Delayed Salvos

Air Force General Thomas S. Power, for seven years head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, has always been boldly outspoken on airpower and its advantages, and on other hotly debated questions of strategy. In 1959 he wrote a controversial book summing up his views on U.S. military policy in the nuclear age, but then-Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy ordered Power to lock it up on the ground that publication would be improper while Power was still on active duty. The manuscript stayed locked up under President Kennedy.

Now retired, Power, 59, has dusted off his book and published it. Design for Survival* may raise hackles here and there in the Pentagon, but Power's ideas are as strong as ever, and certainly different.

Eventually Conventional. Power is the only top-ranking U.S. commander to oppose publicly the 1963 partial nuclear test ban treaty. He terms disarmament patently unworkable, brands U.S. disarmament proposals at Geneva -- such as mutual inspection of atomic sites -- "fantastic and unrealistic." The U.S., he says, could better encourage peace by concentrating on remaining strong, instead is like someone trying to "dress and undress at the same time."

Power also differs with any suggestion that the U.S. must not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any future war. Throughout history, he argues, "regardless of any prevailing moral concepts, new weapons never remained 'unconventional' for long because, in the eternal struggle for power and survival, nation after nation had to acquire and use these weapons until they became quite conventional--and moral." He foresees that the U.S. might use "nuclear munitions" in local wars where American soldiers are "vastly outnumbered by the Communists." Further, it is "conceivable" that the U.S. may some day have to launch pre-emptive nuclear war against Russia.

Floating Surprise? Naturally, Power feels that the U.S. needs a new strategic bomber. He insists that nuclear bombers can be retained as a backstop deterrent, argues that by firing air-to-ground rockets against antiaircraft installations ahead, among other techniques, more bombers could get through than might be expected. But under present planning, reports Power, within eight to ten years "all B-47s would have long been retired; the remaining B-52s would be worn and obsolete, and the limited number of B-58s would be obsolescent at best," while "for the first time in the history of American strategic airpower, no follow-on bomber is under development." Power's emergency solution: Adapt the F-lll (TFX) fighter-bomber for SAC use as a medium-range strategic bomber.

Finally, Power feels that the U.S. may be making a fatal error if it should neglect the military possibilities of outer space. He charges that Washington, which "blithely joined" in a United Nations resolution banning the use of weapons in space, virtually conceded "this promising medium to Soviet trickery." Power warns that Americans "may wake up one morning" and find a number of nuclear-armed Soviet satellites "floating in stationary orbits over every part of the United States."

* Coward-McCann; $5.

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