DRAFT

Peter Ogloblin

June 21, 1955

Administrative Difficulties of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapons present a series of difficulties to the policy-maker in the foreign affairs field that stem directly from organizational structure and administration. These are completely apart from the other imposing difficulties (ethical, military, economic) that confront him. Basically, they are all aspects of one problem: that of control. To put it another way, lack of control makes a given instrument of policy less reliable; it is more likely to go into unintended activities; it is difficult to integrate into a coherent program or policy. With the obvious importance of this new category of weapons to national survival itself, this is a most serious matter.

Because of its great lethal area, the nuclear weapon (or, more precisely, the family of nuclear weapons) creates political problems by its use, intended use, anticipated use, and just its general existence as a weapon. This is so since the smallest known variety (20 KT) is 2,000 times more powerful than the largest HE explosive ever made. The logical consequence of this situation would be to have military planning involving the projected use of nuclear weapons integrated most intimately with the political plans of which they form an aspect. Yet it is precisely here that the optimum desirable conditions are almost completely reversed. The major reason is organization. It falls into the areas of (1) over-specialization of

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nuclear operations; (2) compartmentalization of planning, (3) security;
(4) personnel in the nuclear field and (5) communications.

At present, nuclear operations are not dispersed throughout the armed
services, as is the case with the more common HE weapons. They are entrusted
to a relatively few elite units: the artillery in the Army, some carrier air-
craft in the Navy, and SAC in the Air Force. These units, because of
pressures of secrecy, technological compartmentalization, etc. plus because
of the fact that they are subordinate parts of the military establishment,
tend to isolate their plans, operations and personnel from the everyday life
of the rest of the armed services, let alone the rest of the government. This
is perhaps inevitable, but it leads toward making nuclear weapons remote
from the rest of the community; and consequently harder to visualize and
deal with.

Planning for the use of these weapons is confined to the specialists
who will use them, generally speaking. This is highly significant, because
operations are always based on some such plans. It is inevitable and
necessary for coordination. But when specialized lower units make these
plans, it is likewise virtually inevitable that such plans will be out of
touch with the thinking of command centers several echelons removed. And it
is at these command centers that coordination with foreign policy organs
takes place. Poor coordination of these subordinate unit plans and the
overall purposes for which they are made thus becomes chronic.

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This difficulty could be overcome if sufficient review and control of the plans were extended to the foreign policy agencies. Indeed, the foreign policy agencies would almost require this to do their jobs, considering the political implication of nuclear weapons. Needs of security, however, fore-stall such a development. The reasoning is time-honored: plans reveal intentions, and intentions are one of the key targets of enemy intelligence. Probabilities of such information falling into enemy hands become much greater when the information is known by more than a handful of people. Thus, since our national survival might depend upon its being kept secret, it will not be made common knowledge. The "need to know" basis will have to be very strong indeed if one is to get the information. So security, when linked with the overspecialization of operations and the compartmentalization of planning, is alone sufficient to cause lack of control over the uses of the bomb. And that such plans will be out of tune with higher policy planning (also compartmentalized) is virtually assured by the other time-honored principle, "tell the lower units **what** to do, not **how** to do it." Here "how to do it" is of utmost importance.

The last two problems, personnel and communications, create added burdens for those seeking to control nuclear weapons. For it is evident that many of the people directly involved with the weapons have training and backgrounds of a kind that makes it difficult for them to see the political point of view. This is especially true of the many scientists and engineers engaged in this work, and it must be remembered that a good proportion of the military personnel involved have engineering backgrounds albeit with a different slant. The point is not that such people are

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inherently incapable of taking into account political considerations; it
is that the rigorous training they have undergone to become what they are
has left them little time (and often little inclination) to become involved
with political issues. Thus they cannot be expected to give sufficient
weight to high policy matters.

With such a situation reinforced by the compartmentalization of planning
and operations plus the necessary secrecy, the problem of overall
communication is thrown into relief. For now it is possible that even if
free communication and review were possible, it still might be misinterpreted
in the lower units, because of their more specialized outlook.

Undoubtedly the problem of control is an impossible one for the foreign
policy-makers today. It should be remedied if the tail is not to wag the
dog. Clearly the military use of nuclear weapons is of unparalleled
importance to the U.S. today. The whole strategic concept, and of course
its underlying plans, *must* be *correct* in the event of war; the possibilities
of losing a war within a matter of days make this imperative. But if the
"first guess" is to be correct, it *must* be based not only on information
about the enemy, but also on information and operations from our side. Thus
even if the strategic concept and its high-level implementation were correct,
it is still possible to fail by inexact tactical application of such principles.
This can best be understood by a hypothetical example.

Let us assume that large formations of Soviet aircraft of the inter-
Continental type have been sighted by the DEW line. Their direction of
flight and appearance make the probabilities of their attack on the U.S. very

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great. The President thus decides to retaliate "massively": he calls his
military chiefs and tells them to give SAC the green light. This is done.
When the SAC staffs get the order, they immediately put into effect their
emergency operations plan, and every unit understands fully its mission in
the operation, although none will know of the overall direction of the plans.
Note: these are the plans which only a very few of the top military planners
know; probably none of the foreign policy people have ever seen them. This
may not make much difference in some cases, but in other cases the difference
would be critical. For the foreign policy planner must consider the tasks
and problems *after* the war (assuming we win) -- say, military occupation,
physical rehabilitation, nature of alliances, potential competitors, and the
like. To him certain marginal differences would be crucial: say if Kharkov
and Khem-Belder were targets of equal value and only one had to be destroyed,
the choice of one or the other might be dictated by very strong preferences
of a political nature which the original planners would not take into account.
Or as another case, the political value of hitting or not hitting certain
targets might be decisive in the successful prosecution of the war itself,
through the effects on the less tangible elements off the total equation.
A timely suggestion could have remedied this, but it is highly unlikely that
such coordination could take place under the present system. Thus, for
foreign policy matters, the nuclear weapons family cannot be considered an
entirely reliable tool.

What should be done about this? It is clear that if control is to be
established, certain other functions (security for one) will suffer. The
improvement in one field will charge a price in another; the whole is an

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interrelated web. Yet surely some control is necessary. This could be
done by (a) raising the nuclear weapons -- using agencies to a level whereby
they would automatically coordinate with the foreign policy
staffs (i.e., to the highest levels); (b) create a "grand strategy general
staff" where top policy planners from the State and Defense Departments as
well as the military departments would participate -- this would include
the nuclear weapons units, or (c) attach permanent liaison personnel from
the foreign policy staffs to the nuclear weapons units staffs. Which of
these solutions should be effected and in what proportion it should be done
remains a matter for careful study. With respect to security, it would seem
that as a first step a correlation should be made, from past experience, on
the incidence of security "leaks" with respect to the number of people having
access to the information. This sort of study might help define whether
or not the present security restrictions are too severe and if so, how many
more highly reliable people could receive such information until the
statistical safety limit was reached. Similar such studies in the other
areas would help at arriving at a series of limits wherein desirable shifts
of effort and organization were possible.