HEARING ON MIRV SLATED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010019-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 2, 2001
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: July 9, 1969
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2001/11/15 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010019-5
?W ASHING'1 Vii pVv.i itl JLL Iq
Hearings an
By George C. Wilson
and Richard Homan
Washington Post Staff Writers
The Senate Foreien Relations Commits
tee on Friday will try to add a new-
dimension to the ABM debate by holding,
Its own hearings on the impact of multi.
ple warheads on the world's arms race.
Chairman J. W. Fuibright (D-Ark.), in
going ahead with the hearings during
the Senate's debate on the ABM, will
push MIRV into the center of the con-
troversy.
MIRV is the technique of putting sev-
eral warheads on one rocket to use up
the missiles defending the target nation.
MIRV opponents argue that multiple
warheads on one side will prompt more
ABMs on the other side, pushing both
nuclear superpowers up the arms ladder
with no gain in security.
See MIRV, AS, Col. 1
iuiKV, From Al
Senators at Friday's , hear-
ings will link the two systems
together - something leading
opponents of President Nix-
on's Safeguard ABM have
been unwilling to do in the
current debate for fear of
confusing the issue.
Several Congressmen showed
no such :hesitancy in striking
out at. MIRY yesterday as a
House Deign Affairs subcom-
mittee opened its hearings on
the Implications of the new
nuclear weapon technology.
Rep, Jonathan B. Bingham
(D-N Y.) tk}~e Pentagon op-
Poses a MIRY b oie [torium be-
cause "tue joint cniets of
Staff are basically hostile tole
arms limitations."
Rep. Jeffrey Cohelan (D-
Calif.) warned that deploy-
ment of MIRV might draw a
first strike.
i"There is an advantage to
an attacker in destroying
MTRV missiles in their silos,
as for every MIRV missile
launcher destroyed, several
times that many deliverable
warheads will be destroyed.
Thus there is an advantage in
attacking first before the other
side, has launched its MIRV
missiles," Cohelan said.
The chief danger in MIRV,
according to Cohelan, is its
effect on the strategic balanp pproved
"1t one side perceives.. we
MIRV warheads of the other
. . to be able to destroy a
significant portion of its land-
based ICBMs in a first strike.
"If such a threat is per-
ceived, the threatened site
will have to deploy new offen-
sive or defensive weapons to
preserve its deterrent."
Testimony by Defense Sec-
retary Melvin R. Laird in re-
cent weeks indicates that U.S.
MIRVs could pose such a
threat to Russia, Cohelan said.
He quoted Laird's testimony
that Poseidon MIRV " 1a an
important program since it
pcQr ises to improve the ac-
of the Poseidon mis-
alAr, 'wxua cLaLW11~iti~ 1tS eilec-
tiveneaa against hard targets,"
If Laird believes "that our
MIRV has a significant capa-
bility against hardened tar-
gets," Cohelan argued, "it
seems inevitable that the So-
viets must believe that our
MIRV threatens their deter-
rent forces."
One Republican :Rep.
James G. Fulton (R-Pa.)-of-
fered an argument for uni-
lateral U.S. suspension of
MIRV testing, obviously tai-
lored to win GOP support, as
analogous to the Nixon Ad-
ministration's plan for with-
drawing U.S. troops frogs
Vietnam.
So far, 104 Congressmen
have sponsored resoluna
calling for a moratoria
MIRY testing. But Pres
Nixon has rejected all i
to stop firing Poseidon \;ead
Minuteman 3 with duigalgy
MIRV warheads.
Russia, in testing the
rocket with three dummy war-
heads recently,: m
all.ia a bunch Ti .l
ea about 19 miles apart. The
trim 'MIRV (multiple-indepen.
dently-targetable-re-entry ve-
hicle) is the technique of send-
ing the individual warheads to
different targets hundreds of
miles apart - something the
U.S. has flight tested several
times.
The Soviet Union, in the
view of military leaders, is
faced with a MIRV gap. It is
thus unlikely Russia would
agree to freeze the technology
until she catches up to the
United States.
Witnesses the Senate For-
eign Relations Committee has
asked to discuss these and oth-
er aspects of MIRV are Gorr
don MacDonald, of the Uni-
versity of California and for-
merly vice president for re-
search at the Institute for De-
fense Analyses; J. P. Ruins,
of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and formerly
director of the Advanced Re.
search Projects Agency; and
Herbert York, of the Univeer-
sity of California ana formerly
.director of Pentagoa tesearch.