What About the Missile Gap?

Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson could hardly have had a more opportune week to start his Senate Preparedness Subcommittee on a full-dress investigation of the state of the nation's defenses. In Moscow Nikita Khrushchev, in his latest ploy of missile oneupmanship, boasted that the U.S.S.R. now had assembly-line production of intercontinental ballistic missiles with pinpoint accuracy "to any part of the globe." In Washington President Eisenhower scoffed politely, said that U.S. missile progress was "remarkable" and "going forward as rapidly as possible. I think it is a matter for pride on the part of America, and not a constant--well, hangdog attitude of humiliation."

Star witness before Democrat Johnson's committee was Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, who brought along a signed statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prove that they "consider" the Defense Department's $40.9 billion 1960 budget "adequate to provide for the essential programs," although they have doubts whether the budget provides enough money for all the programs included in it. One by one, the service chiefs--Air Force's General Thomas White. Navy's Admiral Arleigh Burke. Army's General Maxwell Taylor and Marine Corps' General Randolph Pate--backed up the statement on general points, expressed budget regrets that were relatively mild; the Air Force would have liked more money to replace obsolescent B-47s faster, the Navy more for ship replacement, the Army would have liked to modernize its weapons faster, the Marines regretted a manpower cut from 189,000 to 175,000.

Diversified Arsenal. But it was Chief Witness McElroy who dropped the week's bombshell. Only days after insisting that there was no missile gap, he told the Senators that in the early 1960s the U.S.S.R. will be ahead of the U.S. in operational ICBMs by a substantial margin, perhaps 3 to 1.

McElroy took pains to stress that the ICBM gap will be temporary, and that while it lasts it will not mean a real defense gap. The U.S.. he pointed out, has and will have a "diversified" arsenal, with various means of delivering nuclear retaliatory power.

The bombers of the Strategic Air Command will still pack the U.S.'s main nuclear punch in the early 1960s. Backing up SAC will be nuclear submarines armed with Polaris solid-fuel intermediate-range missiles, plus IRBMs deployed in Western Europe, plus U.S. fighter-bombers, with a mighty nuclear wallop, on alert at bases scattered around the perimeter of the Communist heartland. But what made the headlines was the missile gap, and the public confusion was greater than ever.

Into the '60s. Much of the confusion about the missile gap results from changes in the meaning of the term. It figures in debate in at least three different senses: 1) a gap in missile technology, 2) a gap in present missile capability, and 3) a gap in future capability. The answer to a question about the missile gap depends upon which meaning the questioner has in mind.

TECHNOLOGY GAP. In the early 1950s, , the U.S. confronted a serious gap in ballistic-missile technology. The Russians had started in on ballistic missile research right after World War 11, while the U.S., convinced that long-range ballistic missiles could never feasibly carry the bulky atomic warhead, was concentrating on slower air-breathing missiles such as the Air Force's Navaho and Snark. Only Convair, largely with its own funds, plugged along on the Atlas ICBM. Then in 1953 U.S. nuclear scientists found the combination that put a nuclear warhead in a small package. Since then U.S. ballistic missile progress has sped along so fast that the technology gap has just about been closed. The Russians are still ahead in rocket-engine thrust, which gives them a big advantage in space exploration. But for their strictly military task, carrying a warhead to an earthly target, U.S. missile engines are powerful enough.

PRESENT CAPABILITY GAP. When Defense Secretary McElroy denied fortnight ago that there was any missile gap at all, he was talking about operational ICBMs, here and now. The U.S. has no ICBMs that are operational in the sense that they are in place and ready to be fired at an enemy. The nation's first operational ICBM -- a 6000-mile Air Force Atlas -- is scheduled for deployment on a launching pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base next July. The U.S.S.R., as far as U.S. intelligence knows, does not have any operational ICBMs either.

FUTURE GAP. During the next few years, said Secretary McElroy last week, the U.S. will not even try to match the U.S.S.R. "missile for missile" in operational" ICBMs. If the Russians use all their estimated ICBM production capacity, and presumably they will, they will have a lot more ICBMs ready on launching pads during the early 1960s than the U.S. will. This is the missile gap.

Price of Progress. Paradoxically,, the gap will result from the swift pace of U.S. missile progress rather than from any technological lag. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles have come along so fast that they have already made their liquid-fuel forebears obsolescent. As compared to liquid-fuel missiles, solid-fuel models are more compact and incomparably simpler in plumbing, require less elaborate launching rituals and far less countdown time, and will be much cheaper, to manufacture in quantities.

The speed of missile progress--and obsolescence, the seamy side of progress--shows plainly in President Eisenhower's defense budget for fiscal 1960, beginning next July. Predictably, procurement of the Air Force's subsonic, air-breathing Snark is being terminated. Less predictably, the new budget provides very little new money for the top intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the Air Force's Thor and the Army's Jupiter. Procurement of both will halt before the end of 1960 (see diagram) unless the U.S.'s NATO allies show a lot more interest in getting U.S. IRBMs than they have shown so far. Recent U.S. military thinking has downgraded the IRBM's importance; it is too powerful to be useful in a limited war, and in an all-out war the overseas launching sites would be vulnerable to Soviet missile attack. Under present plans, Jupiter will be limited to a mere three squadrons of about 15 missiles each, Thor to five squadrons. The long-delayed decision between Thor and Jupiter will never be reached; technological change, outrunning the glacial pace of bureaucracy, has made the issue moot.

The U.S.'s only intercontinental ballistic missile close to operational status is the Air Force's liquid-fuel Atlas, which has been fired over its full 6,000-mile range, and even sent into orbit around the earth. About a year and a half behind Atlas in development is the Air Force's Titan ICBM, also liquid-fueled but more advanced in design and capable of carrying a bigger payload. Present schedules call for deployment over the next few years of eleven Titan squadrons with about ten missiles each, plus nine Atlas squadrons. These will account for the U.S.'s big ICBM punch in the early 1960s.

Faith in Solids. But even before the first Atlas or Titan is ready for firing in anger, obsolescence is stalking both birds. For the nation's main missile force in the mid-1960s and beyond. Administration defense planners are betting on two solid-fuel missiles: the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's Minuteman. Both will lurk in comparatively invulnerable nests: Polaris in nuclear submarines beneath offshore seas, and Minuteman in underground concrete silos. Though it has not yet been fired with full success, Polaris is scheduled for operational deployment beginning next year. Already it has doomed the Navy's air-breathing Regulus II. Minuteman, still in mid-development, is supposed to be ready for deployment in mid-1962, go into mass production in 1963-64.

With both Polaris and Minuteman in full production in the mid-1960s, the U.S., as Administration planners reckon, will be able to close the missile gap rapidly and decisively--in fact, a force of Minutemen could well leave the Soviets with a technological gap. The big policy question is whether, during the years between, the U.S. should try to forestall any temporary missile gap by pushing production of Atlas and Titan.

On the Plateau. The Administration's answer is a plain, firm no. With its primary force of nuclear-armed bombers and fighter-bombers, plus its soon-to-come secondary force of offensive missiles, the U.S. can already, in the blunt words of a high Pentagon official, "destroy everything." The problem is not to increase that overwhelming destructive power ("overkill" in Pentagonese), but to keep modernizing the means of delivery so as to stay ahead of Soviet defense capabilities. As newer means of delivering nuclear punch are "phased in"--so runs Administration thinking--older means can be "phased out." Total destructive power will remain on a "plateau."

It would be dangerous to phase out obsolescent weapons too slowly. But it would be exceedingly wasteful to phase in too heavily the newer weapons that will soon be obsolete. The art of modern defense planning, combining security with fiscal responsibility, is to phase in and out at the right time, neither too late nor too soon. Looking ahead to the mid-1960s, when Minuteman and Polaris will account for most of the U.S.'s deterrent-retaliatory power, Administration planners are convinced that it would be wildly wasteful to build in the meantime a huge force of obsolescence-doomed Atlases and Titans to replace SAC bombers. So the Administration is partially leapfrogging the Atlas-Titan generation. During the early 1960s the U.S. will continue to rely for much of its retaliatory power on SAC's manned bombers. Meanwhile, SAC will be kept updated, with B-58s and B-70s gradually replacing B-47s.

The danger that Soviet progress in antiaircraft missiles will cancel out SAC's power has been largely overcome by U.S. progress in air-to-ground missiles, which will enable bombers to fire at targets hundreds of miles away. Most promising: the 500-mile nuclear Hound Dog. Under development are new Hound Dog versions with ranges up to 1,000 miles.

Urgent Tasks. So long as the U.S. can rely on SAC's destructive might, the ICBM gap of the early 1960s will not mean any gap in the U.S.'s retaliatory power. The missile gap, as Secretary McElroy argued, is no cause for alarm, much less panic.

But it is no cause for complacency either, and there was a complacent undertone in McElroy's assurances. Complacent acceptance of a 3-to-1 ICBM gap runs the risk that the actual gap will prove to be very much larger: Soviet technological progress has been underestimated before, can be underestimated again. And the existence of even a 3-to-1 gap could, without a shot being fired, shake the morale and twist the policies not only of neutralist nations but even of U.S. allies.

The argument that it would be needlessly wasteful to match Soviet ICBMs with Atlases and Titans is convincing, but if the U.S. is not going to match the U.S.S.R. "missile for missile" during the next few years, the Administration has two urgent tasks cut out for it. One is to convince the world--Communists, neutralists, allies and the U.S.'s own citizens --that the missile gap will not mean a defense gap. The other is to push Minuteman and Polaris as fast as funds and priorities can push them. If there must be a missile gap, however efficiently it is filled by SAC's bombers, the less time it lasts the better.

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