GENERAL OR FLAG OFFICER ON DUTY

STAFFED WITH EXPERTS

PRESIDENTIAL TRANSLATOR

REPRESENTATION FROM OTHER AGENCIES

AUGMENTATION DURING CRISES

The National Military Command Center in the Pentagon is manned by a flag or general officer 24 hours a day. He is in command of a team of officers and civilian and enlisted personnel who support him in all phases of normal, day-to-day posture as well as the execution of the strategic forces if that should be required. It is manned with people who have expertise and background in the fields of operations and intelligence-communications. The center has direct communications with all the major military commanders, as well as with key Government agencies.

Collocated with the Center is the hotline with Moscow, the Molink, which is also manned 24 hours a day, with a Presidential translator, and in times of crisis the Center is augmented by other personnel, some from agencies outside of the Pentagon, such as the State Department, to assist in those crises.

The key to the operation on a day-to-day basis is the current action

center.

The Alternate National Command Center, as I mentioned to you, is located near Fort Ritchie. [Deleted.]

The Center there is also manned on a 24-hour basis. There are constant communications between the primary Center at the Pentagon and the Alternate Center there near Fort Ritchie [deleted].

The Airborne Command Post, known as the "Kneecap"NEACP has the capability of taking the President and a small staff on board the aircraft. There is room there for a staff for briefing the President and an operations team similar to the operational teams that we have in the other two Command Centers, is available to man the aircraft.

This aircraft is staffed by teams that also man the aircraft on a round-the-clock basis. The aircraft is normally located on runway alert at Andrews and has the capability of being airborne in roughly [deleted].

Sir, that is a very brief description of the three centers that we have. I will be glad to answer any questions that you might have, sir. Senator MCINTYRE. General Ellis, proceed.

STATEMENT OF GENERAL RICHARD H. ELLIS, USAF, COMMANDERIN-CHIEF, STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND

General ELLIS. Senator McIntyre, I am pleased to respond to your invitation to meet with you and to discuss a subject that is of great concern to me and to the Strategic Air Command.

Admiral Murphy has set the stage well with his review of the national policies and guidance that affect strategic force management. I will build on that by showing the operational requirements that ensue from the policy and guidance and then assess our capability to meet those requirements.

Force management has always been a key responsibility of a military commander, but the specific requirements of that responsibility are largely determined by the national policy for the use of those forces. National policy, in turn, is affected by the threat the forces guard against. Thus in earlier days when we enjoyed a clear-cut nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, our policy placed great emphasis on reliable force execution with much less concern for force management subsequent to execution.

As the strategic equation shifted toward essential equivalence, there was a concomitant shift in policy toward more flexibility and selectivity of response, with particular emphasis on intelligent and reasoned management of the forces during and after a strategic nuclear exchange. This new policy substantially increased the requirements for more and better tools for force management. Unfortunately, these tools are expensive and require long periods to develop and deploy. Hence, as I will illustrate later, [deleted].

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Given an early decision, I have confidence in our ability to execute our strategic forces, that is, to send them to war [deleted].

With that somewhat somber introduction, I'd like to outline the remainder of my presentation.

First, I'll cover our arrangements for command of SAC forces. Then I'll discuss the six basic tasks that must be performed to manage our forces effectively. Next, I will give you my personal evaluation of SAC's ability to perform those tasks during the three phases that Admiral Murphy mentioned preattack, transattack, and postattack. Finally, I'll offer some conclusions which I hope will provide a proper foundation for Dr. Dinneen's concluding presentation.

SAC COMMAND ELEMENTS

The national command authorities have [deleted]. However, in all circumstances a SAC command element is an absolute necessity to provide for the detailed management of our forces and to recommend the employment of those forces to the national authorities. Hence, a survivable SAC command element is the first imperative for us to implement SAC's portion of the presidentially directed actions.

In the preattack period, this command element would be centered in the SAC underground command post, a facility many of you have visited. [Deleted.]

To provide this absolute assurance of continuity of command, we have kept an airborne command post, commanded by a SAC general officer, continuously aloft for the past 17 years.

[Deleted.]

After landing, the aircraft could be reserviced and returned to the air, or if circumstances permitted a ground command center could be established.

PERFORM ATTACK, STRIKE, DAMAGE, AND RESIDUAL ASSESSMENTS

RECONSTITUTE AND REDIRECT FORCES

TERMINATE HOSTILITIES AND ACTIVE OPERATIONS

A Joint Chiefs of Staff document dealing with worldwide military command and control distills national policy and guidance into these six basic tasks. These tasks are common to the management of all military forces but I'll focus on their application to SAC forces.

The first of these, monitoring the current situation, implies a close watch of the potential enemy as well as detailed knowledge of our own forces, something we do all the time.

The second deals with response to strategic or tactical warning by formulating appropriate responses, [deleted].

The remainder are tasks that would follow from an actual enemy attack and are self-explanatory.

To perform the tasks I've just shown requires force management systems which could be broadly categorized as information gathering, communications, data management, and a command center to support the command element I have already discussed. Each of these systems can be further divided into the subsystems shown.

Although I have not done so here, those subsystems could be further divided into specific programs. For instance, under "Information gathering, warning," we could list all of the various satellite and ground-based programs-[deleted] BMEWS, et cetera-which provide attack warning.

"Information gathering" also includes all of our intelligence and reconnaissance assets and the elements needed to provide us the status of our own forces. We employ extensive land, space, and airborne communications to transmit that information once gathered and to provide control and direction of the forces. We deal in large quantities of data which must be managed either automatically or manually to provide it to the decisionmaker in an intelligible form.

Finally, all of this is controlled from our command center, either ground or airborne. These, if you will, are the essential tools of force management.

Now let me assess our ability to accomplish each of these tasks during the preattack, transattack, and postattack phases. I will illustrate my assessment with color codings-green for satisfactory, yellow for marginal, and red for unsatisfactory.

During the preattack period our immediate concern is with the first two tasks and our ability to accomplish them is [deleted].

This is so because in the preattack plan we [deleted].