-X study was an insight into what could be done to further upgrade the Minuteman silos into which the country had put a large amount of money. The detailed evaluation of the silos and a lot more engineering and testing work that went on during the construction, proved to people that the structures of the silos, the fundamental concrete and steel structure, was greatly overdesigned for what it had been expected to do. And so the idea evolved of using that capability which to, to our happy surprise we found we had, and upgrading other parts of the silo system. So that we had a balanced survivability. And the idea was that a great improvement in Minuteman survivability could be obtained at modest cost by upgrading the existing structures. And that was indeed done. That was called the Minuteman Upgrade Program. And my recollection that it was started by the Air Force in 1970 and it took six or seven years to, to complete in an orderly manner, wing by wing. But that decision bought the country another decade of survivability of Minuteman, at a very modest cost. And allowed the country time to, to explore what to do after that decade was over. And with imp...with further improvements in Soviet missile accuracy even the upgraded Minuteman would no longer be adequately survivable.

WHY COULD THEY NOT JUST GO ON TRUCKS?

The idea of a road mobile missile system that would be, that would roam the public highways was explored by the STRAT-X study in 1966, and has been discussed over and over again since then. I would have to say that my personal view has always been that it was simply impossible for the United States to do such a thing. There is no way the public will ever accept missiles traveling the public roads in peacetime in an alert status. It just won't happen. And...

ISN'T THAT THE PROBLEM WITH LAND-BASED MISSILES THAT THEY ARE IN PUBLIC VIEW?

One of the biggest problems in deciding what to do about a land-based missile system, to replace that leg of the strategic triad, to replace Minuteman, has been that missiles are in the public view to some extent. The Minuteman system is almost out of view in that the silos are in relatively thinly populated parts of the country, that the silos are not very conspicuous themselves. They are certainly utterly safe and the, the people who live in the areas near the silos understand that. So it has not been a source of great public attention. Any ICBM system, any ICBM system which would move missile through towns, move missiles on the interstate highways in peacetime and so forth, is going to attract a great deal more public attention. And worry the public to an extent which I believe would make it impossible to build such a system.

ASKS ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF SURVIVABILITY IN DEVELOPMENT WORK.

The Air Force took the initiative in 1973 or '74 to start engineering work, preliminary studies on a new ICBM generation. Ultimately to replace Minuteman III or at least a large part of the Minuteman system. This program of course became known as the MX Missile Program. It followed a dual track, studying what to do with a new missile and how to base a new missile. Many of the, of the options which had been considered years earlier were brought to the fore, studied again. In regards to basing, many of the ideas which were thrown out earlier for good reasons were again thrown out for good reasons. But certainly every reasonable possibility was considered. Every possibility was considered at least momentarily. The Air Force in the mid-1970s centered on several ideas which seemed to be most attractive. And of course one of these was the multiple protective structure system, the so-called shell game basing idea which was actually approved for engineering development in 1979.

ASKS ABOUT TUNNEL MODE.

One of the options which the Air Force explored very intensively in the late 1970s was the shallow buried tunnel idea, the concept was that tunnels no more than 15 feet or so under the ground would be built over a large area in the western United States and that the missiles would circulate in these tunnels on essentially railroad cars, on tracks in the tunnels. And that this system would be highly survivable, because the Soviets would not know where the missiles were in the tunnels and therefore they could not attack it profitably. That is, it would take a very, very large number of their warheads to be assured of wiping out a large fraction of the MX missiles. This idea... proved out in the studies and initial test work to be reasonably economical because of advances in excavation and tunneling technology. It really foundered in my mind, and different people had different ideas about, about what was the worst problem with the shallow tunnel idea. But in my mind it foundered because of the, because we could not satisfy ourselves that the Soviets could never know where in the tunnels the missiles were. It would be a very difficult problem to be sure that they could never emplace any instrumentation in the ground or whatever that would tell them where along the length of the tunnel a missile was located. And one must keep in mind that a fundamental ground rule of...of an idea for basing that would be located over an area of many thousands of square miles was that the public could not be denied access to such an area. We were searching for a plan which would allow the missiles to be suitably dispersed and suitably hardened without keeping the public out of a 10,000 square mile area, or something like that. Because we assumed, and I think very correctly, that that would simply be unacceptable to the public.

DOES HE MEAN A SOVIET AGENT COULD PLANT DETECTION DEVICES SOMEWHERE?

We could never satisfy ourselves that it would not be possible for a Soviet agent to implant detection devices that would allow them to tell where in the shallow buried tunnels the missiles might be located. Because... if we allowed the public to go into those areas, actually to walk over the top of the tunnels, we couldn't prove to ourselves that the Soviets couldn't put in instrumentation and find out where the missiles were located. And the game is over if they can do that. Then you have invested billions of dollars in a system that is of no value at all. So that was not a prudent thing to do.

HOW MANY MILES OF TUNNEL INVOLVED?

For the shallow buried tunnel system we were talking about 15 to 20 miles of tunnel for each, each missile. So if you were going to deploy 20, or if you were going to deploy 200 missiles that meant about well... If you were going to deploy 200 missiles, that meant about 4000 miles of tunnel. And it was not economically impossible. We did quite a bit of testing, we built I believe two or three miles of prototype tunnel to test the economics of it. That was do-able. We're talking about shallow tunnels, cut and cover construction in the engineering term. Certainly it would have scarred the landscape very badly. The environmental impact would have been pretty severe.

WHAT WAS GOING ON IN DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER END OF MISSILE?

The missile development program for the MX proceeded in a very orderly way, beginning in about I think 1975 or '76. The initial concept of the missile was laid down, the number of stages, the size of the stages, the type of guidance system, the number of warheads that it would carry, and so forth. And those basic parameters have not changed more than a few percent since then. The development of the MX missile has actually been one of the smoothest system development programs that the United States has ever undertaken. The missile development program was really fantastically successful in that even the first ten or twelve flight tests of a brand new missile, the largest we had ever built, suffered essentially no problems at all.

WHAT DETERMINED SIZE CHARACTERISTICS?

When the initial parameters of the MX missile were laid down, the shape and size and stages and so forth, there were two considerations. One is that it should fit into the Minuteman silos. That was always a design requirement for the MX missile. That if a decision were made to put it in the Minuteman silos that it would fit. Another design requirement which evolved later but happily turned out to be about the same thing, was that it should be as large as was allowed by the SALT II treaty. And the SALT II treaty if one recalls, essentially allowed us to build a missile as large as the Soviet's SS-19 missile and no larger. And, and that happens to be the size that will fit in the Minuteman silo.

WHAT ABOUT THE NUMBER OF WARHEADS?

The number of warheads was initially determined by looking at the yield that would be required to destroy the targets that it was expected to have to attack in a retaliatory wave. The, the number of ten warheads was also cast in concrete by the SALT II treaty when that treaty was drafted.

WHAT WAS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YIELD AND NUMBER OF WARHEADS?

The larger the number of warheads that you want to carry on a missile, the smaller the yield that each one has to be, because you can only carry a certain total weight, the throw weight of the missile. But another very important thing is that when you work on the engineering design, you quickly find that the larger the number of warheads, the larger the total fraction of that payload that has to go into, into the junk that deploys the warheads and not into the warheads themselves. So it's, it's kind of a losing game to try to carry too many warheads. You can end up with a larger number of very small warheads, and most of the missile throw weight just going into innocuous deployment hardware.

ASKS ABOUT DESIGN OF WARHEAD PACKAGE: WHAT WAS RELATIONSHIP OF ACCURACY TO THE YIELD?

In design and development of the MX missile, the, once the basic decision was made about how many warheads the missile should carry, then an attempt was made to make each of the warheads as accurate as possible. The accuracy of course involves many factors. It involves the design of the re-entry vehicle, the shell that surrounds the warhead. Most important of all, it involves the guidance system which is really the heart of the missile.

ASKS ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS IN TAKING OUT HARDENED TARGETS, IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY THERE.

Well there isn't any trade off. The first decision to make is how big to make the missile and the Minuteman silo sizes that. Then you decide how many warheads you want to carry, and that's kind of independent of accuracy. Yeah. Because, because you get into this business of just carrying deployment hardware instead of warheads.

THEY DISCUSS WHAT THE QUESTION REALLY IS.

When you design a new ICBM the accuracy is the controlling factor in the effectiveness of the missile in attacking a hard target. The better the accuracy, the lower the yield of the warhead that you can, that you need to carry. And in the final design work on the MX missile, we actually took advantage of that fact.

HOW DID AIR FORCE DEAL WITH CONGRESSIONAL DOUBTS ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY?

There were many discussions in the 1970s about how accurate we ought to try to make a new missile system. Some people felt that we should put self-imposed limits on the accuracy of our new systems so that the Soviets would not feel threatened. On the other hand, many people felt that that was basically an unreal approach because certainly over the long-term the Soviets would do as well as they could, and they would not be adequately deterred by our new strategic forces, if we had not done as well as we could. These arguments eventually sorted out on the side of making the MX missile as accurate as we knew how. And indeed it turned out to be more accurate than we thought we knew how.

ASKS ABOUT CONGRESS'S STIPULATIONS.

There was a stipulation at some point in the early 1970s imposed by Congress which restricted development of improved accuracy for new missile systems. That stipulation was eventually removed or perhaps it was a short-term thing. I really don't recall the details.

STIPULATION ABOUT SURVIVABILITY.

There were many discussions in the mid-1970s about whether the primary purpose of the MX program was to develop a new missile of vastly improved accuracy and payload capability or whether the primary objective was to make the system more survivable. Certainly the final decision said that both parts of this problem had to be solved. But I think in almost everyone's mind the primary objective of the MX program was, and to some extent still is, to make a new generation of ICBMs more survivable.

WAS THERE CONFLICT BETWEEN SURVIVABILITY AS RETALIATORY FORCE AND ALSO ABLE TO THREATEN SOVIET TARGETS?

To some extent there, there is a conflict between requirements for survivability and requirements for missile payload. There is really no particular conflict on accuracy. You can make a mobile missile essentially as accurate as a fixed based missile, because if you are on land in contrast to being under the sea, you always know where you are and you can always stop your mobile missile carrier or whatever to launch. So that your launch velocity is, is zero. But there is a serious conflict between the size of the missile and survivability using some concepts for survivability. In that particularly it is difficult to make a large missile, such as the MX, truly mobile. It is entirely feasible and was demonstrated that you can make an MX missile transportable, in the multiple protective structure system which was under development for several years, you can move the missiles from one place to another, if in full view of the Soviets or anybody else. But you can't launch them from, from mobile carriers. To make a survivable, really mobile system, that's going to be able to launch from unknown points, you have to build a much smaller missile than the MX.

WHY DID DESIGN OF MISSILE NEVER CHANGE FROM ORIGINAL PLAN IN ORDER TO MAKE SURVIVABILITY EASIER TO ARRANGE?

Many analyses were carried out on the tradeoffs between survivability and missile size. As far as I am concerned, the most convincing results of these analyses show that there is really no improvement in survivability until you get down to a very small size, the small ICBM or Midgetman that's under development now. You can make the MX missile as survivable as you want to, depending on the basing plan that goes along with it. Certain options such as a true hardened mobile launcher that's under development for the Midgetman would be impossible for the MX missile, but many other options existed.

WHY WAS THE RACETRACK PLAN ACCEPTED BY THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION?

In 1979 the Carter Administration approved for engineering development the so-called racetrack-basing plan which was a terrible misnomer that attracted all kinds of bad press to us. That appeared to have advantages in being able to assure survivability of a large fraction and a large fraction might be 50 percent, but you could easily convince yourself that that is enough, of an MX missile force, under very heavy attack.

WHY COULD SOVIETS NOT JUST BUILD MORE WARHEADS TO KNOCK OUT NEW SHELTERS?

There were several problems inherent in the multiple protective structure system that was put into full-scale engineering development in 1979. Some of these problems were recognized fully and... people decided to go ahead with them because it still appeared to be the best approach. Some of these problems I will, I will have to say were not fully recognized until quite a bit of work had been done. One of the problems that was apparent to every analyst immediately was that the MPS system, if I may use that abbreviation, consisted of a certain number of protective shelters, the notional idea of 4,600 shelters was used in the initial decisions, and that the Soviets could overwhelm it if they wanted to by simply building more missiles and more warheads. Everybody understood that. It was certainly no secret. We did a lot of work though which convinced us that it would not be cost effective for the Soviets to do that, that indeed there were counters that we could take. For example, the first step in countering any Soviet buildup beyond what we expected would probably have been to simply build more shelters. Once you had the engineering work all done, the designs available, construction crews on the site, and so forth, you could build, you could double the number of shelters quite economically. Beyond that the next step would probably have been to install an ABM system. Now such a system was precluded, of course, by the 1972 treaty. However, I recall Harold Brown testifying in a Senate hearing in 1979 or 80 that people should remember that when that treaty was signed the US position in public was that it should only remain in force if the Soviets did not take steps which would force us to build an ABM system. The multiple protective structure system, decided upon by the Carter Administration, was very amenable to upgrade by ABM. It was vastly easier to defend it with a relatively simple ABM system than it would have been to defend Minuteman. And therefore people figured, if the Soviets produce a massive and obvious buildup which would vitiate the MPS system, then eventually we might have to build an ABM.

ASKS ABOUT RACETRACK SYSTEM.

When the full-scale engineering development of the, when the full-scale engineering development of the multiple protective structure started, several preliminary decisions were made, subject to further study. One of these decisions was the concept of a dash-on-warning, so that a missile could be on this so-called racetrack connecting a number of shelters and then if Soviet missiles were determined to be in flight, could dash into a shelter and assure its survivability. That idea was studied over the next year. I recall there was a defense science board panel that looked at that concept in detail, and decided that it was, that it would be a major complication, would cause a substantial increase in the cost of the system, and indeed was not really necessary. So that idea was, was dropped. And the system was simplified. There were a number of design considerations in the MPS system which were put there to ensure inspectability, verifiability, under strategic arms limitations. For example, there were viewing ports designed into the tops of each shelter so that these ports could be moved up, set aside, and Soviet national technical means, meaning satellites, could look into the shelters and assure themselves that there was not a missile there. The reason for such complications was that we all assumed at that time that the Soviets would never agree to on-site inspections. Now, one of the design requirements for the MX system at that time was that it should be ok for on-site inspection. If …an international agreement were ever reached for on-site inspections, we would be perfectly happy to have the Soviets march in and inspect it. We designed the system that way. However, we also had to assume that such an agreement might not be reached and we had to design it so that the Soviets could inspect it without on-site inspections, and assured themselves that we were complying with the, the terms of the SALT II treaty at that time. And that these measures to ensure inspectability added some cost. Produced really in my mind no significant compromise in the value of the system in the operability of it. Made it a little more complicated. But it was much more a cost issue than it was an effectiveness issue. The system was not really compromised. Except in, except economically by these inspection measures.

AND POLITICALLY?

There was some difficulty in, in convincing some people that these measures taken to ensure inspectability had not compromised the military value of the system. People who were pro new ICBM and anti SALT II were hard to convince that we had not really compromised the military value of the system to make it fit within the SALT II framework. In my mind we had not.

WHAT CAUSED THE DOWNFALL OF MPS?

The biggest single problem with the MPS system was not technical. It was public, political, and environmental. We realized some of the technical problems initially. We knew for example that the Soviets could in principle overwhelm it with numbers if they wanted to, but we had backups for that, and so forth. What very few people really understood when some of the initial decisions were made on the MPS system was the real environmental impact and the adverse public reaction. And... the biggest single problem I believe was the reluctance, the very understandable reluctance of people in the affected areas to have their entire sociology changed by a vast influx of people, first construction people, then operating people. They didn't want their, their world torn up that way. That's the kind of environmental impact that really caused the system to be stopped, of much more than destroying flora and fauna. There certainly would have been regrettable scarring of the desert lands. But it was the public impact that was the biggest problem. And it was so difficult to convince people that they needed to accept it because there were so many alternative ideas for basing the MX missile on the table at that time. Many of them, I believe, floated by people who just didn't want any new system. There were some red herrings drawn across the trail, I am sure. But these, this proliferation of ideas caused a great deal of concern among people in the affected areas in the states of Nevada and Utah particularly. And they would come to us in the Defense Department and say, "We're patriotic Americans. If we are convinced that this must be done, then we will accept it. But you haven't convinced us that it has to be done, because here are all these leading people of various types including a lot of former military people and so forth, who say, 'We have a better idea. Why don't you look at some of those better ideas [instead of destroying our world?'" And that was a situation that eventually caused the system to be cancelled. ]

After engineering development of the multiple protective structure system started in 1979, there was tremendous amount of argument about whether that was the best way to go or not. One group of...of outstanding technical people, not military people but good scientific people, wanted to build small submarines. I personally could never see why small submarines had any provable benefit over large submarines, which we were already building. It didn't really seem like an independent leg of the triad. There were a number of ideas such as using surface ships, which is certainly a cheap thing to do, but you can't convince yourself that it's survivable. You can even in principle hide missiles on surface ships, drop them overboard on pontoons, and launch them out of the water. It's a neat technical idea, which was actually proved to work. It might be useful for something. It doesn't make a survivable missile system. On and on. There were a great number of ideas, of other things that ought to be done, that ought to be studied. People said you haven't studied the problem enough. We said, well, we think we have, we are kind of out of things to do. There was always one group, which favored a road mobile system. Air mobile came to the fore again. In the mid–70s we had carried out a quick flight test of dropping a Minuteman missile out of the back of a C-5 aircraft. And, and then launching it in the air, lighting off the engine. The missile had been modified so that it only had 10 seconds worth of fuel so it wouldn't go anywhere. But it proved the concept that this could be done. People asked why don't you do that? Well, the answer when you go through a lot of analysis and investigation of where airports are and how much it costs to build new airports is that you can't get any real survivability out of that. It's not as good as the bombers we have now. It's a lot, a big transport aircraft is a lot slower in leaving the area of its airport where the Soviets could attack it than a B-1 is, for example. So, that kind of idea seems a lot poorer than the bombers. The country was still groping for a real approach to survivability that would provide an independent type of deterrent that was provably survivable, and was acceptable to the public. And of course was affordable in cost.

DID THE PLANNER NEVER CONSIDER THE EFFECT MPS WOULD HAVE ON UTAHANS? THEY SEEMED SURPRISED.

Many people were surprised, taken aback by the very adverse reaction by the public in Nevada and Utah to the proposition that the MPS system be built. We have to bear in mind that those were changing times. The public was becoming increasingly concerned by almost another factor of two every year about the environment. Environmentalism was a new thing in the world. And when a lot of the initial studies were done in the early '70s, people simply couldn't understand by 1980 the feeling that the public would have on some of these issues. And the people, who had the adverse reaction in 1980, probably wouldn't have understood it themselves six or eight years earlier.

WHAT ABOUT ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT?

Certainly there was and there still is a substantial body of opinion in the country which is not represented by a large number of people, I believe, but tends to be very vocal and very articulate in expressing its views, that we should not build any new missile systems at all. Probably should not build any new nuclear systems at all. I personally don't believe that that is the way to avoid war. We have to keep remembering that the number one national objective is to prevent nuclear war. The objective is not to stop spending money, the objective is not to reduce the number of warheads, the real objective is to avoid war. I am sure that... the opinion of some people that we should not build an MX system at all entered into the arguments about what kind of system to build. If you don't want to build anything, then it's always easy to say, "Well, why don't you play B instead of A," and so forth. And it, the issues get very confused.

THEY WERE ARGUING AGAINST BASING MODES AS A WAY OF FOULING UP THE MISSILE QUESTION?

I believe that people were playing off one basing mode against another, were bringing in extraneous arguments, to slow down the decision making process and with the hope of ultimately preventing the country from building any new missile system at all.

WHY WAS 200 THE NUMBER CHOSEN?

An early decision was made to deploy 200 MX missiles and this was really never viewed as a final decision but this was, the notional plan was to deploy 200 for really two or three reasons. One is that 200 MX missiles, each carrying 10 warheads, would have about the same number of warheads as the total Minuteman fleet. So that if, if the decision were taken to take out all the Minuteman and have 200 MXs as replacement, you would have the same number of warheads. The number 200 was also chosen based on projections of the Soviet strategic forces that might be able to attack the system. 200 missiles with the MPS system, with the then existing projections of the Soviet capabilities, would assure that enough MX missiles would survive to provide a strong deterrent force. So all of these considerations came together and 200 was a round number that seemed to satisfy all of the, all of the requirements.

SINCE MISSILE WAS TO BE A SILO BUSTER, WAS 200 TIED TO THE NUMBER OF MISSILES ON SOVIET SIDE?

The 200 missile force or a reasonably surviving fraction of the 200 missile fleet would provide enough warheads to attack a large fraction of the known and expected Soviet hard targets, including missile silos.

WAS THERE A CONFLICT IN THAT IT WAS TO HIT THOSE SILOS--AND BEING BASED SURVIVABLY? WOULD SILOS BE EMPTY WHEN IT WAS LAUNCHED?

The question is often asked, why should we build a very accurate new missile system to attack silos that are likely to be empty because the missiles that are in them have already been launched? Now the real answer is that nobody knows whether those silos are going to be empty or not. One doesn't know what the Soviet plan of attack would be. Perhaps they don't know at this point what it might be ten years from now either. And certainly we thought it would not be prudent not to have the capability to attack Soviet silos if missiles were still in them. And in looking back at the design criteria, one has to remember that we were planning a missile system which was expected to be in the field, on alert, for at least 20 years. Minuteman first went into operation in the very early 1960s. It's still there and flourishing and will be for the foreseeable future. And we expected that any new missile system such as MX, that was built, would have to survive, would have to be effective through generation after generation of Soviet advances, and be able to take into account all kinds of changes that were almost imponderable at the time the design was made.

BUT FOR THAT REASON IT WAS HARD TO CONVINCE PEOPLE IT WASN'T DESIGNED TO BE USED FIRST?

It was hard to convince people when we... decided that the missile had to be accurate enough to attack silos or any other hard targets, it was hard to convince some of the American public that the intention was not to build a first strike capability.

IF OUR POLICY HAD BEEN LAUNCH UNDER ATTACK, MIGHT WE HAVE AVOIDED ALL THESE STUDIES AND WORK?

One of the ideas, which seemed attractive to many people to avoid spending the money on a new missile system and also to avoid appearing to threaten the Soviets with an accurate new missile system, was the idea of launching on warning or launching under attack. Such a plan is fraught with danger. One has terrible worries about whether our warning systems would give warning if an attack were underway. You have perhaps even greater worries about a false alarm. And you have to recognize that decisions on launch under attack would have to be made by fallible human beings at a moment of incredible stress, and in a very short period of time. The national position has been as long as I remember and still is, that we should have the technical capability to launch under attack, but we shouldn't depend on it.

ASKS LATER BASING IDEAS.

In 1971 a committee established by the Defense Department, after the Reagan Administration came into... After the Reagan Administration came into office in 1981... After the Reagan Administration came into office in 1981; they ordered a new look at the MX program and a re-evaluation of the decision to build a multiple protective structure system. A high level committee chartered by the Defense Department looked at a wide variety of possible alternatives again and suggested several new approaches. And a decision was made as part of the President's strategic modernization program that was announced in October of 1981, to do some initial engineering development work on several alternative approaches to MPS. And to stop the development work of the MPS system at that time, while continuing forward with the missile development. One of the ideas which was selected for considerable additional work was deep underground basing. And a very aggressive program was carried out for several years on that. A great deal was learned. And the conclusion of that work was that such a system is possible, it is very expensive. It is particularly expensive if you wanted to be able to launch quickly. And of course one of the advantages as far as a deterrent is concerned of the ICBM force has always been its ability to launch almost upon command. Another idea that was selected for, for further work was the concept of a very long-range airplane. This was a variation of the air mobile idea which had been worked on before, but advances in aircraft technology convinced people that it would be possible and entirely feasible to build an airplane that, that would be able to fly for hundreds of hours. With only a modest amount of refueling, over the oceans, over international waters all the time. So that there would be no hazard to people if the plane crashed and so forth. And the aircraft would be able to launch its missiles upon command. That idea was looked at in considerable detail. And the final conclusion was that one could not assure undetectability of the airplane. And bear in mind again that one is looking for a system that would be viable for at least 20 years say. Over a period of time and, you know, some years for development and 20 years for operation, you couldn't convince yourself that the Soviets would not be able to locate the airplanes, know where they were all the time, and just shoot them out of the skies immediately if they decided to do that. So. The Big Bird idea was rejected for that reason.

DID DEEP UNDERGROUND BASING GIVE PEOPLE THE IDEA OF A PROTRACTED NUCLEAR WAR?

When you look in detail at how you might build a deep underground missile system, you come to several conclusions. One is that it is possible to achieve a very high degree of survivability at costs, which are relatively modest and affordable. People are initially skeptical of this because they have visions of how many billions it costs to build a modest urban metro system these days. But that's an entirely different problem. If you want to get the missiles deep into a mountain or a mesa or something, you can do the construction very much cheaper than you can in the middle of a city. The biggest technical problem in a deep underground missile system is getting the missiles out so that they can launch back quickly. Now this is probably do-able but at a great increase in cost of the system. So, anything that appears to be affordable is going to take hours to days to launch its missiles back at the attacker. And this, the idea of a system which takes hours or particularly takes days to launch is very unpalatable to a lot of people because it brings up the specter of protracted war. Now I certainly believe that a system that is slow to launch has less deterrent value, I don't get too excited about the undesirability about protracted war because I am so excited about the undesirability about any nuclear war that the, the protracted nature of it seems like almost a nuance. We want to avoid any war. [The quicker the system can launch, the better a deterrent it is and the less likely it is to be attacked at all.]

A part of the strategic modernization program that was announced in October of '81 was to emplace the initial MX missiles in upgraded Minuteman silos. This idea was not well received in Congress by many members because they wanted something better. They thought that was a halfway step that would involve large expenditures of money, that the possibilities for upgrading the Minuteman silos were really quite modest when you looked at it in detail. And that they wanted to see something better and they pushed the Administration very hard to come up with a better idea.

WHERE DID IDEA OF DENSE PACK ARISE?

One of the reasons for this national groping for a new ICBM basing plan, the driving force behind it really, was a desire to recreate all of the advantages, the beauties that the Minuteman system had had when it was first built in the early 1960s. All of the advantages of total survivability, immediate response, excellent command-control and communications, of no impact on the public whatever, and so forth and so on. As years went by it became obvious to many people that it was simply impossible to, to have any plan like that. Technology didn't permit it. With increasing accuracy of Soviet missiles there is simply no way to go back to the 1960s. One of the great advantages which people had always understood was inherent in the Minuteman system was its total independence of warning. When you talk about requirements for warning for a missile system or any strategic system, people talk about two things: strategic warning which means some evidence hours or days or whatever in advance that the Soviets might, might attack and such strategic warning could perhaps be given by starting of a conventional war somewhere else. A conventional war starts in Europe, certainly that would be considered strategic warning by people. People also worry about tactical warning. That means evidence from radars, satellites, whatever, that Soviet missiles are actually in flight, that there is incoming on the way. The Minuteman system has never depended on either of these types of warning. Because when it was first built, as I said, it was essentially invulnerable and you could ride out an attack, just sit there and then the commanders could give the order to launch at any time they wanted to after that. After the, the first round of ICBM ideas which were studied by the Reagan Administration had been really dismissed by the Congress, people started concentrating on how to build a new system of giving up some of the advantages that Minuteman had always had, some of the good features of Minuteman would simply have to be sacrificed. And when people broadened their horizons to think of, of ideas that were perhaps less good in principle but much more do-able, one key individual in the Air Force, an outstanding technical officer named Mike Havey, invented the idea. He just sat down with a blank sheet of paper and invented an idea, which later became known as dense pack. And the idea depended on two concepts. One was superhard silos and the other is the, the fact which had always been realized, been known for many years, that it's impossible for an attacking force to set off its warheads too closely spaced in both space and time, because they will interfere with each other. So the, the fundamental concept of dense pack or closely spaced basing as it was officially known, was that you would build an array of superhard silos, close enough together that, that incoming warheads could not attack them all at the same time. So between waves of an attack the surviving missiles would launch out.

ASKS FOR STORY HE HAS TOLD ABOUT A BREAKTHROUGH.

The United States started doing some technical work on the idea of superhard silos in the late 1970s. It was an idea really that we kind of got from the Russians. We understood what the Russians were doing in the way of silo construction, gave us some ideas and we went out to the, to the field and tested these concepts with high explosive simulation of nuclear weapon effects, and found they not only worked, they worked a lot better than we expected. We didn't have the analytical tools, the engineering design techniques that would allow us to fully appreciate how good these concepts were. And that was the genesis of superhard silos. Now it's a very interesting fact that when the idea of dense pact, closely spaced basing, was first generated early in 1982. I remember quite precisely when that happened. That the superhard silos that were included in the concept were the 5,000 to 10,000 psi type silos that we knew how to build at that time. It was quickly realized after just a few months of analysis that that wasn't good enough and what we now know as superhard silos were invented just almost overnight because people put several more technical ideas together and realized that they could talk not about 5 or 10,000 psi, but about 50,000 to 100,000 psi. And I remember the day when...a group of people from the Defense Nuclear Agency came running into my office in the Pentagon and sort of shouted "Eureka, we have an idea for real superhard silos." And they got up at the blackboard and indicated how this would work and you know, we thought about it for a while and we argued back and forth for an hour. And I agreed. It will work. It will surely work. This is really a new concept. And, and all of the engineering development work since then has thoroughly proved out the idea of superhard silos. The...the Scowcroft Commission in 1983 recommended an intensive effort on the part of the Air Force and the Defense Nuclear Agency to, to test out and refine the concept of real superhard silos. That was done, the work ended mid-1986, on an extremely successful note. Large-scale tests were carried out using every possible way of simulating the effects of real nuclear weapon detonations and it just works beautifully.

BUT CONGRESS WAS NOT CONVINCED?

While the highly successful technical development work was in progress on superhard silos, another set of events was in progress, which dead-ended the idea of using these silos for MX missiles or for the small ICBM. In that the flight testing of the Peacekeeper when it started showed that the accuracy of the missile was extremely good. Really much better than most of the experts had predicted that it was going to be. And in fact the, the accuracy was so good that if you mirror image this, say that in another decade or whatever the Soviets can build a missile that accurate, then it's not clear that you really want superhard silos. So the MX missile sort of dead ends its own best basing plan with its own accuracy. Although, although there are, I am still convinced that there are many benefits to a super-hard silo system. And that it's far from clear that it's not a cost effective thing to do because it's such an easy thing to do.

DESCRIBES DR. TOWNES' LETTER TO WEINBERGER ABOUT HIS FEAR ABOUT THE SYSTEM. WHEN THE LETTER GOT PUBLIC, DID IT HAVE A BIG EFFECT?

Yes, the, the private letter which Professor Townes wrote to the Secretary of Defense, expressing his private reservations about the closely spaced basing plan got into the newspapers, a few days after it was received in the Pentagon, and I'm afraid that the effect of that letter was devastating.

WHAT WAS HIS POSITION DURING SCOWCROFT COMMISSION?

I was the Executive Secretary of the Scowcroft Commission from the time it started on the first working day of '83 until it's big report was rendered a few months later.

WAS THE COMMISSION PRIMARILY POLITICAL OR TECHNICAL?

The primary job of the Scowcroft Commission was to forge a national consensus on a major national problem where the great majority of the Congress and the great majority of the American people believed that something had to be done. And you could get 95 percent of the Congress to agree that something had to be done, and no more than 18 percent to agree on any particular approach to it. And the country was very happy at that moment, at the beginning of 1983, with the success of the Social Security Commission which was still in progress but had declared victory at that point, in achieving a national consensus, in the same kind of situation, where everybody knew that something had to be done tore form the Social Security System, but you couldn't get very many people to agree on any particular idea. So based on that very happy precedent the President appointed another Presidential commission to, to try to achieve a consensus among the great majority of people who believed that we needed to do something about the obsolescence of the Minuteman system.

SUGGESTS IT IS IRONIC THAT THE COMMISSION FINALLY AGREED THE MISSILES COULD GO INTO SILOS, WHEN THE IDEA HAD BEEN REJECTED SO MANY TIMES.

The Scowcroft Commission came up with a conclusion that I think surprised a great many people after all of the engineering work that had been done on new ICBM basing plans. And that was that there was no immediate rush, no great urgency to build a new survivable basing system for the MX missile. That in fact the survivability of the submarines would be good for a considerable period of time, the survivability of the bombers would also be pretty good, particularly with the B-1 bomber going into production then. And that the country could afford to wait a few years before starting production of a truly survivable ICBM. They said loud and clear that we should have a survivable ICBM system. But it can wait a few years until the country can do it the right way. In the meantime the MX missiles ought to be deployed in the existing Minuteman silos.

WAS THERE A WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY?

The Scowcroft Commission certainly did not conclude that, that there was not a window of vulnerability. That term had been bandied about for years. People arguing whether there was a window of vulnerability, and one group accusing others of ignoring it and another group accusing some people of trumping it up and so forth and so on. The Scowcroft Commission said there is vulnerability, there is going to be increasing vulnerability, we're in that window but we don't have to shut the window right now. There is a window of vulnerability for ICBMs but not for the country was the conclusion, as long as we have survivable bombers and submarines we can take a little while to do something about the land-based missiles.

WAS IT DECIDED THAT THERE WERE TWO DIFFERENT PURPOSES AND DID YOU NEED TWO DIFFERENT MISSILE SYSTEMS?

The recommendation of the Commission was that the deployment of the MX missile should proceed since it had been developed, was already well along in its flight testing, doing extremely well. We had this capability, which we ought to deploy in a limited number in order to...improve our deterrence. That we should not deploy them in enough numbers so that we would pose a serious first strike threat and that's why 100 missiles was selected instead of 200. And that we should proceed in an orderly way to development of a new missile system which would carry only a single warhead. And that, the idea would be to de-MIRV the missile fleet, if you will, by not providing attractive targets to the system in the sense that the MX missile does by having ten warheads located at a single well known point. And the Commission foresaw the development of this small ICBM which people frequently call the Midgetman these days, and deployment of the new missile beginning in the early 1990s with the, the basing plan essentially undetermined at that time. They recommended intensive work along two quite different lines, one being a superhard silo and the other development looking at a hardened mobile launcher, which was a brand new idea at that time. They made no selection between them and certainly left the door wide open for any other ideas that came along for concentrating on the advantages that a small missile provided. They were certainly well aware of the much greater costs involved in a survivable small missile system contrasted to a large missile, and indeed the much greater costs of the missiles themselves, and even for a missile the size of the MX, the cost of the guidance system is about one-third the total cost of the missile and it takes the same guidance system to steer a Midgetman that it does to steer an MX. So the costs really go up quit sharply for a small ICBM. And that was well recognized by the Scowcroft Commission.

ASKS TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES THAT MADE IDEA OF HARDENED LAUNCHER POSSIBLE.

The, the hardened mobile launcher, like the idea of really superhard silos as we know them now, was generated under stress. Necessity was again the mother of invention there. The fundamental data which underlies, under which underlay... let me start that over. The fundamental data which underlay the hardened mobile launcher concept had existed for less than a year at the time the Scowcroft Commission suggested it for further exploration. In 1982 the Defense Nuclear Agency executed a large high explosive test where they tested small models of a hardened vehicle for carrying mobile radars actually. It was connected with the dense pack concept. And the idea of this radar carrier was that it would have skirts, which could be deployed and sealed the vehicle to the ground so that the blast wave from a nuclear explosion could not get under the carrier, the truck, and turn it over. And indeed that worked very, very well in this high explosive test. So a group of people put that idea and several other ideas together and came up with the concept of the hardened mobile launcher and did some quick analyses which indicated that 30 to 40 pounds per square inch was an interesting and important level of hardness for a launcher, which would allowed it, which would allow it to be deployed [on existing military reservations or other government reservations and have a lot of survivability.]

WAS THERE A TURNING POINT IN THE PROCESS OF SCOWCROFT DELIBERATIONS WHEN THEY ALL REALIZED THAT HERE WAS A RATIONALE, A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM?

When the Scowcroft Commission started it well understood its major objective was to forge this national consensus on what to do about the ICBM programs. The, a few of the individual members of the Commission I think had some ideas of, about what the approach ought to be. I believe that nobody was really firm in his views about exactly what ought to be done. Everybody understood the problem was too hard for that. Nobody said, I know what to do. After many weeks of discussion and hearing from a very large number of people, the ideas sort of gradually came together. But the, the conclusion that there was not a window of vulnerability which had to be closed immediately was a very important step in the process of forging this consensus within the Commission even. Then the idea about what to do. The recognition of probable technical merits of the silos, the hardened mobile launcher. The understanding that the Peacekeeper missile in the Minuteman silos would substantially enhance our deterrent. When these ideas all came together, I think there was considerable feeling of relief on the part of the members that they had a product, that they had been able to do the job that they were chartered to do.

ASKS ABOUT AL CARNESALE'S COMING ONTO THE COMMISSION.

The Commission listened to a very large number of people. There was a concerted effort to hear abroad spectrum of opinion. To hear from people who had major experience at the policy level and to hear from advanced technologists in parallel. Got it all mixed up. One of the most influential speakers before the Commission was Prof. Al Carnesale of Harvard who came in to give an intellectual defense of silo stuffing, it was called, because people called the idea of putting the MX missiles into the Minuteman silos, "silo stuffing." So Al came in and gave a spirited intellectual defense, sort of in the vein of an attorney-speaking for his side, you know, not saying I'm going to stand or die on this concept, but here is a good intellectual rationale for doing this. And that had a major impact on peoples' thinking.

ASKS ABOUT ASPIN AND DICKS.

Congressmen Aspin and Congressman Norm Dicks were very important liasoners between the thinking of the Commission and the Congress. They were consulted frequently both in meetings and in private discussions with some of the members and were very, very helpful in sounding out their colleagues on Capitol Hill about the acceptability of, of some of the ideas that the Commission was thinking about setting forth. And also bringing back to the Commission thoughts that individual members wanted, wanted them to express.

ASKS WHAT THEY BROUGHT BACK.

The Commission members were quite encouraged by what they heard from Mr. Aspin and Mr. Dicks and a few others of their colleagues, that they were encouraged that this consensus which they had, were forging, this consensus that they were forging among themselves, would be acceptable to a majority in the Congress. Perhaps a very large majority in Congress because that was considered a very important object to show the country and to show the world that this problem had really been solved, that there was a, not just a 51 percent vote in favor of a solution, but a real national consensus. That we had faced down this issue and had handled it, had done something about it, and the country could now forget these arguments and move onto something else.

WAS THE ADMINISTRATION REALLY INTERESTED IN THE SMALL MISSILE CONCEPT AS SOME IN CONGRESS HOPED THEY WOULD BE?

There was a lot of discussion between the Commission and senior officials in the Defense Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other decision makers in the Administration, about the acceptability of the small ICBM concept. I don't think that anybody had serious reservations about it except on issues of cost. It was well understood by everybody that it would be an expensive program. The question was, how necessary-is it in view of the cost? But people agreed that as part of, a national program, it was something that ought to be done, and I believe that at least at that time, that people sincerely signed up to that approach.

GIVEN BUDGET CUTS, WHICH IS THE HIGHER PRIORITY FOR SECURITY; BUILDING THE REST OF THE MX OR THE MIDGETMAN?WHICH BEST MEETS THE THREAT THAT WE FACE?

Since the Presidential Commission rendered its report in 1983 that led to the President's decision to, to start the development work on the small ICBM, there has of course been greatly increased concern about the military budgets for the future, whether the Defense Department has overcommitted itself and so on. The small ICBM is not turning out to cost any more than people expected a few years ago it was going to. Indeed, with the present idea of basing many of them, if not most or all of them, in the existing Minuteman areas instead of on single large military reservations, the cost will probably come down substantially. At the same time though we have to recognize that there will be very serious budget crunch in the Defense Department over the next few years and I will have to say that, that despite my involvement in this program for some time, I am not totally convinced at this time that, that the small ICBM, it is going to be high enough priority in the national picture to deserve the cost that it's going to require.

ASKS ABOUT RAIL GARRISON CONCEPT.

I think it's very important that we continue the ICBM modernization program. The, the deployment of 50 MX missiles in the silo as the Congress decided upon is a very poor way to invest the billions which have gone into the development of the system up to this time. Let us recall that the Scowcroft Commission in '83 recommended a deployment of 100. Congress eventually cut that down to 50. At this point the, our investment in the development of the system has certainly not been amortized because we're deploying so few of them that, if you were starting over again, you wouldn't spend that money to do that. We ought to, to continue the MX program and deploy at least another 50 MX missiles. The garrison rail mobile approach, which is being developed at this time, certainly has some merits to it. It's, it's an inexpensive approach. It of course does suffer from the problem that it depends upon strategic warning. If you do not have strategic warning such as might be given, for example, by conventional war starting in Europe or somewhere else in the world, if you don't have some incentive to move the system out of its garrison onto the railroads and put it in a survivable position, then it has no survivability at all.

SHOULD WE GO AHEAD WITH THAT SYSTEM?

I think it's, I think the garrison rail mobile system is a highly cost effective solution. It certainly suffers from some problems. On the other hand it's a very inexpensive system and a very good way to maximize the return from the billions that have gone into development of the MX missile.

ASKS ABOUT STABILITY ISSUES.

I have always thought that the, the most important consideration in making, in... let me start over. I have thought that the most important consideration in making decisions on ICBM modernization, modernization, is to maintain. It is most important that the Soviets know that we can respond to any attack they launch. And therefore we have no incentive to pre-empt. We have no incentive to launch first. And we should want the Soviets to have that same degree of comfort. Our national position has always been that the world is a safer place and a better place if both sides have confidence in the survivability of their strategic forces. I believe that. It's very important that we not build a system that is going to be destabilizing because we don't have confidence in it. It's also important that we not try to live with old systems that we don't have confidence in. So, we have to modernize. Otherwise we will lose confidence and that will be destabilizing. So we must modernize but we have to do it in a right way.

ASKS IF WE HAD LEFT MPS IN PLACE, MIGHT WE HAVE BEEN BETTER OFF?

The MPS system as it was being engineered in the late 1970s and early 1980s, would have been a pretty survivable system. In retrospect, looking back at all the additional technical knowledge that we have now and so forth, I think that survivability under, under a severely constrained Soviet force, would have been very good. It had terrible problems in public acceptability. Technically it was a good idea. And actually I guess I am less concerned now about Soviet spying on it and its vulnerability to Soviet intelligence than I would have been eight or ten years ago.

MENTIONS UTAHANS WERE WORRIED THEY WOULD BE UNDER SURVEILLANCE AND THEIR MOVEMENTS RESTRICTED. MIGHT THAT HAVE HAPPENED?

One of the great concerns that the people in Nevada and Utah had was that, that the system would eventually come to be seen by, by the Pentagon as not survivable because it could be penetrated by Soviet intelligence agents. And then the Air Force and the Defense Department would move to exclude the public from the entire deployment area of 10 or 12,000 square miles, instead of just from the 25 square miles which is the little area surrounding each shelter. Certainly the people were wrong in having this worry in the sense that there was any plan to do that. You know, I am just absolutely sure that nobody had any such idea in mind as something they wanted to do. I certainly didn't. On the other hand they, they probably had a reasonable concern that, you know, anything can happen in the future and it was something for them to worry about. I really doubt that it could ever, that it would have ever happened, because a different approach, another approach which would have caused some concern from the civil liberties standpoint would be to require inspection of camper vehicles and things like that. You don't exclude the public from 12,000 square miles but if somebody wants to drive in his, his Winnebago that's covered with antennas and so forth and so on, you say, hey fellow, what's going on, you know, we're going to inspect your, your truck before you drive in. So any possible future problem could probably have been handled without really excluding the public.