Cut-Rate Defense

ARMED FORCES Cut-Rate Defense "The day is coming," said Chairman Brien McMahon of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy last week, "when the quantity of atomic weapons we are capable of making could be sufficient, beyond any question, to serve as a paramount instrument of victory." Within three years, he told the Senate, atomic bombs could be flowing into the stockpiles at mass-production speed, each one costing less than a heavy tank (about $200,000). By concentrating on the atomic weapons, said McMahon, the U.S. could safely cut back its conventional defenses and buy security for half the present $60 billion to $80 billion price of defense.

The idea of cut-rate atomic defense has revived in recent weeks with talk of "fantastic weapons"--bomb-bearing missiles, atomic subs and planes. The talk is of an atomic Army, Navy and Air Force, small teams of specialists who can send an atom-laden rocket 10,000 miles at the push of a button. U.S. military men think such talk dangerously misleading. It will be years, perhaps decades, before the U.S. will have a satisfactory intercontinental rocket. Even then, no amount of atomic weapons can take the place of men with guns on the battlefield.

The Pentagon's planners know that in any future war a U.S. Army will probably have to engage the enemy's army. Atomic weapons--guided missiles, artillery shells and tactical A-bombs--will help, but such weapons do not handle themselves. Men must be trained to assemble, fire and guide them. Ground troops with tanks and machine guns must be ready to prevent sudden paratroop attacks on launching sites, and to squeeze enemy battalions into tight pockets where atomic weapons can destroy them. Atomic depth charges can be used to kill enemy submarines, but a U.S. Navy must first track down the subs. It will take a strong Air Force to protect the U.S. and carry the A-bomb to an enemy's industrial nerve centers.

Such a force, say U.S. military men, will mean 4,000,000 men under arms and an annual expenditure of $70 billion to $80 billion for years. Military security is not headed for a bargain counter.

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