While it is still too soon to tell what the ultimate effect of 1963's first-step agreements will be on easing the cold war threat, it is not too early to see the value of, and take some satisfaction in, ACDA's research and planning techniques.

Military Security and Disarmament

A look at these first agreements and possible next-step preliminary measures immediately exposes some of the most vexing problems of arms control and disarmament. Even the tension-reducing measures—whether observation posts or the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons-involve our collective defense system and the thorny business of multilateral decision-making. And, in addition, the profoundly difficult problems of verification are ever present.

The difficulties complicate the search for ways to bring about more substantial measures of arms control, but do not prevent critical examination of present disarmament schemes.

The first signs of movement shown by the agreements of 1963 coincided with a research effort which was already fanning out rapidly in a search for fresh approaches. The pressure of events has accelerated ACDA's research effort. The Agency is conducting a continuing study of new alternative approaches to disarmament, particularly for the early stages of the process. At about the time the test ban treaty was being signed in Moscow, a group of outside consultants was working in ACDA on the political and military aspects of arms control measures in Europe. An ACDA contractor has embarked on an extended exploration of substantial arms control measures aimed at reducing the dangers inherent in the East-West military confrontation. This study takes as its point of departure the estimated military situation in Europe between now and 1970. A parallel study will take up the political aspects.

Such research is guided and supervised within ACDA by civilian experts and military officers who have had long experience in defense planning work at the Department of Defense and in its armed services. They are concerned with a wide range of studies into specific control measures which are being conducted through the Department of Defense as well as in ACDA. Every idea is analyzed in terms of its impact on the relative capabilities of the Western forces the relationship of reductions in nuclear arms to conventional arms, the effect on ground and air forces, on the Navy, on military bases, and on evolving strategic concepts.

Such studies must be continuing and current, not only because they are related to our disarmament proposals, but also because of the way

in which the pressures of changing technology and the realignment of strategic concepts affect the possibilities for arms control.

The research going on in the U.S. influences, and is influenced by, the critical examination of the Russian and American schemes for general disarmament at the 18-Nation Conference in Geneva. The Soviet treaty draft and the U.S. outline reflect basic substantive differences in approach. Nevertheless, the exposition and advocacy of the proposals by both sides over a year's time made a critical evaluation on an inter-Allied basis timely and worth while. Last August, in London, a distinguished international group of generals, admirals, and scholars in war studies completed an analysis of the effect on Europe of implementing the first stages of both the U.S. and Soviet disarmament plans. The study was directed toward Europe because it is a major focal point of military and political tension today. Although both disarmament plans are intended to apply on a worldwide basis, it was clear that the implications of each must be judged primarily in relation to the security of the countries of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

In addition to the London study of the military balance, ACDA and the Department of Defense are making similar evaluations of the overall, or global, military power balance.

Verification and Inspection

The illuminating study of the two disarmament plans made in London could not, of course, be conducted except on the assumption that the problem of inspection had been solved. But, of course, many questions remain to be answered. .

The U.S. proposals are predicated on the belief that the military equilibrium must be maintained during the disarmament process, and an important question to be addressed is how to develop methods of verification that will give us the necessary assurance that the nation's security will not be harmed. It is for this reason that much of the Government's research in disarmament is also directed to verification questions. These questions are with us right now in relation to some of the predisarmament measures.

The test ban is a case in point. Verification and inspection are not necessarily synonymous; we can verify the absence of explosions in environments covered by the partial treaty, but in the present stage of technical development the ban cannot be extended to underground tests without the assurances only on-site inspection can give. Some of the most recent ideas developed in the course of ACDA's research had to do with access to foreign territory by inspection teams and were incorporated in the most recent U.S.-U.K. proposals for a comprehensive

test ban. They ranged from the strictly limited and proscribed access to install and service automatic recording seismic stations to broader entry privileges into areas specified in advance, but excluding sensitive military installations.

The problem of ascertaining compliance with a disarmament agreement has many facets; each type of arms limitation and class of weapons presents its own difficulties. The most important category, however, is strategic delivery vehicles-principally the giant missiles designed to carry thermonuclear payloads over great distances. A great deal of attention is being given in ACDA research to the verification of limitations on the production of these weapons and on reductions in their numbers.

Disarmament controls over such weapons as strategic delivery vehicles must begin with their research, development, and testing phase, and apply as well to production-both of the weapons themselves and of the materials that go into them—and include, at the end of the process, reduction in numbers and final destruction or conversion to peaceful use.

The research and development phase is being studied by an ACDA contractor who is nearing completion of a preliminary investigation of possible ways to construct workable agreements on controls. The study will try to assess the impact of restrictions on research and development, and design inspection procedures to govern those restrictions. They will also examine the way controls fit in with other disarmament measures.

How to police limitations on the production of delivery vehicles was the subject of another ACDA contract. The study examined both how to check on weapons manufacture permitted under an arms limitation agreement, and also how to ferret out clandestine weapons production. Special characteristics of missile production were first identified and then classified as to those which were particularly detectable. Next, the contractor was asked to design special monitoring techniques to pick up and evaluate the telltale clues. These techniques can include everything from photography and special detection equipment to expert examination of records.

This inquiry is now moving into a planning phase which should lead ultimately to field tests. Production facilities most like those in other countries will be identified with the help of plant personnel and experts in foreign manufacture. The object is to investigate the possibilities of control by carrying out inspection at American nearfacsimiles. Plans for the composition and training of inspection teams, equipment and costs, which are now only theoretical, have been designed for eventual field testing of controls in complex and highly specialized industrial production.

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While a great deal is already known about the facilities which produce the nuclear materials which go into weapons, control and inspection of the operation of such plants is under continuous study by the Atomic Energy Commission. Behind the question of control over current production lies the old, by atomic standards, and nearly intractable problem of how much material exists in another nation's stockpiles and how it can ever be accounted for with any safe degree of accuracy. ACDA's staff has been working steadily on this, and a proposal has been made at the 18-Nation Conference that a technical committee be established to study the problem. If this is done, the United States will be in a better position than it was 2 years ago to bring available resources to bear on this difficult question.

Project CLOUD GAP inspectors consider possible areas for inspection in a test exercise designed to determine how accurately armored equipment can be located and counted on a military reservation.

Policing limitations on the numbers and types of the delivery vehicles after they have been manufactured and deployed has also been studied by a separate group of researchers on contract.

Late in the year ACDA announced the first in a projected series of field tests of inspection techniques. The first small-scale test, which is being carried out jointly with the Department of Defense under Project CLOUD GAP, was conducted at Fort Hood, Tex. It was an experiment in inspection by small resident teams on a military reservation, and was designed to find out how accurately armored equipment can be detected and identified and counted under these conditions.

Of course, the best inspection schemes are useless if access to a particular country or plant or installation cannot be gained. The political, psychological, and legal implications of inspectors on foreign territory—particularly in a closed society-have to be considered. ACDA has underway a group of studies related to the basic conflict between inspection and the wish to maintain privacy. It includes exploration of problems created by industrial or commercial secrecy, limits in national laws concerning search, and the general legal aspects of inspection.

ACDA also has embarked on a series of studies of past experienceinternational inspection in Korea, policing the Geneva agreements in Southeast Asia, and so on. A particularly interesting report has been made on the techniques and experience of the Arms Control Agency of the Western European Union, which has done pioneer work on a number of relevant technical, legal, and political problems.

Economic Research

The Arms Control and Disarmament Act requires the Agency to assess the effects of various arms control and disarmament measures on the American economy. These are the subject of continuing study within ACDA's Economics Bureau. The nature of the problems to be faced and solved has been the subject of contract studies; but these are only exploratory. Research in greater depth is planned.

The vast number of factors involved in any consideration of the economic impact of disarmament led the Agency to take the initiative in the establishment in July 1963 of an interagency committee of representatives from the Council of Economic Advisers, the Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Defense, the Office of Emergency Planning, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as of ACDA. The President on December 21 gave formal status to this committee by a memorandum directed to the heads of the above Departments and Agencies, directing that each designate a senior