SOME ANIMADVERSIONS REGARDING THE MATTER OF THE 'MISSILE GAP'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85G00105R000100110001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 17, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 21, 1959
• Content Type: MF

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
21 December 1959
Approved F O y + r Release 1999/09/25: CI -RD 8 001058000100110001-
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SUBJECT: Some Animadversions Regarding the Matter of the
"Missile Gap"
1. Having for some time endured in silence, or near-
silence, the pain occasioned by a quantity of talk about the dire
implications of the "missile gap", I wish to seek relief. * In
this essay I lay no claim to knowing all the answers pertaining
to this extraordinarily complex matter. I do lay claim to know-
ing that more answers are needed than are usually provided by
those who speak positively regarding the implications of the
"missile gap".
2. Theorizing about the "missile gap" begins with the
affirmation that sometime in 1961 or 1962 the USSR will have a
substantial number of ICBM's and the US will have few. So far
as I know, this much is fact. From this point on, however,
those who view with great alarm the implications of this fact
make assumptions and net judgments of a sort which are usually
described as "war-gaming". Now "war-gaming" does not pro-
duce incontestable facts. Indeed, inherent in its nature is a
certain circular relationship between assumption and result which
is notorious among professional practitioners of the war-game.
As one eminent researcher in these realms, General Curtis LeMay,
has said with characteristic plainness, "Tell me your assumptions
* The most recent and final stab of discomfort, leading directly
to this outcry, was administered by the remarks attributed to
Mr. Philip Mosely in Staff Memorandum 53-59, "Meeting of
the Consultants at Princeton, 19 and 20 November. "
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and I'll tell you your results. IT My view regarding the assump-
tions generally made by theorizers-of-the-missile-gap is that:
(a) they ascribe perfection to the Russians and imperfection to
ourselves; (b) they ignore or pass lightly over some hard mili-
tary facts; and (c) they posit an extremely unlikely situation in
the realm of international affairs.
3. Those who find extreme peril in the "missile gap"
usually credit the USSR with having between 200 and 500
ICBM's operational in 1961 or 1962. It is true that our studies
in NIE 11-8-59--to my mind the most sophisticated and thorough
exercise as yet undertaken anywhere on this subject--have dem-
onstrated that possession of such a number of ICBM's on launcher
by 1961 or 1962 represents such an extraordinarily difficult
achievement as to make it unlikely. But then we may be wrong,
so let us proceed to the next point. These missiles, it is assumed,
are targeted against the bases of the Strategic Air Command, and
they are timed to arrive with perfect surprise on all these bases
simultaneously. As a consequence, SAC is caught with its planes
down, and the US nuclear retaliatory capability is obliterated or
reduced to proportions which the Soviet air defense system can
deal with, or can reduce again to proportions which make the
level of damage it can inflict on the Soviet Union acceptable to
Soviet planners
4. The underlined phrases in the paragraph above rep-
resent points at which major assumptions must be made regard-
ing the interaction in this hypothetical military engagement. We
start, appropriately, with surprise --appropriately, becals e
we shall see here and later, surprise is the absolutely essential
element; without it the whole hypothetical construction comes
apart.
5. It is fair to say that surprise, explicitly the danger
of being surprised, is recognized by SAC as its most acute prob-
lem. In response, this superbly trained and equipped force, which
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has seldom lacked for funds, priorities, or elite personnel,
has perfected complex, interlocking systems and procedures to
guard against surprise. SAC is a jumpy and alert-happy force.
There is little, if any, exaggeration in saying that if small fires
were to break out simultaneously in the paint lockers of three
or four SAC bases in the world, the bombers of the SAC alert
force (numbering in the hundreds), bombed-up and fully fueled,
would within approximately 15 minutes take off and head for
their assigned targets in the USSR. After the several SAC base
commanders had investigated the paint locker fires, and the pos-
sibility of sabotage as an accompaniment to Soviet attack had
been set aside, the bombers would be recalled to base and new
alert aircraft would take their place on the alert strips. So
little as this has alerted SAC many times in the past and will
do so again. I personally believe that there has never been a
military force more difficult to surprise than SAC.
6. I have just mentioned the SAC ground alert force.
Besides its capability for maintaining between one-fourth and
one-third of its bombers on continuous 15-minute ground alert,
SAC has a capability for airborne alert. * At present, SAC can
maintain a small percentage of its aircraft on continuous air-
borne alert and can, under emergency conditions such as a period
of international tension, put substantial proportions of the force
In this discussion, "15-minute ground alert" means that bomber
aircraft, a requisite number of tanker aircraft, and their
crews are at all times fueled, bombed-up, and briefed on
specifically assigned targets. Five minutes after the alert
is sounded the first alert aircraft leave the runway; the rest
of the alert force gets off at intervals of one to two minutes.
"Airborne alert" means that a percentage of the force is kept
constantly aloft, shuttling out and back part way along the
assigned routes to the designated targets.
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on airborne alert for several days at a time. The point about
all this is that no number of ICBM's can destroy a SAC bomber
once it is airborne and en route to its target. SAC can, there-
fore, frustrate the assumed Soviet missile superiority at any
time by putting its cocked aircraft aloft. The percentage of
the alert force which is aloft at the hypothetical moment when
the Soviet missiles detonate on SAC bases is approximately the
percentage with which the Soviet air defense system will have
to cope, and this we will discuss later.
7. Here, however, we may note in passing a secondary
point regarding the assumed simultaneous arrival of the Soviet
missiles on target. At present there exists considerable
skepticism among technical experts regarding the feasibility
of causing several hundred missiles, originating from points
hundred of miles apart, to impact simultaneously on targets
also hundreds of miles apart. This skepticism derives largely
from a detailed understanding of the enormous complexity and
technical uncertainty of the missile at the stage of its develop-
ment anticipated between now and 1962. But there is also avail-
able to anyone who lives in the real world another source of
healthy skepticism. Human affairs, as we note daily while
searching for misplaced car keys or balancing unbalanced check-
books, are constantly going askew. When these affairs are
military in nature, this tendency, as historians have recorded
and those of us who were adults by 7 December 1941 have ob-
served, reaches new heights. As is 25X1A9a
credited with noting in Staff Memorandum 53-59, the Soviet
military operation envisaged by the missile-gappers surpasses
in scope and perfection any military operation in history. Unless
we assume such perfection in the matter of simultaneity, however,
we must admit that when approximately five minutes pass between
the arrival of the first Soviet ICBM anywhere in the US and the
first detonation on any given SAC base, the alert bombers will
begin taking off from that base and others will follow every
passing minute. This number, its size dependent upon the number
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and length of the time intervals involved, must be added to the
number which will confront the Soviet air defense.
8. Now we turn to the second major assumption under-
lined in paragraph 3: the assumed capability of the Soviet air
defense to deal with the SAC bombers not destroyed by ICBM's.
I suppose that the effectiveness of air defense against jet bombers
ranks, along with the efficacy of airborne electronic counter-
measures, as the most vexing and disputed question confronting
military planners these days. The air attack-defense equation
is extremely complex and constantly shifting, and in the absence
of testing under combat conditions no one has any definitive data.
Among those who study these matters there is general recogni-
tion, however, that the USSR has been investing heavily in air
defense. This awareness has caused SAC to intensify its effort
to devise equipment and techniques which will augment its ability
to penetrate the Soviet air defense. As a consequence, SAC has
developed the capability to mount an assortment of attacks,
variously designed to exploit the inherent vulnerability of air
defense systems to low-level approaches, deception, saturation
by mass, stand-off weapons, and airborne electronic counter-
measures. It may be that in time the manned aircraft will be
no match for air defense missiles, but at present two techniques
provide considerable assurance that within the 1961-62 period
the balance will not swing wholly against attack: (a) the use of
low-level approaches to the target, combined with specially
designed weapons permitting the aircraft to stay low throughout
its bombing run; and (b) the use of long-range (300-400 miles)
air-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads for blasting out
air defense sites. Another tactic which could degrade the ef-
fectiveness of air defense is use of the so-called dead-man fuse.
This is a device which causes the nuclear weapon aboard a shot-
down aircraft to detonate upon impact. These weapons would
not of course land on their assigned targets but they would in
most cases land on Soviet soil. Each one, be it remembered,
would be a multi-megaton detonation.
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9. The importance of all this, in relation to the missile-
gap problem, is that in this hypothetical situation the odds are
favorable for some SAC bombers to get their bombs down on
the USSR. No one to my knowledge over postulates that all the
attacking bombers will be shot down by the air defense. The
attrition factor frequently employed in professional war games
ranges from 50 to 80 percent. Some bombers always get through.
My own view is that a sizeable fraction of the attacking force--
say, about one-third- -would probably get through in this assumed
situation.
20 kiloton weapons.
To this one must rejoin, yes, but we are no longer talking about
on a modern country. We do know that the havoc and chaos at
Hiroshima was indescribable. But then, one might answer,
Moscow is not Hiroshima and the Russians are not Japanese.
the effect of a multi-megaton detonation on a modern city, let
alone the effect of a number (10? 100? 1000?) of such detonations
imagination. Up to the present, fortunately, no one has observed
of nuclear damage are guilty of a major failure in constructive
things does seem certain on this question, and that is that those
who easily assume that the USSR would willingly accept a quantity
knows how much nuclear damage would be acceptable. But one
fident in saying that even in the USSR no one--not even Mr. K. --
course, we enter an area where nothing is known. I feel con-
to accept indeterminate amounts of nuclear damage. Here, of
10. This brings us to the third major assumption under-
lined in paragraph 3: the assumed willingness of Soviet planners
11. It is sometimes argued by the missile-gappers that
the Russians in World War II displayed considerable fortitude in
accepting millions of casualties and therefore might willingly
accept a couple of million again. To me, this comparison is
utterly irrelevant. In the first place, in this situation the Soviet
leaders are assumed to be deliberately accepting casualties of
this order. In World War II, if I remember correctly, they were
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 05R0001001-10001-attacked first and their casualties were sustained while repelling
an invader. But far more important, to sustain casualties on a
demarcated military front on a day-by-day basis over several
years time is vastly different from sustaining such casualties
over an entire country in a matter of hours. The impact of an
airborne nuclear attack of multi-megaton weight on the complex
mechanisms of modern civilization would be most profound.
The shock to the population of millions of simultaneous casualties
would transcend anything the world has seen. I personally doubt
that the Soviets could willingly accept just one 10-megaton detona-
tion on Moscow. In this hypothetical situation, they would be
risking the receipt of scores and hundreds of multi-megaton
weapons, not only on Moscow but widely throughout the country
they have struggled so to modernize during the past forty years.
12. This brings us, it seems to me, to the very nub of
the matter--the risk and the degree of assurance attending the
risk. Before initiating the attack posited by the missile-gap
theorizers, the Soviet planner would have to assess the degree
of assurance he could obtain that the US retaliatory attack would
not inflict on the, Soviet Union some unspecified amount of damage.
How much assurance could he get? In dealing with this question,
one ought to make every effort to see the problem from the Soviet
point of view--from a point of view, in short, which permits one
to see the enormous strengths, as well as the weaknesses, of
the US nuclear delivery capability, and one from which one can
see the possibility that the Soviet attack might not go off exactly
as planned. No military planner I have ever met wants to set
up a military operation without lots of assurance of success.
They all want to be very sure.
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13. As. the Soviet military planner surveys the problem
before him, what does he see? First of all, he sees the SAC
bomber force, possessing the biggest punch of any military force
in history. To defeat it, he must surprise it. Not just partly
surprise it, but completely surprise it. This means he must
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caution his political superiors that a period of political relaxa-
tion is essential for his purposes. During a period of interna-
tional tension, he has no assurance that he can surprise SAC.
Moreover, to think of making an attack after a blackmail attempt
horrifies him. Threats, maybe; an actual attack, no. SAC
would certainly be alerted and substantial numbers of its bombers
airborne. He must have complete quiet.
14. Mindful of his need for surprise, the Soviet military
planner is disturbed also by the reports he has received about
the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. Some of his
experts are skeptical that the US BMEWS could function rapidly
enough to permit SAC to get the ground alert force airborne.
He knows, however, that the system was designed to give warning
of the firing of ICBM's in the first minutes of their approximately
30-minute flight. For a man who has considerable respect for
the electronic ingenuity of the Americans and who is searching
hard for assurance regarding surprise, this is disturbing. He
finds it hard to be sure.
15. Next, the Soviet military planner looks at the US ICBM
capability. It is not, by his assumed standards, large, and it is
in 1961 mostly soft-sited. But again he appreciates the need for
surprise, because alerted American missiles can be held for long
periods of time on a 15-minute, or less, posture of readiness.
He also knows that any which are not hit on his first salvo will
be fired and once on their way cannot be stopped. Similarly,
he knows that the US Polaris-equipped submarines are opera -
tional at this time, and each submarine carries a load of 16
missiles with nuclear warheads. His chances of averting a
Polaris attack are negligible; the damage his country will almost
certainly receive is far from negligible.
16. Finally, he turns his attention to the US Sixth Fleet
in the Mediterranean and the US Tactical Air Command in Western
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Europe. T:-:e threat represented by these forces is not really
large by the appalling standards of the nuclear era, but the
forces are there and the Soviet planner must have some assur-
ance that they will be dealt with. He recognizes at the very
least that severe problems of timing are presented by his neces-
sity to launch strikes at a large number of targets in Western
Europe and its periphery, such strikes to arrive simultaneously
with the ICBM's on North America. He realizes also that the
preparations necessary to take out these forces may jeopardize
his attainment of surprise and without surprise he cannot
succeed.
17. Having made his survey of the forces opposing him,
what does the Soviet military planner conclude? I believe that
even if he gives himself the highest degree of assurance military
planners ever use, 90 to 95 percent, and grants himself the
achievement of complete surprise, he will still face some dis-
couraging conclusions. He will find as he tots up the nuclear
rnegatonnage that he cannot be sure of warding off--the fraction
of the SAC force that is airborne or escapes damage, the ICBM's
he does not hit, the Polaris submarines, the carrier-based jet
aircraft, the TAC fighter-bombers--that a megaton here and a
megaton there add up to a significant total. I personally believe
that the total figures of our assumed planner would approximate
100 megatons, at the very least. To be sure, these megatons
would not all be delivered on target, but the Soviet planner rec-
ognizes that whereas the attacker needs precise accuracy for
success the defender needs only enough to cause substantial
damage. He knows that 100 megatons delivered even at random
on the USSR would cause enormous damage. I do not see how any
responsible Soviet military planner could obtain assurance--
solid, militarily-defensible assurance--that the level of damage
from the US retaliatory attack %- ould be less. I therefore believe
that this planner, and anyone else who looked hard at the military
realities, would strongly advise against the launching of the
assumed attack in 1961 or 1962.
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18. Suppose one accepts the contention that possession
by the USSR in 1961-1962 of a superior number of ICBM's does
not necessarily have the dire implications drawn from it by some
observers. Does this permit us to be complacent about the
Soviet ICBM capability? Far from it. I think that the present
Soviet ICBM capability and the probable achievement of a numer-
ical superiority in 1961 or 1962 have profound significance in the
US-Soviet power balance. The Soviets now have positive assur-
ance that they can inflict enormous and crippling damage on
the US under any of the circumstances which may precipitate
general war.. This, I think, is the true and accurate meaning
of their ICBM capability, and it has wide-reaching implications.
The Soviets are now liberated from the one-sided threat of our
enormous nuclear capability. For people afflicted with deep
feelings of inferiority this is extraordinarily important. It
bestows greater flexibility on their use of military power to obi
taln objectives. Likewise, since their possession of an "equalizer"
accords them the status of an equal, to say the least, they are
enabled to pursue policies of relaxation without fear they may
appear to be supplicants. The powerful can afford to appear
benign. I expect that Soviet policy henceforth will be far more
menacing, when it is menacing, and far more conciliatory when
it is conciliatory. I expect it to be free-swinging and hard to
handle. But I do not expect it, suddenly on some quiet day, to
seek fulfillment of its ambitions in a single gigantic gamble,
when the odds for complete success are not great and the
potential losses are catastrophic.
25X1A9a