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II THIRD WORLD CONFLICTS AND US INTERESTS

Nearly all the armed conflicts of the past forty years have occurred in what is referred
to as the Third World -- the diverse countries of Southeastern and Southwestern Asia, the
Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Eastern Caribbean. In the same period, all the
wars in which the United States was involved -- either directly with its combat forces or
indirectly with military assistance -- occurred in the Third World. Given future trends in the
diffusion of technology and military power, the United States needs a clear understanding
of its interests and military role in these regions.

Disagreements about these matters have been endlessly vexatious in the past. The
overarching common feature of our military involvement in the Third World has been
rancorous disagreement about the nature of our interests. We have disagreed not only
about whether we should be involved (as in Nicaragua) but about whether we were even
supporting the right side (as in Angola). Our failure in Vietnam still casts a shadow over
US intervention anywhere, and other setbacks -- notably those we suffered in
Lebanon -- have left some predisposed to pessimism about our chances in the Third World.
Our ability to persevere in such wars is always questionable.

So the tools and tactics of American involvement are severely circumscribed. In
addition, we are sometimes constrained by the need to "save" forces or advanced
technologies for a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union -- even though our
potential adversaries in the Third World are themselves acquiring increasingly
sophisticated weaponry.

These conflicts in the Third World are obviously less threatening than any Soviet-
American war would be, yet they have had and will have an adverse cumulative effect on
US access to critical regions, on American credibility among allies and friends, and on
American self-confidence. If this cumulative effect cannot be checked or reversed in the
future, it would gradually undermine America's ability to defend its interests in the most
vital regions, such as the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, or the West Pacific.

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The Commission believes that in the coming decades the United States will need to be better prepared to deal with conflicts in the Third World. The preparations will not be expensive. But they require new kinds of planning, since they often call for missions, force structures, and equipment not now available in the US inventory.

US difficulties in dealing with this violence constitute a major reason for its persistence. Our adversaries can tell themselves that they often run little risk when they attack US interests or allies in the Third World, especially if the warfare is of low intensity and protracted, using guerrilla forces, paramilitary terrorist organizations, and armed subversives. If we do not improve our ability to counter this lesser violence, we will surely lose the support of many Third World countries that want to believe the United States can protect its friends, not to mention its own interests.

The violence threatens our interests in a variety of ways. It can imperil a fledgling democracy (as in El Salvador), increase pressures for large-scale migration to the United States (as in Central American wars), jeopardize important US bases (as in the Philippines), threaten vital sea lanes (as in the Persian Gulf), or provide strategic opportunities for the Soviet Union and its proxies.

The Soviet Union and its allies have often backed terrorism and insurgency around the world. They have skillfully exploited pervasive poverty and nationalist resentments in many regions, and their Leninist methods provide a useful model for Third World dictatorships seeking to gain and hold power. Still, the Soviets have problems of their own in these regions. It is increasingly well understood that Communist economics offers no passport to development: the contrast between North and South Korea carries a powerful message, and so do the economic disasters of Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, and Cambodia. Right now something

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like 500,000 insurgents have taken up arms against Soviet-supported regimes (which are in the aggregate supported by perhaps 400,000 Soviet, Cuban, and Vietnamese troops).

Third World conflicts in the future will call for many different responses by the United States, but it is possible to specify some guidelines for US strategy. We see a strategy built on six basic propositions:

(1) **US forces will not in general be combatants.** A combat role for US armed forces in Third World conflicts has to be viewed as an exceptional event. Some exceptions will doubtless occur, as in 1983 in Grenada and 1986 in Libya, and it would be self-defeating for the United States to declare a "no use" doctrine for its forces in the Third World. But our forces' principal role in the Third World will be to augment US security assistance programs. Mainly that means military training, plus technical training and intelligence and logistical support.

(2) **The United States should support anti-Communist insurgencies.** The Commission believes that in carefully selected situations, where important US objectives would be served, and US support might favorably affect outcomes, the United States should help insurgencies against Communist dictatorships.

Supporting such rebels is ordinarily difficult and demanding. Many of those we support will be ill-trained, unlike their Soviet-bloc counterparts, and will be primitive in their strategies, inept in their tactics and logistics. They will badly need help with intelligence and strategy, and with tactics, communications, intelligence operations, and routine field operations.

If the US support for Freedom Fighters is a large and continuing effort, it is bound to be referred to in the press. Nevertheless, neighboring countries that provide access to or bases for the Freedom Fighters often prefer that the US Government role not be officially acknowledged. By constructing the US support as a "Special Activity" (also known as a "covert action"), the US

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Government can maintain official silence. The laws governing "Special Activities" provide for a great deal of flexibility. They make it possible to assign the task of supporting the insurgents to a military command, under cognizance of the Commander-in-Chief of the US Combatant Command in whose region the insurgency is located.

Military management of this kind may have advantages if the support operation involves extensive training and supplies. In any event, the issue is not whether the operation can be kept secret, or whether the CIA should be involved. The President has the flexibility to have "Special Activities" managed by any government department, for example the Departments of State or Defense. And the activity does not necessarily have to be a better kept secret than other military operations which involve both classified and open matters. Given Congressional support, the organizational problems can readily be solved.

### (3) Security assistance requires new legislation and more resources.

US economic and security assistance -- the foreign aid programs which should have assisted US friends and allies in reducing the underlying causes of instability in providing security and nation-building -- have proven to be inadequate and inflexible. Congress has repeatedly underfunded Administration requests, and has earmarked as much as 86 percent of military assistance for five countries. For example, out of the 1987 budget of five billion dollars for worldwide security assistance, Congress reserved 62 percent for Egypt and Israel, 17 percent for Greece and Turkey, and 6 percent for Pakistan. The Administration had to provide for El Salvador, Honduras, and the Philippines as top priorities, leaving less than 10 percent for the rest of the world. But even here, the Congress circumscribed the President's flexibility to deal with conflicts that threaten US interests.

Ordinarily the most effective kind of military assistance we can offer is training. Our training missions are critically dependent on the quality of the

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people we station abroad. We know from experience that a few well chosen, well educated military professionals can transform the security establishment of a friendly country. But current law reflects a desire by Congress to limit the duties of these professionals to the task of auditing US aid, and to index their numbers to the dollar volume of aid. These provisions represent a self-inflicted strategic wound. They discourage competent men and women from seeking such assignments and severely handicap our Ambassadors and regional Commanders-in-Chief.

The number of US military officers in friendly Third World countries has declined severely. Today the Soviet Union has far more military advisers in the Third World than we do. The Soviets have more military advisers in Peru alone than the US has in all of South America. We also fall short in another important form of security assistance: training of foreign military in US service schools. The Soviet Union has a much larger program than the United States, and as a result we are losing valuable links to the new generation of military officers in many Third World countries.

Moreover, Congress prohibits the training of officers from countries that have not brought their nuclear technology programs under international control. The law thus works to isolate military officers in those countries -- to keep them relatively uninformed about the growing importance of modern conventional weapons, and hence more inclined to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The legislation achieves the opposite of what Congress intended.

Still another unwise restriction: legislation from the post-Vietnam era that continues to bar US training for police forces. The legislation forced US combat forces to remain in Grenada long after their role was completed. We had to plead with the Canadian, British, and other governments to help in training a small police force for Grenada.

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Most US aid money buys materiel. While some US high technology equipment is entirely appropriate for low-intensity conflicts, a great deal of our standard materiel is altogether too complex and expensive for our Third World friends and allies. To fill their requirements, the United States may have to revive obsolete systems, to support or enhance foreign-manufactured systems, or to develop equipment designed expressly for the purpose.

Security assistance for the Third World is not yet well understood by the American public, and therefore has no constituency in Congress. Yet improvement requires Congressional action. Our security assistance laws should underwrite sensible personnel policies, permit us to train and equip friends and allies to provide for their own security, and enable us to provide for their own security, and to provide incentives for others to come to their aid as well.

(4) The United States needs to work with its Third World allies at developing "cooperative forces." Regrettably, we have a lot to learn from the Soviet Union in this regard. Soviet efforts to advance and defend its interests in less developed countries are typically supported by a familiar cast of characters from the Soviet bloc -- Cubans, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, North Koreans, East Europeans. These cooperating forces are led and financed by Moscow, even when not tightly controlled from there. Support may also be available from quasi-allies in Libya, say, or the PLO, whose interests sometimes diverge from those of the Soviet Union but who are available for heavy duty on other occasions. The entire operation carries enormous advantages for the Soviet Union, both in minimizing its own risks of confrontation with the West and in making available troops that blend readily into the environment.

In this area, the United States will start out with some large competitive disadvantages. Because they are dictatorships, Soviet client states can secretly order aid missions and military units abroad and disguise their missions

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there. The United States and its friends and allies cannot ordinarily move troops
around so cavalierly.

Still, some allies have substantial reasons for joining in a
cooperative-forces program. They can point to our mutual interests in open
societies and in containing or reversing Soviet gains in the Third World. They will
expect to improve their own military capabilities, and perhaps their regional
political and economic influence, in the process. We could hope to develop some
mobile forces available for duty outside the region -- somewhat on the model of the
Republic of Korea troops or the Philippine Task Force that helped the United States
in Vietnam.

(5) In the Third World, no less than in developed countries, US strategy should seek to maximize our technological advantages. In some cases, technologies developed for fighting the Soviets will be enormously useful. Here too we will want to use smart missiles that can apply force in a discriminate fashion and avoid collateral damage to civilians. Advanced technologies for training will also offer us more effective ways to help friends cope with terrorism and insurgency.

We look for certain technologies to be especially helpful in
bolstering tactical intelligence, which is crucial in Third World conflicts. Among the
most interesting new technologies for such purposes:

- Advanced information-processing systems enabling us and our friends to store, sort, retrieve, and collate enormous amounts of data about the movements of organizations and individuals;

- Low-cost space systems, long-endurance aircraft, and robotic reconnaissance vehicles that make it possible to monitor large areas, day and night, regardless of weather or terrain, and have the additional advantage that they will in some measure be substituting for air crews who might be lost or taken hostage;

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-- Networks of sensors and other micro-electronic equipment that will help in monitoring the movements of enemy forces;

-- Bio- and micro-mechanical sensors with vastly expanded capabilities for detecting explosives (and also narcotics);

-- Vivid digital graphics of dangerous areas (or areas denied to US advisers) to permit reconnaissance, rehearsal of plans, and training for specific operations.

High tech is not always the answer. Air Force transports and Army helicopters are far too big, expensive, and complex for many allies. Providing canned field rations and a means of manufacturing boot soles may be more important to the mobility of a Third World army than advanced aircraft.

(6) The United States needs alternatives to overseas bases. In some contexts, to be sure, bases will continue to be critically important -- especially when our problem is to defend against possible Soviet aggression. But we should not ordinarily be dependent on bases in defending our interests in the Third World. We have found it increasingly difficult, and politically costly, to maintain bases there. Many of our friends in the Third World become vulnerable to nationalist charges that they are surrendering sovereignty by allowing us to use ports, airfields, and other territory; even overflight rights for US aircraft have become controversial in some friendly countries.

Here again our technology can help us. Low-cost satellites in space can in some measure replace the communication and intelligence-gathering functions of overseas bases. We can build very long-endurance aircraft for surveillance, manned or unmanned. We also have some impressive naval options. Located in international waters, or in an ally's territorial waters but still out of view, our operations can be far more secure than those on land bases. Among the approaches studied, one of the most interesting is the so-called ARAPHO concept. It

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entails the use of standard containerized merchant container ships to support
specially configured units, with the containers carrying all the mission equipment.

* * * * *

Many of our problems in the Third World are centered on what is now called "low intensity conflict." The term refers to insurgencies, organized terrorism, paramilitary crime, sabotage, and other forms of violence in a shadow area between peace and open warfare involving large units. To defend its interests properly in the Third World, the United States will have to take low intensity conflict much more seriously. It is a form of warfare in which "the enemy" is more or less omnipresent and unlikely ever to surrender. There are many thousands of trained saboteurs, terrorists, and insurgents who are always looking for opportunities to attack American interests around the globe. In the past we have sometimes seen these attacks as a succession of transient and isolated crises. We now have to think of them as a permanent addition to the menu of defense planning problems.

Thinking of low intensity conflict as protracted war should lead us to a number of changes, some of them fairly obvious. We will have to make sure that our security assistance is targeted on countries that face long-run threats, and we will need to be seen as reliable in providing steady amounts of aid over time. In security assistance, as in defense spending generally, consistency over time is often more important than the actual budgetary level.

We also need to think of low intensity conflict as a form of warfare that is not just a problem for the Department of Defense. In many situations, the United States will need not just DoD personnel and materiel, but diplomats and information specialists, agricultural chemists, bankers and economists, hydrologists, criminologists, meteorologists, and scores of other professionals.

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Because so many Americans are predisposed to pessimism about our role in the Third World, it is worth pointing to one recent US intervention that, against a lot of odds, did very well: the saving of democracy in El Salvador. In 1980 it seemed quite possible that the country would fall to guerrillas supported from Nicaragua by the Sandinistas and Cubans. Many Americans assumed that the government would soon go the way of Somoza. Congress severely limited the security assistance our government could make available to it. And yet by 1985 there was a democratic government in place in El Salvador, and Congress became committed to supporting it.

The transformation in large measure reflected some ideas we have proposed here. American technology gave the Salvadoran government a new tactical intelligence capability, which became a prod to action for the military (while also giving it constant feedback on the effectiveness of its operations). Under American leadership, the war also became a model of sorts for cooperative efforts: other Latin American countries proved willing to offer military training and some economic aid of their own to El Salvador. Our security assistance program helped the Salvadoran military to acquire weapons systems that made possible more discriminate attacks on enemy troops and reduced civilian casualties. We also did a lot for the morale of our allies by introducing medical programs that drastically reduced death rates among wounded Salvadoran troops (from around 45% to around 5%). The long-term outcome in this nation, of course, still depends on developments next door: if a Soviet-supported Leninist regime can consolidate its power in Nicaragua, the success of democracy in El Salvador will probably be undone.

The strategic concepts laid out here to deal with low intensity conflict will not be especially expensive. Full funding of our proposals will require annual outlays of perhaps $15 billion. We believe that this amount could be provided under current

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Defense Department budget levels without significantly impairing our ability to
prosecute higher-intensity wars. Indeed we believe that in the long run any such
shift in emphasis would enhance our situation relative to that of the Soviet Union.

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III WARS ON THE SOVIET PERIPHERY

The conventional forces of the Soviet Union, like its nuclear forces, represent
awesome power. Nowhere on the periphery of the country today is it credibly threatened
by invasion. Instead, its large military forces serve to suppress the independence of its
neighbors. At several points around the periphery, the USSR and its satellites could
plausibly expect to win conventional wars and occupy other countries' territory. The
prospects of its neighbors in any such wars would vary with their prior defense efforts,
with their alliance ties (especially to the United States), and with geographical differences.

Soviet neighbors in the Far East are in some ways best off. Japan is favored by geography (and also helped by the relative modesty of Soviet amphibious-warfare capabilities). The Republic of Korea is strongly defended and its ability to resist conventional attacks from North Korea should increase; but the defense of South Korea will have to be achieved under the shadow of possible Soviet intervention. US assistance will continue to be required to deter such outside intervention in support of a North Korean attack.

At other points on the periphery, the conventional balance will continue to favor
Soviet forces. They would be favored in an attack on Northern China, say, or one limited
to the Nordic areas of Europe. A broad attack on Western Europe would be more
problematical, but there too the balance of conventional forces favors the Soviet Union. It
would be more one-sidely in the Soviets' favor if they attacked the Northern part of the
Persian Gulf area.

It is sometimes assumed that the Soviet Union would never attack in the Gulf region
alone -- that any such attack would surely be part of a larger assault on Europe, or that it
would inevitably spread there. The assumption is probably wrong. The turbulence of the
region, the importance of its oil to Western nations for the foreseeable future, the severe
limitations of countervailing force in the region -- all the factors combine to make it quite

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plausible that Soviet leaders might seize an opportunity to intervene. Success
would confer a major economic and geostrategic advantage on the Soviet Union
and deal a possibly decisive blow to the unity of the Western alliances. Leninist
principles and common sense both suggest that if indeed it attacked, the Soviet
Union would try to limit the war to the Gulf area, where its strategic advantages are
greatest.

The West's ability to counter threats to the Gulf area has declined substantially
since the 1950s, even as the area's strategic importance has grown. Thirty years ago,
the United States and Britain could respond to a crisis there with overwhelming
power. A broad Alliance consensus, combined with our superior airlift and access to
bases in the region and along the way, would have enabled us to move in our forces
(mostly from Europe) well before the arrival of Soviet forces. Their airlift
capabilities then were relatively primitive and their aircraft were routinely denied
the right to fly over Iran and other countries in the region.

In a crisis today, the situation would be quite different. The Soviet Union has
invested heavily in an infrastructure enabling it to move forces around within the
country. Its airlift is far more capable than in the past; today, furthermore, most
countries in the region are unlikely to challenge Soviet overflights. If they stay in
Afghanistan, Soviet forces will in any case be much closer to the Gulf. Meanwhile,
the available Alliance forces are much farther away: they would be coming from
North America and require refueling and staging along the way. And some of the
bases most useful in any such operations (in Spain and the Azores) might again be
jeopardized by controversies over US access.

Despite this gloomy perspective, there are ways for us to build on the
improvements the United States has made over the last seven years in its ability to
defend the Gulf. (Our airlift and sealift capabilities have increased by roughly 50
percent in this period.) The defense will remain critically dependent on our having

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substantial air power in the region. The air power in turn would depend on our
having bases close to the Gulf. American air power would in fact present a
formidable threat to the invading Soviet troops, who would necessarily be massed
at various points in Iran, or Afghanistan, or their bases in the Trans-Caucusus.

Present strategy recognizes the potential of our air power but requires us to
depend on an uncertain prospect: that if an attack seemed imminent, we could
then get the needed bases. It is far more likely that any hints of an attack, and the
intimidating crisis atmosphere presumably accompanying them, would make our
allies more reluctant than ever to call us in. Our major problem, then, is that except
for carrier-based aircraft, we have no assured timely access for our air power. The
challenge is to get some.

Turkey, a NATO member, adjoins the major Soviet military area threatening
the region. Building up Turkey's defense capabilities, particularly those for air
defense, would cast a strong shadow over any Soviet planning for operations in the
Gulf region. We might be able to agree with our allies that operations with Turkey
to prevent a Soviet invasion of the Gulf would in effect be a defense of NATO, even
without any formal agreement to extend alliance responsibilities to the region.

In addition, we will continue to encourage other friends there -- Saudi Arabia,
for example -- to help improve US access and make bases available in an emergency
for the only power that can defend them. Considerable progress has been made
along these lines in recent years, but more is needed. The threat we will face in the
region is that the Soviet Union will be able to put enormous forces on the ground
rapidly, before we have a chance to block them. If that happened, the Gulf would
be lost

In the Gulf and elsewhere, the Soviet Union will generally prefer to limit its
operations to a region in which it can win while minimizing the risk of a wider war.
The United States, however, should not want to fight only at a time and place

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selected by the enemy. We should plan both on defending in the attacked region, to include deep conventional air and missile strikes, and on conducting naval operations elsewhere and deep conventional air and missile strikes. On the other hand, we should not plan on the assumption that any conflict with the Soviets will necessarily become worldwide or nuclear.

For the United States, a global strategy does not imply that we must expect the Soviets have to attack globally or that we have to defend everything simultaneously. Rather it means that we have to consider a global range of possible attacks, including some in which the Soviets might invade a single critical area or a single important country. There will be, in any case, other major powers than the Soviet Union, and we will have to deal with more varied contingencies than an all-out, global Warsaw Pact/NATO war.

In developing a strategy for dealing with Soviet conventional power, we take note of a truism: in the nuclear age, no conventional war involving combat between US and Soviet forces would be unaffected by nuclear weapons. The war would inevitably be planned and fought in the shadow of nuclear threats.

Strategies for conventional war in Europe return repeatedly to this theme. The US and its allies have repeatedly stated that their forces in Europe are not equipped to sustain themselves in combat beyond a certain number of days, and that they would then have to turn to nuclear weapons.

However, a fateful ambiguity enshrouds this declaration. Sometimes it has seemed as though NATO plans to use battlefield or even theater-wide nuclear weapons for their direct effect in repelling the Soviet invasion. At other times, NATO officials posit a different strategy -- that what NATO really intends in threatening to use nuclear weapons is to point up the perils of escalation and, in effect, concentrate the minds of Soviet leaders on the apocalypse at the end of that road.

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If the latter is really the Alliance's message, would it remain credible? Can NATO rely on threats of escalation that would ensure its own destruction (along with that of the Soviet Union) if implemented? These disturbing questions, which are scarely new, have again been raised squarely in recent European debates, many of them triggered by the negotiations to eliminate intermediate nuclear forces from the continent. NATO plainly needs some better answers than those it has been supplying.

What about the possibility that the alliance could defeat the Soviet Army, or at least fight it to a standstill, without having to reach for nuclear weapons? Many analysts assert that this should indeed be possible. They cite the qualitative superiority of NATO's weaponry and go on to argue that the invader would presumably need overwhelming superiority in manpower (a 3 to 1 ratio at the point of attack is often said to be required).

However, this analysis may be defective. In recent years, the Warsaw Pact forces have substantially narrowed NATO's qualitative advantage. Moreover, the Soviet Union would choose the point of the attack, the only place where the 3 to 1 superiority is relevant. The defense's disadvantages would be additionally complicated by the Soviets' ability to present ambiguous threats in many different areas at once. And here again, Soviet planners could play on the likely reluctance of some NATO members to take decisive defensive measures that might look "provocative" in a crisis.

The Pact is now well positioned to launch a surprise attack and in the coming decade it could enhance this capability. Its forces are arrayed so that they do not need a great deal of final preparation or reinforcement from the Soviet Union. Speed is emphasized in Pact combat training. The attackers would be aiming for a blitzkrieg, expecting to break through forward defenses quite rapidly and destroy much of NATO's nuclear force before it could be used. A number of analyses

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suggest that the Pact's forces could move deep into Western Europe within ten days or so, before many, or perhaps any, US reinforcements were on the continent.

To be sure, there would be a disadvantage to the Soviets in a surprise attack organized along these lines: it requires them to depend heavily on East European forces. This dependence should work to deter Moscow, and the deterrent effect could be enhanced if NATO paid more attention to the fact that most of Eastern Europe would be an unwilling accomplice in any Warsaw Pact attack.

So the Soviets might mobilize before an invasion and rely much more heavily on their own forces, even if this meant that the attack lost an element of surprise. In that case, a critical question would be whether the Alliance took advantage of the warning signals, which would doubtless be ambiguous -- or declined to react promptly for fear of exacerbating the crisis.

The Commission believes that NATO's prospects are far grimmer than they need to be. In the years to come, the Alliance could take measures that would materially advance its prospects in defending against a conventional attack while also making far more credible its threat to use nuclear weapons if conventional defense fails.

Significant improvements have been made in recent years in US capabilities for conventional defense in Europe. The most important of these has been the higher readiness and improved morale of military personnel. In addition armaments and equipment have been upgraded significantly -- for example, the introduction of 4000 M-1 tanks, 1000 new helicopters (AH-64 and UH-60), 1200 new F-16 fighters, etc. For the future, the strengthening of a non-nuclear defense of Europe should be centered on the vigorous procurement of advanced conventional weapons: NATO must move again to reassert the technological superiority that has always been a major "comparative advantage" of the Western powers.

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The Alliance's posture could be transformed by new military technologies. Among the most important: those involved in accurate stand-off weapons, in new target acquisition systems for these weapons, in "low-observables" (Stealth) systems for aircraft and other vehicles, and for improved ballistic-missile and air defenses. The required number of advanced stand-off weapons would probably be measured in the few tens of thousands, versus the few thousand now planned; however, there would be much less need for the millions of "dumb" bombs that might be called for under present plans.

These advanced weapons do not come cheaply; still, their cost would remain only a small fraction of current alliance spending. Acquiring an effective collection of such weapons would add perhaps $50 billion to the NATO budgets over a period of five years -- less than 5 percent of what has already been budgeted for Europe's defense in this period.

The advanced weaponry would help NATO implement its plans for the so-called Follow-on Forces Attack (FOFA), a doctrine formally embraced by the Alliance in 1984. The central idea of FOFA is that a purely static and shallow defense has no hope of repelling an invasion -- that the Alliance must instantly launch air strikes against the enemy's follow-on forces in the rear. But air strikes would not be enough. A credible conventional defense must also include plans for NATO ground forces to mount counter-offensives across the NATO-Warsaw Pact border (which would, of course, have been violated by the Pact's invasion). Even more important, Alliance preparations for war should include specific plans to exploit Eastern Europe's potential disaffection from the Soviet Union.

In the next two decades, extended range smart conventional weapons would make a major contribution in defending Europe. Blows against the Pact's follow-on forces would be concentrated on assembly areas ranging from perhaps 20 miles to 100 miles behind the front. The new weapons make it possible to attack targets

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from hundreds of miles away and yet attain accuracies within a couple of feet. They
could scatter mines between the assembly areas and the front, attack bridges and
other bottlenecks, disrupt enemy command and control centers, and target enemy
trucks. (Trucks are an essential part of Warsaw Pact offensive operations: each tank
division has some 1,800 trucks for resupply, each motorized rifle division has some
2,200.) Deployed near the front lines, smart weapons will also have the capability to
zero in on targets "over the hill."

Even if NATO makes dramatic improvements in its conventional defenses, the Alliance will still want nuclear weapons (including weapons based in Europe) for several reasons. First, because its improved conventional defense might still prove inadequate. Second, because nuclear weapons discourage the massing of forces in any attack. Third, because NATO's ability to respond with controlled and effective nuclear strikes would minimize the Soviets' temptations to use such weapons in discriminate attacks of their own on key elements of the Alliance's conventional capability.

However, there should be less ambiguity about the nature of this deterrent.
The Alliance would be threatening to use nuclear weapons not as a link to a wider
and more devastating war -- although the risk of further escalation would still be
there -- but mainly as an instrument for denying success to the invading Soviet
forces. The nuclear weapons would be used discriminately in, for example, attacks
on Soviet command centers or troop concentrations. The Alliance's nuclear posture,
like its posture for conventional war, will gain in deterrent power from new
technologies emphasizing precision and control.

There would be powerful incentives for Soviet planners to make sure that any
nuclear attack on NATO forces was selective and discriminate. An attack of this kind
would seek to exploit the fact that NATO is far behind the Warsaw Pact in
preparations to fight a combined nuclear-conventional war. A particular liability of

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the Alliance is its dependence on a small number of air bases and its vulnerable command system.

Arms control agreements might help the Alliance protect itself against Soviet conventional attack; they also might jeopardize our defense. NATO's interests would surely be damaged if the INF agreements gave a new momentum to the idea of a nuclear-free Germany. The Commission believes that so long as the West needs nuclear weapons to defend against conventional attacks, that idea should be resisted.

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IV THE EXTREME THREATS

US defense planning has long been dominated by two extreme contingencies. The first is a massive conventional attack against NATO, with the Warsaw Pact pressing forward on all fronts in an effort to take over Western Europe. The second, even more apocalyptic, is a massive Soviet nuclear attack on US strategic forces and other targets in the West. The first extreme leaves no ally the chance to opt out, the second extreme leaves us no incentive to exercise restraint.

Alliance strategy sees a crucial connection between the two extreme contingencies. In a conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact, the strategy of "flexible response" envisages a conventional defense backed by the threat of nuclear weapons. While the outcome of the conventional campaigns would of course affect the terms for ending the war, many NATO officials do not expect these campaigns to be decisive in halting a Soviet attack. What they ultimately count on to deter or stop the invasion, and make possible a peace on terms acceptable to the Alliance, is Soviet fear of an ever-widening nuclear war. They see the prospect of a "nuclear exchange" -- one that would destroy both the Soviet Union and the United States -- as NATO's ultimate leverage in defending against conventional attack. In the last analysis, then, the deterrent against the massive conventional attack is the same as the deterrent against the all-out nuclear attack.

The strategy has serious limitations. At best, it is useful only in dealing with those extreme contingencies. It does not help defense planners trying to deal with many important and far more plausible situations in which threats of nuclear annihilation would not be credible.

Apocalyptic showdowns between the United States and the Soviet Union are certainly conceivable in the nuclear age, but they are much less probable than other forms of conflict. Even when Soviet forces move into other countries, their leaders are likely to indicate that their objectives are limited. They will try to behave in ways that give the West a stake in restraint and prudence. Over the last forty years, the Soviet regime has

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shown no signs of gravitating toward all-or-nothing gambles, much preferring instead to make gains by successive, incremental advances, below the threshold at which nuclear war would be a possibility.

To be sure, some situations remain untested. Soviet aggression has not yet led to combat between Soviet and American forces. We cannot be sure what would happen in any such conflict -- in, say, one triggered by a Soviet invasion of the Persian Gulf region. But even in that very dangerous situation, it seems unlikely that the United States could plausibly represent that it was willing to initiate an all-out nuclear war. The outcome of the invasion would probably be determined by air, land, and sea battles; the nuclear threat would remain in the background, functioning only as a distant monitor and reminder to both sides of the need for restraint.

The Alliance must obviously plan for the extreme contingencies. But excessive emphasis on them can leave us unprepared for other kinds of aggression. The massive, worldwide, conventional attack by the Soviet Union is frequently characterized as a "worst case" scenario, and many assume that if we can defend against such attacks then surely we can also handle the "lesser included cases." The dog that can handle the cat can surely take care of the kitten. But such reasoning misleads us. A geographically limited attack could exploit advantages that the Soviets gain from their internal lines of communication; they could bear down on one or more weakly defended allies while providing incentives to opt out for those not attacked. The attack would not look like a lesser case, but like a quite different case, in some ways much more difficult to deal with.

An emphasis on massive Soviet attacks leads to tunnel vision among defense planners. Assuming that any attack would rapidly become worldwide and necessarily involve most all our allies, planners have neglected the problem of Alliance disunity in a selective attack (the opting-out problem). They have not given

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enough thought to our prospects for exploiting tension within the Soviet empire
(and giving the East Europeans some reasons to think about opting out). They have
over-emphasized war on Europe's central front, where the threat to use nuclear
weapons might be more credible, and neglected planning for the possibility of
Soviet assaults on the flanks, in Norway or Turkey.

Because they are so ingrained in our country's thinking about defense, the extreme contingencies also warp decisions at a deeper level. They provide a wholly inadequate conceptual framework for planners thinking about defense priorities, weapons systems requirements, or arms control criteria.

The dominant role of the extreme contingencies became especially perverse when they were packaged together with certain other ideas about deterrence. These ideas emerged in the 1950s and became influential in the US Department of Defense in the 1960s. The core idea: that nuclear forces of the United States and the Soviet Union could be locked into a relationship of "stability" in which "mutual deterrence" made any war between the two sides quite impossible. There could be no war because war would inevitably lead to the use of nuclear weapons, which would mean the destruction of the two sides, which meant in turn that neither side would ever start a war. Nuclear weapons were inherently unusable. This cluster of ideas is generally known as mutual assured destruction (or MAD).

An important corollary of MAD is that we should not even want to be defended against nuclear attack. Since the postulated stability depends on mutual vulnerability, defense is destabilizing. Indeed anything that could make it possible to use nuclear weapons in non-apocalyptic ways is considered destabilizing. So the concept leads not only to efforts to ban defense against nuclear missiles but to concern about weapons that are too accurate. For a while in the early 1970s the US Congress actually prohibited the Pentagon from spending money to improve the accuracy of missiles. Similar reasoning prevented the deployment in the late 1970s

IV-4

of the neutron bomb, a weapon that could destroy tank crews without destroying
towns.

If deterrence really depended on mutual vulnerability, then NATO's
foundation idea -- that an attack on one is an attack on all -- would be instantly
overboard. In the crunch, a doctrine as incoherent as MAD would be seen as a bluff,
and the bluff would be called mutual suicide. A doctrine as incoherent as MAD
cannot possibly be the basis for an alliance, and in the long run it could not even
deter selective attacks on the United States. In the crunch it would be seen as a
bluff, and the bluff would be called.

The criticisms above are scarcely original. Extreme views of "stability" through
mutual vulnerability have been assailed for their contradictions ever since these
ideas first surfaced. Yet such views have, incredibly, retained an extraordinary hold
over political and military elites in Europe and even, to a lesser degree, the United
States.

We have argued here that the most extreme threats are also the least likely. It
is obviously in our interest to keep them that way -- to continue the inverse relation-
ship between the intensity and the probability of the threats. However, this
relationship is not a law of nature: it depends on things we do, or fail to do. If we
slide into postures leaving us weak at higher levels of warfare -- or leaving us with
no higher-level response that leaders of democratic countries could reasonably
make in a crisis -- then our adversary will be encouraged to raise the ante. Threats
against us of mass destruction would look much more plausible.

What should the United States do to minimize the likelihood that the more
extreme threats will come to seem more probable? Two kinds of answers suggest
themselves. Both rely heavily on American technological advantages.

One answer is to continue moving toward a defense against ballistic and cruise
missiles. Too much of the national debate about the Strategic Defense Initiative

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centers on the degree of perfection attainable in the system finally deployed. The Commission believes that we should be pushing to deploy defensive systems even if their value is at first limited. Deployment should be evolutionary. Even imperfect defenses can reduce an attacker's confidence in the success of his attack on our command centers and military forces. Relatively thin defenses may be effective against missile attacks by minor powers, many of which may have nuclear weapons in the years ahead; such defenses might also help to forestall catastrophe in the event of an accidental missile launch. Retaliatory threats will not work against accidents.

Another answer is to continue increasing the accuracy of our missile force and its ability, even when nuclear warheads are involved, to make discriminating attacks against military targets.

The Soviet military has made clear its own enormous interest in the new technologies of guidance and precision, and it will have the capability to attack selected targets in the United States with low-yield nuclear weapons. The most effective deterrent against such attacks would be a similar, or superior, capability by US nuclear forces, especially one enhanced by limited strategic defenses.

We must be able not only to respond discriminately to a Soviet attack, we must also have some prospects of keeping any such war within bounds -- of ensuring that it does not rapidly deteriorate into an apocalypse. The revolution in micro-electronics (and photonics), along with advances in certain space technologies, have multiplied the modes of telecommunications available to command centers and generally made command and control much more achievable. They have also made possible the creation of multiple command centers, made safer by their redundancy. The image of a "decapitated" nuclear force should become extinct. The assumption that command and control would instantly collapse in a nuclear war has led some proponents of "stability" through mass destruction to favor launches of our

IV-6

strategic missiles as soon as US warning systems showed a Soviet missile launch. The
concept involves a reckless gamble with fate. It too should become extinct.

The United States needs to deter the extreme case -- the all-out nuclear attack -- even if it is improbable. Deterrence against any such attack requires the assured survival of powerful retaliatory forces. We must continue to ensure that Soviet leaders will never think they could launch a surprise attack that would prevent a "dying sting" by a mortally wounded United States. But for the US retaliatory response to such a Soviet attack, our surviving forces need not be capable of destroying the entire range of military targets in the Soviet Union. If our civil society were destroyed, it would not matter much whether Soviet military targets were destroyed promptly or comprehensively. In fact, a capability to deter or respond to a more limited nuclear attack could well be more difficult to maintain than the capability needed to deter the all-out attack.

11-30

V INFLUENCING SOVIET ARMS POLICY

For the foreseeable future, the United States will have to compete militarily with the
Soviet Union. Oddly enough, some Americans regard that statement as controversial.
They see our past efforts to compete as part of an "action-reaction cycle" that has
triggered a mindless and futile "arms race," and they believe both the United States and
the Soviet Union would be better off if we declined to participate.

In fact, the Soviet-American military competition has not been much of a race. The pattern of the past forty years is more accurately characterized as a steady, slow-paced, relentless military buildup on the Soviet side and an erratic, inconsistent, up-and-down performance by the United States. Only our side has been reactive: we have let defense slide in periods when no threat seemed imminent, then turned around and launched a buildup after an external challenge occurs -- as in Korea (1950), Berlin (1961), Vietnam (the 1960s), Afghanistan (1979). During the 1960s and 1970s, while Soviet strategic spending grew steadily, U.S. spending on strategic forces declined at an average rate of 6.4%, while the myth of the arms race flourished.

We need to emphasize strategies for competing more effectively with the Soviet Union -- strategies that will continue to capitalize on our inherent advantages in technology, that maximize the return on our military investment, and that lower returns to the Soviets on their huge investments. By learning how to compete effectively, we can improve our chances of negotiating useful arms agreements.

So we need to promote military programs in which the United States has a special
competitive advantage vis-a-vis the Soviets. One example is "low-observables" (Stealth)
technology, which will make aircraft and other military vehicles harder to trace. The
"competitive" case for investing heavily in Stealth is not just that we are ahead in the
technology but that deploying it will render obsolete much of the enormous Soviet
investment in air defense. Some of the new technologies of precision and accuracy, which
make it much easier to attack missile silos with minimal collateral damage, will similarly

V-2

jeopardize the Soviet investment in land-based missiles. In 1987 Secretary Weinberger initiated a concerted effort in the Defense Department to identify programs that offer the United States a competitive advantage.

The military strategy described throughout these pages has to include an arms-control strategy. The link between national security and arms control might seem obvious and noncontroversial: good arms control agreements will give us more security, possibly at lower cost. But many people prefer to think of arms control as somehow taking place on a different plane from defense planning. A great deal of political rhetoric encourages them to believe that the ultimate point of arms control is not so much military as political. For many Americans and Europeans, the lure of the agreements is that they enable us to engage Soviet leaders in a "process," expected to develop a "momentum" of its own, that will lead to understanding about other contentious matters and serve broadly to reduce international tensions. (The words in quotation marks turn up quite a lot in discussions of arms control.)

The Commission believes that this perspective is a recipe for disaster. When arms-control agreements are valued mainly for the international good will they are expected to generate, and only secondarily for their effects on arms, then our political leaders will always be under pressure to reach agreements by making concessions on arms. Moreover, if an existing agreement is valued primarily as an expression of good will toward the Soviet Union, then it is much more difficult for American leaders to express concern about cheating by the Soviets, since these expressions will inevitably be translated on the political stage as a lack of interest in furthering the new relationship, all of which makes it more likely that the Soviets will cheat.

The problem of cheating is hard to handle in a democracy. Proposed arms deals cannot be evaluated solely on the assumption that the Soviet Union will

V-3

comply, or even that it will mostly comply. We must also weigh the possibility that the Soviets will violate the treaty in major ways, attempting not just to achieve some advantage at the margin but to establish decisive gains that would make a huge difference in the event of war. We need to anticipate the effect on our security of a delayed or uncertain U.S. response to substantial violations. The record of recent years suggests that the response may be weak. The SALT II treaty signed by President Carter in 1979 prohibited any concealment of missile test measurements. This so-called encryption issue was viewed as a major matter: the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution stating that the United States reserved the right to withdraw from the treaty if that provision was violated. But years later, after it clearly had been violated, majorities in both houses of Congress passed resolutions favoring continued observance of the treaty (which had never been ratified).

Our arms agreements must be capable of yielding evidence, in the event of a major violation, that will be sufficiently unambiguous to enable the US Government to decide on an adequate response. Such a decision would be painful for both Congress and the Executive Branch, for it would mean that our hopes for arms control had been shattered and that costly remedies are urgently needed. The more significant the arms agreement, the more important a US capability to deter violations and promptly to redress the damage from major violations. To this end we must maintain a standby capacity for surging defense production.

A good arms control agreement will be consistent with our long-term military strategy. This means that our arms control negotiators should be seeking out agreements that (a) do not assume nuclear vulnerability is a desirable condition for the American people, (b) do not assume that accuracy is an undesirable attribute for American weapons, and (c) do not assume that defense against nuclear attacks is

V-4

more threatening than offense. The Agreements should be negotiated with an
awareness that they will restrict our forces and technologies for decades.

Even taking a very long view, it is not realistic to pursue agreements to eliminate all nuclear weapons, or all chemical weapons. The huge Soviet advantage in conventional forces makes it likely that the Alliance will need some nuclear weapons to defend Europe for many years to come. A ban on chemical weapons could never be verified.

Several Soviet arms control proposals favor limits on testing of new
technology. The Commission does not generally favor such limits. The United States
relies on technological advantages to compensate for quantitative inferiority, so
test limitations would rarely work in our favor. The ultimate problem about such
limitations is that they make it harder to continue developing the new technologies
associated with accuracy and precision.

Nuclear arms agreements should be centered on verifiable reductions in
offensive weapons. A substantial reduction in the nuclear missile forces of the USSR
and the United States would make it much easier for both sides to develop and
deploy effective missile defenses. Such a long-term reduction in the nuclear threat
could serve the security of all nations, provided at least two conditions are met:
(1) For the foreseeable future, the US verification system and the US capability for
responding to violations would have to prevent (or be able to cope with) major
Soviet cheating. (2) The threat of non-nuclear aggression against our allies and
other vital areas (especially on the Soviet periphery) would have to be greatly
reduced, in part perhaps through conventional arms reductions.

The United States might gain substantially from arms agreements focused on
conventional forces. Indeed these are the only kinds of agreements that might lead
to significant cuts in defense budgets. (Agreements limited to nuclear weapons
affect only a small fraction of U.S. and Soviet military expenditures.) However, a

V-5

conventional arms agreement that merely took Soviet and American forces out of
Central Europe would not do much for Alliance security, in part because the Soviet
forces could be brought back much more rapidly than our own. To improve Allied
security such agreement must genuinely reduce the Soviet geographic advantage in
bringing force to bear, not only at NATO's central front, but also at the flanks. This
would require the destruction -- not just an Eastward movement -- of heavy
conventional equipment, in particular tanks and artillery, in which the Warsaw Pact
has such a preponderance. It is conceivable that Soviet leaders might agree to some
such deal in an effort to reduce the pressures of defense spending on their
beleaguered economy.

11-30, rev 1700

VI MANAGING TECHNOLOGY

Although US strategy has depended heavily on U.S. technological superiority since
World War, the United States today is less superior than it used to be. Even some Third
World countries are becoming independent producers and users of high tech. And the
Soviet Union is gaining in a number of areas, while continuing to acquire Western
technology both legally and illegally. In addition, the Soviets have worked hard at
ensuring that their acquisitions are applied rapidly to priority military missions. Their
military research budgets have exceeded those of the United States and remain at steady
levels.

US budgeting for research and development has been constrained and uneven, and
during 1965-80 the technology base was substantially eroded. Military spending for
science and technology shrank at an average rate of 1.7 percent a year in that period -- a
cumulative deficit of some $25 billion. Early in the 1980s, a turnaround began, but more
recently spending was cut back again.

At the same time, the substantial R&D undertaken by the defense industry
(reimbursed in part by the Department of Defense) has changed significantly in its
character. While this effort was highly innovative in the 1950s and 1960s, it has become
increasingly conservative in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it has become far more an effort
to reduce technical risk than to innovate. In some measure DoD is responsible for the new
emphasis. The main criterion for reimbursement used to be the innovativeness of the
work; today the controlling question is apt to be whether the work is sufficiently related
to an ongoing weapons program.

The underlying trends are disturbing. For a growing number of basic technologies
with important military applications, the United States may lose its superiority over the
Soviet Union. Moreover, in translating scientific knowledge into deployed military
systems, the Soviet Union has recently been far more successful than we have. Our current
approach is piecemeal and haphazard. The procurement process is rigid, slow, and

VI-2

confrontational, and micro-managed in ways that endlessly work against the
efficient use of our resources.

Even more important is the difference between the US and the Soviet
approach in relating decisions on new weapons systems to a long-term strategy. It
has become apparent from Soviet arms control decisions over the last 20 years, as
well as from the fielding of Soviet arms, that Moscow's decisions on new military
systems are guided by a long-term strategy to a far greater extent than ours.

One effect of the Congressional investigations and public criticism of "waste"
has been to make the system unhealthily risk-averse. DoD officials try to minimize
risk by writing excessively detailed specifications, which unfortunately guarantee
that compliance will be expensive, technically conservative, and uncreative.
Throughout the acquisition process, risk is avoided by focusing on today's
technologies and on familiar old operational concepts -- even though the system
being procured will typically be needed for many years into the future. To be sure,
conservatism in procurement has also been fostered by the past absence of an
integrated long-term strategy. In its absence, the system keeps responding to only a
few standard contingencies and overlooking many likely demands on U.S. forces in
the future. The Commission believes that adoption of its proposed long-term
strategy could make procurement much more rational.

Fixed-price R&D contracts have been another obstacle to advanced
technology. Such contracting has several pernicious effects. It leads to "buying in"
by contractors, which greatly increases the likelihood of overruns and slipped
schedules. These in turn leads the harried DoD program manager to minimize
technological risk in a project, which he typically does by steering clear of the cost
and schedule uncertainties associated with leading-edge technologies.

For the coming years, we will need an acquisition process that fosters
cohesion, speed, and incentives for innovation. DoD has made a fair amount of

VI-3

progress toward revitalizing the acquisition process by implementing
recommendations of the Packard Commission. But the Pentagon is handicapped in
attracting competent managers and engineers by onerous "conflict-of-interest"
restrictions. The reforms need to be moved further, preferably with Congress a
partner in the process (and exhibiting some self-restraint on micro-management).

Conservatism in procurement has meant a dearth of "new-new" projects --
efforts to develop systems incorporating both new technologies and new
operational concepts. Successful past examples of such efforts are the long-range
bombers, nuclear submarines, and solid-propellant missiles of the 1950s; a more
recent example is the development of Stealth. These were all highly successful, but
a defining characteristic of new-new efforts is that success surely cannot be
predicted with much certainty. Which is precisely why such projects have been rare
in the age of micro-management.

{The next three paragraphs are new and will still have to be revised.}

The main reason for the dearth of projects incorporating both new
technologies and new military operations is the way in which the Pentagon tends to
establish requirements for R&D and procurement. A few major innovations,
combining both new strategic concepts and new technologies, have recently been
instituted from the top down -- that is to say driven by a Presidential decision, or a
decision of the Secretary of Defense. An example of the former is SDI in 1983,
examples of the latter are Stealth and cruise missiles in the 1970s and conventionally
armed cruise missiles in the 1980s. But the majority of R&D and procurement
projects originate at the working level of the Services. The CINCs (Commanders of
Unified and Specified Commands) can identify needs related to their missions.
While this role of the CINCs has recently been strengthened, the dominant role in
setting new requirements still rests with the Service staffs.

VI-4

The Service staffs, however, may not fully understand the needs and opportunities of the CINCS, nor the full range of available or emerging technologies that could be marshalled to meet these needs. Moreover, the process of generating requirements for R&D and procurement should be guided by a long-term view of US strategy and of the technological opportunities. The process should not only tolerate, but indeed should seek out new concepts for meeting our basic strategic needs through new systems and new operational tactics. We must overcome the "horse cavalry syndrome" familiar from military history. A number of options are available to the Secretary of Defense for encouraging strategic innovation and imparting a long-term perspective in the requirements process. Once an innovative, high priority project has been identified that combines new technology with new operating concepts, it may be desirable to set up a "fast track" for the acquisition of the system to overcome the prevalent reluctance to take risks.

We cannot assume that all programs currently planned for the 1990s will in fact be fully funded. This means that defense planners will likely face some wrenching decisions about trade-offs. They will want to maintain spending on many systems now in engineering development and will also find it difficult to cut personnel-related costs, all of which suggests that the Defense Department will have trouble in fully replacing its aging capital stock. It is not yet possible to predict how these trade-offs will play out and whether (to mention a particularly tough decision) they will result in force-level cutbacks.

However, we can decide now which programs should be given the highest priority in the new long-term strategy. In general, these include programs that strengthen our ability to respond to aggression with controlled discriminate use of force. They also include programs that in diverse ways work to promote flexibility and widen the options available to future Presidents. We would also assign a high

VI-5

priority -- higher than it has been getting in recent years -- to spending in the accounts for basic research and advanced development.

Among the programs meeting these criteria, four seem especially urgent. The commission would give special attention to (1) the integration of "low-observables" (Stealth) systems into our force posture; (2) smart weapons -- precision-guided munitions that combine long range and high accuracy; (3) ballistic missile defense; and (4) space capabilities needed for wartime operations.

We believe that returns to national security will be especially high in these areas, and that Congress and DoD must work to ensure the systems have adequate funding and become operational as soon as possible.

(1) Getting Stealth into place. Low observables technology is revolutionary. Radar systems for detecting, tracing, and attacking air and surface vehicles are relatively cheap and enormously effective -- except when the vehicles incorporate Stealth. In that case radar systems are ineffective. Military vehicles that incorporate enough low-observables technology make existing radars obsolete. Replacing them with systems that can detect, track, and attack Stealthy vehicles is technically difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and not easy (the more so since low-observables technology is still evolving).

Stealth operates on a major Soviet vulnerability: the central role assigned to radar-based air defense in protecting not only the Soviet homeland but Warsaw Pact theater forces. Low observables aircraft can disrupt a Soviet invasion. The contribution of our non-stealthy aircraft would be limited, since in an air strike so many of them would be devoted entirely to jamming and defense suppression. If the strike force included Stealth vehicles, the fraction of aircraft given over to attacks on primary targets could rise by a factor of about five. Low observables aircraft would also make possible a number of other military missions now generally

VI-6

considered beyond alliance capabilities -- for example, search-and-attack forays on enemy missiles or forces whose location is not precisely known.

However, it will take a major planning effort to make Stealth fully effective. It will not be just a matter of deploying the technology. Introducing it will also require a certain number of adjunct programs for munitions development, friend-foe identification systems, and electronic warfare systems. Stealth will call for new operational concepts. It will require sophisticated force planning to determine the appropriate mix of Stealth/nonStealth systems. We recommend that the Defense Department continue these programs as a high priority and accelerate efforts to generate truly operational forces and doctrine.

(2) Accurate Smart munitions. Extended-range, accurate smart conventional weapons can make a major contribution to halting Soviet attacks anywhere on the perimeter of the U.S.S.R. These weapons can delay and inflict heavy losses on advancing forces. By delivering heavy firepower on critical targets, they can make breakthroughs difficult for invading troops.

By the standards of a decade ago, the accuracies are extraordinary. Current technology makes it possible to attack targets at any range with accuracies within one to three meters. Without using nuclear warheads, the right munitions give us a high probability of destroying a wide variety of point and area targets in a single shot. They make possible attacks on heavily defended military targets deep in enemy territory. Airfields deep inside the Soviet Union could be put out of commission with warheads designed to attack infrastructure (fuel and maintenance facilities, say) and command-and-control facilities. Bridges, surface-to-air missile sites, intelligence facilities, rail lines, electric generating plants, petroleum refineries -- all are suddenly much more vulnerable in the emerging age of smart munitions.

But for the last twenty years or so, the Defense Department has been moving too slowly at making these potentialities real. It is true that, here

VI-7

again, the tradeoffs must be examined bearing on the appropriate missions and
best delivery systems for the munitions. Yet it is already clear that we will need tens
of thousands of the weapons, and we should be closer than we are to solving the
problem of production. To get the munitions in the desired quantity, we will need
to bring down unit costs through standardization. Large production runs of only a
few different systems seem indicated. We do not want the kind of overdesign that
leads to highly demanding specifications. The final cost of the weapons will also be
affected heavily by their sensor, computer, and artificial intelligence components.
To the greatest extent possible, we would hope to see these subsystems designed
generically, that is to say making them usable in many types of smart weapons.

(3) Ballistic missile defense. The issue of missile defense is raised urgently
by the Soviet acquisition of missiles accurate enough to threaten many critical
European targets with conventional warheads or chemical weapons. Among the
targets under the gun: operating bases for tactical aircraft, command-and-control
centers, and major supply centers.

We need both active and passive defenses against the missiles.
Passive measures would include hardening, dispersal, multiplication of critical
facilities, and stockpiling of rapid-repair equipment. The active defenses would
probably include some directed at tactical ballistic missiles (ATBM systems),
although it is possible that the INF agreement will reliably limit such missiles.
Assuming that we opt for ATBM, upgrading air defenses would look like a useful
first step, but only that. More capable systems would require advanced endo-
atmospheric interceptors and airborne optical sensors. Components with these
capabilities can be derived from existing technology for the Strategic Defense
Initiative. Because of such overlaps, we would generally hope to see research on
tactical missile defense made an explicit goal of the SDI program.

VI-8

Ballistic missile defense is important in a broad range of situations. Active defenses with even moderate capabilities can contribute to deterring Soviet attacks on many different theater targets, and also on targets in the continental United States. In this country ballistic missile defense, complemented by air defense and a cruise missile defense, can improve the protection of the U.S. National Command Authorities, and increase confidence in the country's ability to keep control of its forces in a war. Which means in turn that our nuclear deterrent would be less hair-triggered.

The Commission has indicated elsewhere in this report that it favors evolutionary development of missile defenses. As to future deployment decisions of strategic missile defense, it is important to keep in mind that a limited, imperfect defense can still be useful. Improving missile and air defense will eventually make possible a real reduction in the terrors of the nuclear age. It might also serve to moderate our concerns about cheating after an arms control agreement providing for deep cuts in offensive missiles. It is generally quite difficult to make a case against missile defense unless you have accepted an extreme dogma of mutual assured destruction.

(4) Space Capabilities. Our space systems, in principle, can acquire and distribute information about an adversary's preparation for and initiation of attacks, about the location, status, and movements of allied and enemy forces over-the-horizon and at great distances, about the weather affecting military operations, and much more. So an invader would have every reason to attack them.

The United States needs military satellite systems that will continue to function or can at least be replaced speedily, not only in peacetime but also to support our forces in resisting attack by Soviet land, sea and air forces.

In conducting a conventional attack, the Soviets would use their own satellites as an essential support for their military operations. So we need the

VI-9

means to degrade Soviet satellites, not simply in reaction to Soviet attacks on our satellites, but more fundamentally because they will use their satellites to acquire and distribute information in support of their land, sea and air forces attacking our air, land and sea forces. Just as the United States and the Soviet Union have both tanks and anti-tank missiles, the United States, like the Soviet Union, will want active and passive defense of its satellites, means of replenishing them in wartime and ways of degrading an adversary's satellites.

In a war overseas with the Soviet Union space would be no sanctuary, but a critical battlefield.

Carefully designed arms agreements governing the peacetime distribution and operation of satellites might enhance measures of self-protection. But arms agreements cannot prevent an adversary from attacking a vulnerable system in wartime. A nominally complete ban on anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) would not save satellites, since satellites themselves can turn out to be ASATS. And with changes in their guidance logic, ICBMs and SLCMs can also be converted for use against satellites (as the Soviets have used their SS-9s in their co-orbital satellites). In any case, we need relatively robust space systems for a well designed arms agreement to be helpful.

As successors to the U-2 program for peacetime reconnaissance, our military satellites were designed from the outset to perform primarily important and exacting tasks in peacetime, or in the transition to an unrestrained nuclear war. Hence, many of them are large, heavy, hard to protect, and very expensive. Both the space and ground elements of many satellite systems tend to be concentrated in a few points, thus readily targetable by non-nuclear means.

More recently, important progress has been made in protecting key satellite functions. However, for a wide range of the most plausible conflicts, short of global, unrestrained nuclear war, the Soviets, much more than we, have designed

VI-10

their space systems for support of their military operations in wartime. Many of
their systems are far more proliferated than our own. Also, they can surge and
replenish their satellites more easily than we can during a crisis or a war. They have
a deployed co-orbital ASAT for attacking our satellites at low earth orbits. With
their near term or even current technologies, they could produce means for attack
at all altitudes. In the United States, on the other hand, there is no consensus on the
need to degrade Soviet space systems. And tests of our one ASAT design directed at
low earth orbits are still prohibited by Congress.

To remedy our weakness in space, we need at least the following:

- A surveillance and tracking system, capable of operating in plausible wartime contingencies, that can warn us of impending attacks on our satellites. (This system should not be delayed by the added performance requirements and costs of space surveillance and tracking for defense against ICBMs.)

- More distributed satellite systems designed to survive in wartime, including the use of smaller lower cost satellites, able to be replenished by austere spare satellites that, unlike our peacetime satellites, need not last for many years.

- A wartime capability, including mobile satellite launchers, to replace damaged and spent satellites.

- A satellite control system that could serve as a backup and ensure continued effective operations under conditions of wartime jamming and repeated non-nuclear attacks. One possible approach would be a mobile, proliferated system, based in the continental United States with some

VI-11

elements protected deep underground to perform some
functions even in the event of a nuclear attack. A
capability in wartime to disable hostile satellites at all
altitudes and to attack the ground elements of enemy
space systems with non-nuclear weapons.

-- Better adaptation of civilian satellite systems to military use in crises and wars, supported by the requisite training of personnel.

-- As a possible arms agreement, explore a US-Soviet accord on a declaration of self-defense zones around many of the satellites in the key space systems of either side, on the same grounds used to justify the self-defense of ships at sea against intrusions that can have no purpose other than a hostile one. Such an arrangement might permit some entries into the self-defense zones and would not affect normal non-threatening satellite operations, including perhaps some inspections.

* * * * *

The technologies mentioned above are by no means the only ones needing
extensive development, but they afford a powerful reminder of the extent to which
our long-term strategy depends critically on investments in military science. The
"rusting" of the technology base in the past couple of decades casts a long shadow
over the country's future security. The Commission recommends an aggressive
program to strengthen science and technology programs, guided by a coherent
long-term strategy.

[L/C]

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VII. MANAGING THE DEFENSE BUDGET

Budgeting for national security is apt to be especially difficult in the decades ahead. The Commission believes that the integrated long-term strategy proposed in these pages will provide a guide to some wrenching budget decisions the country will be making in this period.

The resources available for defense will probably be constrained more than in the past, principally by concern over the national debt and pressures for social spending (the latter driven by the aging of the US population and perhaps also by a spreading AIDS crisis). These constraints are likely to increase risks to our national security. The United States came into the Eighties suffering from the cumulative effects of many years in which our military investment was below that of the Soviet Union. Despite our spending turnaround in the first half of this decade, we have yet to eliminate the gap that opened up in the Seventies. Our military capital today is perhaps 85% of the Soviets' (up from around 80% at the low point).

Furthermore, our spending for defense has persistently been less efficient than that of the Soviets. National security does not have much of a "natural constituency" in the United States, and Congress has repeatedly demonstrated that in the absence of a crisis it is prone to cut back on defense -- and then to spend heavily when the next crisis comes along. In the years since World War II, the United States has never had a period of more than six years in which defense spending increased in real terms every year. Defense dollars will continue to buy less so long as we remain in this stop-go mode.

The Commission strongly recommends that both Congress and the Executive branch aim at steady, moderate growth in the defense budget and avoid these extreme fluctuations. As a modest first step toward smoothing out our spending, the Defense Department has been backing a move to a two-year budget cycle, and the Congressional committees concerned with the armed services and with budget have agreed that the proposal makes sense. Such a budget would help both government and industry to plan

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more realistically for procurements. It should also help to make various defense
accounts less vulnerable to changes resulting from short-term political
considerations. It would still not give the United States the formidable stability that
has long marked Soviet defense investment, but it would be a highly positive
development.

Given the continuing threat represented by large Soviet forces with the
advantage of interior lines of communication, our current defense posture is
scarcely unreasonable. The spending required to sustain that posture has recently
absorbed around 6 percent of our country's output, which is at the lower end of the
historic defense/GNP ratio. Only in the mid-1970s has spending fallen below 6
percent. In the 1950s, the share exceeded 11 percent; in the 1960s it exceeded 8
percent; in the early 1980s it reached 7 percent. Yet we now face the prospect of
the spending levels again declining below 6 percent. In fiscal 1987 outlays fell from
$302 billion to $294 billion, and they are virtually certain to fall again in fiscal 1988.
(Here and below, all figures are given in constant 1988 Fiscal Year dollars.)

If we hold at around a 6 percent share of GNP, the United States will
presumably be able to increase real defense spending by 3 percent or so a year --
roughly the long-term growth rate of the economy. At that rate, we could acquire
the systems needed to maintain the current worldwide posture, cope with some
occasional new threats, and retain some needed flexibility. We could also
incorporate the capabilities called for in this report. But if defense cutbacks
continue, and we drift to lower levels of GNP share, something will have to give.

Precisely because the years ahead are likely to be austere, we need a long-term
strategy that tells us how to rank our priorities. We need to be clear about which
programs we want to protect in periods when budgets are being cut. Meanwhile,
we also need to plan better for the occasional periods of expansion. So long as the

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country remains afflicted by stop-go spending, the Pentagon will need plans for taking maximum advantage of the next crisis-driven surge in spending.

Defense budgeting decisions inescapably require resource allocators to quantify present and future risks. A decision to invest incremental dollars in operations and maintenance rather than to initiate procurement of complex weaponry is implicitly a judgment that near-term threats outweigh those for the long term. These abstract considerations are especially relevant to budgetary decisions in periods of cutbacks. When spending decisions are not clearly linked to a strategic vision, then there will be heavy pressures to maintain force size and take the cuts out of modernization. Any steady pattern of that sort would be incompatible with the strategy we propose, which depends heavily on procurement of advanced weaponry. The preceding chapter described several of the programs we believe to be especially important to our proposed strategy. As indicated in the chapter, we favor continuing heavy investment in basic research -- the longest lead-time item of all.

In past years, defense planners have generally identified ships, aircraft, and other major platforms as the long lead-time items requiring the most protection in periods of budget stringency. More recently these "platforms" have become enormously expensive and are being introduced less and less often. The Air Force introduced ten new fighters in the 1940s, six in the 1950s, two in the 1960s, and two in the 1970s; we now look for only one fighter to be introduced in the 1980s and 1990s combined.

To a considerable extent, then, we expect modernization in the years ahead to take new forms. In particular we look for a new emphasis on the auxiliary systems, which can be changed more frequently than the expensive major "platforms." These systems include the intelligent subsystems and munitions carried on the platforms. Not necessarily carried on the "platforms," but helpful in informing and