DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION FOR APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1979 MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1978 U.S. SENATE, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE ICBM SURVIVABILITY Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9 a.m. in room 224, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Thomas J. McIntyre, chairman, presiding. Present. Senators McIntyre and Goldwater. Also present. Robert Q. Old, E. George Reidel, and Larry K. Smith, professional staff members; Rhett B. Dawson, Counsel; Betty Mayo, clerical assistant; Charles Stevenson. assistant to Senator Culver; and Peter Gold, assistant to Senator Hart. OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR THOMAS J. MCINTYRE, CHAIRMAN Senator MCINTYRE. The subcommittee will come to order. My work on this subcommittee since 1974 has led me to make every effort to persuade our Government that R. & D. decisions about our ICBM systems should be framed in two critical ways. First, although the M-X, like its predecessor program, advanced ICBM technologies, is funded as one R. & D. program, it should properly be conceived as two quite separate families of technologies, each turning on a quite independent cluster of policy considerations. Second, the kind and number of our future ICBM force should be determined by military requirements to destroy specific classes of targets which the President defines to be necessary for deterrencerather than vice versa. For years, elements of the Department of Defense stubbornly rejected these two procedural premises. For example, it took 2 concentrated years of legislative efforts by this subcommittee to scrap plans by Air Force and elements of D.D.R. & E. to stuff M-X into our current silos, even though this would hardly enhance the survivability of our ICBM which was the dominant objective of the program. The Department's confusion in this case, as in others, was, I believe, produced by its failure to separate the survivability issue from the missile issue. (6453) For years we also had little luck in persuading the Government that national strategic policy should not be defined by ICBM technology. This issue was at the heart of two historic debates in the Senate which I precipitated with floor amendments in 1974 and 1975. Even though our traditional deterrence policy defines no military requirement for large numbers of silo kill missiles, even though such a force would de facto redefine our strategic policy without constitutional officials having consciously decided to do so, and even though such developments would have contradicted explicit Departmental policy defined earlier by Secretary Laird, elements of the Department of Defense chugged along in their plans to design and deploy such an ICBM force. Therefore, in 1976, this subcommittee persuaded the Congress to direct the Secretary of Defense to review the relationship of ICBM developments to national strategic policy and especially to military requirements to destroy specific classes of targets at specific levels. We asked that the President personally certify that the results of this review represent national policy. We also insisted that this review should be completed before any Departmental request for authority for full-scale development of the M-X. Unfortunately, President Ford was not able to complete such a review. I, therefore, personally brought the matter to then Secretary of Defense designee, Harold Brown, early last year to insure that he appreciated how critical we believe this review to be. Nevertheless. over a year later, we still have no such review nor Presidential determination. I, therefore, wrote to Secretary Brown a few weeks ago to express my personal disappointment that the present administration had not yet resolved these matters. Despite our frustrations on both these points over the years, I sense we are finally beginning to make some important progress in recent months. I was elated to learn a few days ago that Dr. Perry has apparently adopted the view for which we fought so hard-that is, the missile and the basing technologies should be assessed separately. I look forward to discussing this further with him today. I am also quite heartened by evidence that the executive branch is finally responding to our pleas that they examine the relationship between ICBM developments and strategic policy. I understand that a series of policy reviews at very senior levels will inform a Presidential decision, I hope by the end of the year. In any case, I am assured by the Department of Defense that this review will be completed before any request is made for the authority to enter full scale development of a new missile. Without objection, I will enter this exchange correspondence between the Department and me into the record at the end of these remarks. Today's hearing will proceed on the two premises I have described. First, Dr. Perry will summarize our current strategic policy and report on the status of the administration's review of it. This discussion will be brief, and we will resume our systematic review of the doctrinal issues and their relationship to missile and RV development later when the executive branch has come closer to completing its review. Although we will concentrate on the survivability issue today, I feel there is no need to add to our analysis of two of the three survivability issues we examined last year. I believe last spring's hearings on U.S. technology which insures that our RV's will penetrate—that is, survive any future Soviet ABM defense demonstrated that our R. & D. programs have given us redundant solutions to that problem if it should emerge, and should demonstrate to the Soviets that it is in their own compelling self-interest to honor the ABM Treaty. That hearing produced the important conclusion that the quickest and most effective response we could make to such a threat, if it emerged, would be to improve modestly, the accuracy of our seabased deterrent and to add more weapons in our bomber force. The hearing also demonstrated that there were no gains to be made for the purpose of defeating an industrial hardening program from ICBM weapons of substantially higher quality than those currently deployed. So today, we will focus primarily on the physical vulnerability of our missiles in their silos. We have asked General Slay to explain the effect on the SIOP if our future strategic force could not depend on a survivable ICBM component. This subcommittee has strongly supported the concept of the Triad, and at our request last year, the full committee included a strong declaration on its behalf in their report. We have asked DIA to update the rich record they provided us last year regarding the Soviet ICBM threat to our Minuteman. And finally, we have asked Dr. Perry and his support witnesses to describe U.S. R. & D. programs which are designed to provide alternative counters to the threat. [The information follows:] U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Hon. HAROLD BROWN, Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. SECRETARY: As you know, in the spring of 1976, at the urging of the Senate Armed Services Research & Development Subcommittee which I chair, the Congress requested the Secretary of Defense to conduct "a comprehensive study of the future of our ICBM force and its role in our national strategic posture." Congress asked that the review : (1) Resolve the issues outlined in the Senate report on the fiscal year 1977 Authorization Bill; (2) Be prepared by "a panel of strategic analysts drawn from each of the national security organizations which have a major responsibility for the conception or execution of strategic policy," and therefore be a coordinated Executive Branch position; (3) Be accompanied by a statement from the President certifying that the study reflects the national policy." I understand that the Department of Defense will not be prepared to provide the Congress a review with these qualities in conjunction with the fiscal year 1979 budget. I very much regret this, as I know you must. Under the circumstances, I very much hope that: (1) You will not submit an interim report since it would not reflect Executive Branch coordination nor Presidential decisions. (2) You will make every effort to complete a review with the qualities described above as well and as quickly as possible. I understand that the Executive Branch has recently initiated a review of our strategic policy at a level and in a way that will enable the President and you to respond to our request, but that this work will not be completed for at least several months. (3) You will complete your review before you ask for the authority for the program to enter full scale development. I look forward to hearing from you on this matter. THOMAS J. MCINTYRE, U.S. Senator. Hon. THOMAS J. MCINTYRE, THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, Washington, D.C., February 17, 1978. Chairman, Subcommittee on Research and Development, DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your letter of January 31, 1978, concerning the TRIAD study which the Congress has requested. While we do have an interim report which could be presented, the President has directed, and we are now conducting, a series of comprehensive strategic policy studies. I believe that the interests of the Congress and the Executive Branch would be best served by deferring submission of the TRIAD study, as you suggest, until such time as the current DOD studies are completed and assimilated. I wish to assure you that the current DOD policy reviews will be completed and manifested in a Presidential policy decision prior to any request for Congressional authority to proceed with full-scale development of a mobile ICBM system. Sincerely, C. W. DUNCAN, Jr., Deputy. Senator MCINTYRE. Senator Goldwater? STATEMENTS OF DR. WILLIAM J. PERRY, UNDER SECRETARY OF Dr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like first to introduce on my left General Slay whom you know of course. Since the last time he appeared before this committee he has had an extra star added to his shoulder. He is now commander of the Air Force Systems Command. On my right is Dr. Zeiberg, my Deputy Assistant for Strategic and Space Systems, and Mr. Jim Miller, DIA. I would like to start off with brief introductory remarks. First I would like to review the present strategic policy under which we are operating. This chart summarizes the principal points of the President's policy on strategic deterrence. I don't plan to review this for you in detail, I will just summarize he main features of it. The first point simply notes that the President is committed to mainaining a strategic posture of essential equivalence so the Soviet Union annot use its strategic forces for political leverage or coercion. The econd point, in a sense, defines essential equivalence. The key point is, we will not accept a strategic posture inferior to the Soviet Union out in the assessment of inferiority or superiority we can consider rollover of the entire strategic deterrent forces. The third point notes that our forces are not seeking a first strike apability. They are designed to promote stability and our force posure should allow us to inflict an unacceptable level of damage on the Soviet Union following a first strike on the United States. The last point simply asserts we should maintain sufficient command and control to be able to carry out this policy. I would like to show you on the next chart the panoply of programs which have been structured over he last few decades to carry out this policy. Senator GOLDWATER. Dr. Perry, can you go back to one point I think you should elaborate on. Under essential equivalence the United States of America accepts a strategic posture inferior to the Soviet Union. Haven't we done that already? Dr. PERRY. It is our view, Senator Goldwater, that we have not accepted an inferior posture. While it is true in some subsystems the Soviet Union is superior to us, in other systems we are superior to them. Our belief is that if we look over a whole set of strategic forces, we do have essential equivalence with the Soviet Union today. This policy states that we should take the necessary programmatic actions to maintain that position through the years. 27-766 - 78 - 5 |