THE FAILURE TO DEFEND DEFENSE WEINBERGER AND CASEY FAIL TO STRIKE THE PROPER MILITARY BALANCE

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00363R000901960021-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 16, 2007
• Sequence Number: 21
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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The Failure to Defend Defense
0
Weinberger and Casey Fail to Strike the Proper Military Balance
by Anthony H. Cordesman and Benjamin E Schemmer
Even in the best economic cli-
mate, defense must compete
with other uses of public funds.
In a major recession, every defense dol-
lar must be shown to be necessary. This
is partly a matter of efficiency and effec-
tiveness: the American people must be-
lieve that their tax dollars are being
spent wisely. It is also, however, a mat-
ter of convincing the American people
that a strong defense is necessary to
meet the Soviet threat. This is not simply
a matter of showing that Soviet forces
are increasing in size and capability, it is
a matter of showing that planned US
force improvements are a well-judged re-
sponse to the trends in the Soviet threat.
For the last decade, the Secretary of
Defense and the Director of Central In-
telligence have published comparisons of
US and Soviet forces as part of the annu-
al budget cycle to support the Presi-
dent's proposed defense budget. The De-
fense Secretary has explained the
strategic balance, the trend in theater
nuclear forces, the trend in conventional
forces, and the trends in the NATO and
Warsaw Pact Alliances, while the Direc-
tor of Central Intelligence has published
detailed dollar cost estimates of US and
Soviet defense spending. . - -
These data have shaped the Reagan
Administration's buildup of US forces.
The comparisons of US and Soviet
forces have furnished the essential rario-
nale for increased defense spending, and a critical perspective on the size of the- - -
US defense budget and the adequacy of
US forces. Although many readers may
not realize it, most of the statistical and
graphic data that shaped the SALT II
debate, and many of the -qualifying --- -- words necessary to give such numbers -
meaning, came from the Annual Report
of the Secretary of Defense and the Mill= - -
tary Posture statement of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. Virtually all of the data
on the inadequacy of US forces and de-
fense expenditures that President Rea-
gan campaigned on came from these
sources. They underpin every reputable
work on the military balance and on US
and Soviet defense expenditures.
Omitting the Facts from the
Secretary's FY84 Annual Report
=;+i- glass table eostai~inioemitioa
4LaMWV
istLe ebv~e s
:,Doe-aot indnde poctfoorofte~t with stalls
tae simp'y tables and c r s, the coent?for
The merits of providing as much data
on the balance as possible should be ob-
vious to a conservative Administration
which won election through its use of
such data, which advocates a strong de-
fense, which now faces a massive defense
budget battle in the Congress, which
faces an even greater battle over arms
control, and which must try to persuade
its allies to maintain their defense spend-
ing in the face of a world recession. The
Reagan Administration seemed to un-
derstand this when it wrote its first se-
ries of defense posture statements.
It published more statistical material
on the balance in FY83 than any previ-
ous Administration.
Somewhere along the line, however,
things have gone astray. As Table One
shows, Secretary Weinberger has re-
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moved virtually all of the useful data on
the balance from the Defense Depart-
ment's two main defense policy and bud-
get statements. Even Table One under-
states. just how much material has been
censored in FY84, or is presented in an
? inadequate or potentially misleading
form. With almost Orwellian timing, the
Secretary of Defense has made "1984"
the year in which the truth about the
balance is missing from his defense of
the nation's defense budget.
Canceling CIA Public Reporting on
the Soviet Military Budget and
Activities in the Third World
~ecretary Weinberger has not acted
alone. William Casey, the Director of
Central Intelligence, has killed the
CIA's annual estimate of Soviet defense
spending. The Agency will no longer
publish . its Dollar Cost Comparison of
Soviet and US Defense Activities, perhaps
the most quoted work it has ever issued.
CIA reporting will evidently be confined
to the release of selected data to the
Congress and press, although in a form
that will lack sufficient analytic detail
and backup to be convincing in the face
of intelligent questions or criticism. Ac-
cofding to an official CIA spokesman,
the Director has done this as part of a
general policy of eliminating all public
CIA reporting on military matters and
Soviet forces.
? He has also eliminated the Agency's
annual estimate of Soviet military and
economic assistance to Third World
countries and its reporting on the num-
ber of Soviet military and economic ad-
visors overseas. This information used to
be published in a document entitled
Communist Aid Activities in Non-Com-
munist Less Developed Countries.
The title of this report is so esoteric
that its importance may not be obvious,
but it was the only useful source of data
on the number of Soviet bloc and Com-
munist advisors in foreign countries, the
number of foreign military trained in the
Soviet bloc, and the size of Soviet eco-
nomic and military aid to Third World
nations. Without it, there is no reliable
source of data on the number of Cuban,
Soviet, East German, or PRC military in
1=* or, Ig 111011F.1 ties WA 91:1-11IRS 070 if F"M P11
is problems and uncertainties in the CIA.
effort in this area One CIA analyst also
raised the issue of whether the report on
Soviet expenditures was being dropped
because it would disclose a leveling out
or drop in the rate of growth in Soviet..
tion over the last two years, although he
,i veisiai" and scarcely reduced the ratio
Hale for increases m the US defense bud
nations like South Yemen or Ethiopia or !
-
on inc intensity or the Soviet effort to
target given Third World nations.
The same CIA spokesman made it
clear that the Director's new policy ap-
plies to far more than these two periodi-
cals. When asked whether the CIA
would issue any further statistical or an-
alytic data of any kind on threat military
? forces, he replied, "Nothing."
Some lower-level CIA staff have
raised some more serious issues. Al-
though there is no way of confirming
their views, some feel that the reporting
on Soviet defense may have been elimi-
nated because it disclosed serious analyt-
net.
The Surviving Facts Cannot
Defend Defense
This leaves only four, far less signifi-
cant, official sources that provide mean-
ingful data on the threat and military
balance. Even if these sources are not
buried under the current wave of censor-
ship, they are scarcely adequate substi-
tutes for the information that has now
been eliminated:
? The first source is the annual report
of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Research and Engineering, and is called
the DoD Program for Research, Develop.
ment, and Acquisition. This statement
has provided useful comparisons of US
vs. Soviet and Western vs. Soviet bloc
investment, R&D, technology, and pro-
duction in recent years.
It has not, however, compared total
force capabilities. It provided few in-
sights into the balance of forces by which
Americans can measure the adequacy of
their defense budget. It compared bud-
get inputs-how much the US invests in
strategic forces or general purpose
forces, for instance, compared to the
USSR. But it told almost nothing about
budget output-what impact those rela-
tive investments have had or will have
on the military balance.
Moreover, the first printed version of
this year's R&D report contained virtu-
ally no information on the array of new
systems which the Soviets' past R&D
investment has produced, about which
the US Defense Department has said
little or nothing officially, but on which
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Western intelligence sources have now
collected hard evidence. These include:
? Three new cruise missiles;
? Two "families" of fighter variants, in-
cluding four or five fighter and attack
aircraft;
? Two new strategic bombers;
? A successor to the mobile SS-20 inter-
mediate-range ballistic missile (which is
still being deployed at a rate of over four
a month);
? Three new ICBM intercontinental
ballistic missiles, two of them apparently
already in flight test;
? An impressive new torpedo;
? A new T-80 tank (which a New York
Times op-ed piece last November head-
lined as being "nonexistent");
? A new 11-76 Airborne Warning and
Control System with the NATO code
name "Mainstay," replacing the first
generation Tu-114 Moss.
At press time for this issue, senior
Pentagon officials were considering
whether or not to add an addendum to
the R&D report pointing out some of
these new developments. One such offi-
cial expressed genuine surprise that the
version already printed contained almost
no information about them.
? The second source is the statements
issued by the Service Chiefs and Secre-
taries when they first testify on their
budgets. These have had virtually no
substantive content on the threat in re-
cent years. They used to include an oc-
casionally useful table comparing pro-
duction rates of combat aircraft, tanks,
or ships; but this year, the Army and Air
Force statements have no such data.
Defense Secretary Weinberger did re-
lease the charts reproduced here com-
paring 1974-1982 production of select-
ed weapons and annual Soviet
production compared to DoD's FY84
budget request when be unveiled his
budget to the Pentagon press corps. But
there was no explanation of the data,
and it -differs markedly from the last
data Weinberger provided on 'Soviet
production rates in his widely publicized
September 1981 pamphlet Soviet Mili-
tary Power. That document showed Rus-
sia producing an average of 2,700 tanks
a year between 1976 and 1980, com-
pared with the 1,920 a year in Weinber-
ger's latest 1974-1982 comparison, a.
difference of either 29% or 40% (de-
pending on which number is used as a
base). For major surface combatant
ships, the 1981 data showed average an-
nual Soviet production of over 11 a year,
Weinberger's latest chart showed over
nine a year. Weinberger's 1981 data
showed the Russians producing an aver-
age of 1,260 combat tactical aircraft a
year, with production on the increase
from 1978 to 1980; but his latest chart
shows only 680 a year, a discrepancy
either of 46% or of 85%. The figures on
Soviet submarine construction differed
from an average
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1981's estimate to roughly 12 in this
year's.
For more than one reporter, the dis-
crepancies raised two questions: Was
American intelligence that inaccurate or
uncertain? Or, had the Soviets dramati-
cally curtailed production of military
hardware in the past two years? The
answer turned out to be neither: Wein-
berger's public affairs office finally ex-
plained that the latest numbers were in-
tended to reflect only what the Soviet
arsenal has been producing for its own
forces, and excluded ships, tanks, air-
craft, and submarines produced for ex-
port. Most reporters, apparently, were
too confused by it all, or skeptical of the
data, to report any of the numbers.
Thus, what little comparative threat
data Weinberger had provided to sup-
port his record FY84 budget request
went unreported to the American public.
In contrast to the Army and Air
Force Chiefs of Staff and Secretaries,
Navy Secretary John Lehman included
four very informative paragraphs in his
FY84 report to Congress on new Soviet
naval systems and deployments. But nei-
ther his statement nor the Chief of Na-
val Operations' provided any assessment
of the new naval balance.
Thus, the Service budget statements
this year fail to give the taxpayer any
feel for how much of a gap in equipment
or forces their record budget requests
are designed 'to bridge, or of how much
better America might stand against its
principal adversary even if Congress
were to approve those budgets in full.
? The third source is ACDA's World
Military Expenditures and Arms Trans-
fers, but the data in this document are
two or more years old. The 1982 edition,
for instance, only reports on
"1970-1979." The document fails to
provide any useful information on cur-
rent trends and programs, and has se-
vere definitional and reporting problems.
The data on the numbers of weapons
transferred and the data on the dollar
value of weapons transfers never seem to
track. It does not provide a breakout of
weapons transfers by year or country,
and gives no picture of the number of
civilian or uniformed advisors in a given
country. It badly needs expansion and
updating to become more relevant, and
is largely of interest to historians and
those poor journeyman reporters forced
to write this year's story about the evils
of arms sales and "merchants of death."
? The final.source does not provide
any data on the balance, but rather a
one-dimensional view of the threat. This
source is a new document called Soviet
Military Power, released by Secretary of
Defense Weinberger late in 1981. That
first edition was designed to dramatize
the threat in Sunday supplement terms,
and failed to present the threat in per-
spective. It provided little useful qualita-
scribed, and little new statistical
information-notwithstanding some
Pentagon claims that it had involved a
"massive" declassification effort and
that about 35% of the information in it
had never been made public before.
A new version of Soviet Military Pow-
er was being readied for release as this
issue of AFJ went to press. Pentagon
intelligence officials have been working
overtime to ready it for printing yet still
seemed very uncertain of bow much new
data it might divulge.
Whatever its revelations, the docu-
ment will still be one-dimensional: it will
be about Soviet forces, and thus cannot
substitute for the data on the military
balance that used to form such an im-
portant part of the Secretary of De-
fense's Annual Report and of the JCS
Military Posture statements. While the
document will be useful in telling Amer-
ican taxpayers something new about the
threat which prompts President Rea-
gan's $274.1-billion FY84 defense bud-
get request, it will not tell America how
that money will help meet the threat.
The US needs to show bow the threat
relates to US and allied capabilities, and
present the threat in terms that will con-
vince moderates in the US, Europe,
Asia, and the Third World. The Soviets
have retaliated with a propaganda docu-
ment on the US "threat" entitled
Whence the Threat to Peace. The second
edition of this document has just been
issued by the Soviet Ministry of Defense,
and it is a virtual parody of Soviet Mili-
tary Power down to the slick photos,
simple graphics, and punchline maps. It
is a grim warning that propaganda can
only alienate anyone seeking perspective
and objectivity; yet it is the unconverted
who must be won over if the FY84 de-
fense budget is to survive the massive
cuts Congressmen are now suggesting.
Removing the Balance from the
Secretary's FY84 Annual Report
The largest number of deletions oc-
curs in the Secretary's Annual Report,
reaching a point where DoD and the
CIA risk killing 10 years' worth of work
to help Congress and the public under-
stand the trends in the military balance.
There is no information on the strategic
balance or theater nuclear forces of any
kind in his FY84 Annual Report, al-
though these deeply troubled programs
cry out for a rationale. There are no
comparisons that would explain his gen-
eral purpose forces program or his ratio-
nale for shifting increased resources into
sea power. It gives no information on the
changing balance in Asia. It provides no
data on the adequacy of our forces in
NATO or USCENTCOM or whether
our tactical forces can compete with
those of the USSR.
What little data on the balance remain
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or misleading. There are only five sets of
data on the balance in the entire docu-
ment. Three cover US vs. Soviet and
Western vs. Warsaw Pact military in-
vestment, but all end in 1981. Not only
they repeat data released last year,
ey seem to omit corrections for reduc-
tions in Soviet defense activity in late
1981. They give no feel for whether the
proposed program will restore any of the
past gap between US and Soviet defense
expenditures and give no picture of
whether the Western Alliance now is
doing a better job of competing with the
Warsaw Pact.
Military Equipment Production:
More Questions Than Answers
The fourth table is simply a different
array of the data on US and Soviet mili-
tary equipment production during
"1974-82," which Weinberger gave the
Pentagon press corps when he unveiled
his budget, and whose discrepancies
have already been discussed.
The data do not even track with the
FY83 report of the Under Secretary of
Defense Research and Engineering. This
is revealed by the statistical shifts in the
self-propelled artillery data in the FY83
and FY84 documents, which suddenly
raised the Soviet advantage in artillery
production from 13:1 to 38.1:1, and in a
ew method of counting other armored
hicles, which raised the Soviet advan-
ge from 5:1 to 7.6:1. While the changes
seem to be part of a harmless exercise to
refine the data base, they become a prob-
lem when the method of analysis is
changed.
US and Soviet Arms Sales: Too
Little Data on Too
Important an Issue
The final table on the balance in the
Secretary's FY84 Annual Report again
covers the period before the Reagan Ad.
ministration had any impact on the bal-
ance, and provides no insight into the
need for the FY84 defense budget. It
compares US and Soviet arms deliveries
to the Third World during 1977-1981,
but was originally released last August
by the Department of State in Special
Report No. 102, Conventional Arms
Transfers in the Third World,
1972-1981.
Once again, the table runs into defini-
tional and reporting problems that cast
the validity of the estimates into doubt,
when it should be part of a detailed
analysis that could provide a clear case
increased US effort. One table shows
t the USSR delivered 7,065 tanks and
self-propelled guns to the Third World,
while the US delivered 3,200. Similarly,
the USSR delivered 9,570 artillery weap-
ons to 3,155 for the US, 2,525 combat
aircraft to 955, 11,680 surface-to-air mis-
siles to 7,860, and 910 helicopters to 225.
These figures should be a grim warn-
ing to the Congress and the US that our
military assistance program is an urgent
offset to a systematic expansion of Soviet
arms sales, particularly because the
USSR is said to have a 20:1 superiority
in the number of foreign military trained
and in the number of military techni-
cians serving in Third World countries.
Unfortunately, the data do not track
with the data which compare US and
Soviet arms transfers in billions of dol-
lars in the Joint Chiefs' FY84 Military
Posture statement. The Joint Chiefs' fig-
ures indicate that the US sold almost
exactly as many arms to the Third
World during 1978-mid-1982 as the
USSR, the US selling $36.3-billion
worth to $38.1-billion worth for the
USSR. Even this comparison ignores the
fact that the table only counts FMS and
MAP sales for the US and all sales for
the USSR If one does not play defini-
tional games, the JCS data clearly indi-
cate that the US sold more arms than
the USSR.
Which should anyone believe? Does
the USSR really produce two to three
times as many modem weapons for the
same dollar? Is the Soviet economy real-
ly two to three times more efficient than
that of the US? Well, no, but the con-
flicts in US arms trade statistics have
only begun.
Although estimates of the trade dur-
ing all of 1982 were available when the
JCS Military Posture report was written,
the data in the Military Posture state-
ment cover only the part of FY82 that
disguises a massive bulge in US sales.
There is also no indication that such
arms deliveries (what is included is never
defined) have nothing to do with the
total US military assistance program.
This is made all too clear on the same
page of the Military Posture statement
that shows arms delivery data. The Joint
Chiefs' table shows that the US delivered
only $4.5-billion worth of arms during
the first six months of FY82, but the text
indicates that the FY82 FMS program
totaled nearly $22-billion.
Both the Secretary's and Chiefs' fig-
ures seem to conflict with the Defense
Security Assistance Agency's statistics
on FMS sales deliveries, published in the
1981 edition of Foreign Military Sales
and Military Assistance Facts. The
DSAA data show that the US delivered
$8.3-billion worth of FMS and MAP
sales in FY81, vs. the $4.9-billion report-
ed for the same year in the JCS table.
This same document shows that the US
had over $40-billion worth of undeliv-
ered FMS and MAP agreements in
1981, long before $22-billion was added
in the FY82 program. Without the sup-
porting text to explain the conflicts be-
tween these figures, one is forced to be-
lieve that the USSR gives its clients six
to 12 times as many weapons per "dol-
lar." This is scarcely the argument the
US should be making to its allies.
Finally, the risk of presenting over-
simplified "punchline" data is illustrated
by the fact that the only way the Secre-
tary of Defense can estimate that there
are 20 times as many Soviet military
technicians serving in Third World
countries as US military technicians is to
(a) ignore all US civilian personnel per-
forming the same functions and (b)
count the entire Soviet invasion force in
Afghanistan.
"Thugs"? Yes. "Invaders"? Yes.
"Technicians"? Hardly.
This is no way to persuade anyone to
fund military assistance, or to persuade
the new Congress that the US is not
overselling arms. It is also no way to
persuade the Third World that the
threat is being driven by the USSR
Not only is seven-eighths of the world
more interested in this aspect of the bal-
ance than any other, virtually all politi-
cal and military confrontations between
the US and USSR now occur in areas
primarily affected by arms sales, advi-
sors, training, and proxy forces.
What is needed is a net assessment
that builds on documents like the State
Department's Conventional Arms Trans-
fers in the Third World, 1972-1981, is-
sued last August, and the very report
that the Director of Central Intelligence
has eliminated, Communist Aid Activities
in Non-Communist Less Developed
Countries, last issued in October of 1980.
The Lack of Balance in the FY84
Military Posture Statement
The omissions in the FY84 Military
Posture statement of the Joint Chiefs are
less obvious. There is some current in-
formation on the balance. These data are
shown in Tables Two, Three and Four of
this article. They are scarcely of much
use trying to track with data published
in previous years, however, and may ac-
tually end up disguising the absence of
more useful information from the Con-
gress, press, and public.
In fairness to the Chiefs, these data
are not what several wanted. One Ser-
vice Chief came within the thin edge of
refusing to endorse the document for its
lack of substance. It is also obvious that
much of the data on the US-Soviet and
NATO-Warsaw Pact balance was de-
leted at the last minute. The ground,
naval, and air tables all bear headings
that indicate they should cover 1982 and
1988, but the 1988 data were deleted just
before press time.
In fact, the deletion came so late in
the process that one senior OSD official
and at least one Service Chief had no
idea that the data had been removed
from the final edition. They were even
removed from the Secret version of the
Military Posture report provided to key
Congressional committees who have to
decide on the FY84 defense budget.
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The Conventional Land and Air
Balance: Persuading Congress and
Our Allies Not to Cut Their Forces
Nothing is provided on the land and
air balances except the point estimates
shown in Table Three. These do nothing
to flag the dangers to the West that are
inherent in further cuts to conventional
forces. If anything, these tables and the
supporting text in the FY84 Annual Re-
port and Military Posture statement en-
courage the feeling that the fighting in
Lebanon and the Falklands, and in the
Iran-Iraq War, has demonstrated the su-
periority of Western tactical weapons.
The key uncertainties raised by the
T-80, the BDRM-2, and the rest of the
next generation of Soviet armored fight-
ing vehicles and armored personnel car-
riers, new Soviet artillery weapons, and
new Soviet antitank and antiair guided
missiles are virtually or entirely ignored.
The same is true of the fact that the
Warsaw Pact has a whole new genera-
tion of fighters in active production or
on the edge of production. The impact of
the Su-25, Su-27, MiG-29, and a new
Soviet AWACs is not portrayed or dis-
cussed.
There is no conceivable point in con-
cealing the Soviet threat from the USSR,
or in hiding the fact that US intelligence
quickly detects such systems. There is
vast merit in showing the American
people and our allies the trends in the
balance, and the fact that the present
tactical program is not a needless expen-
diture in defense, but rather a critical
investment in minimal deterrence.
The Naval Balance: Keeping the
Shipbuilding Program Afloat
The sparse data on the naval balance
follow the same trend. Table Four shows
all of the comparisons provided in the
FY84 Military Posture, statement. The
good news is that a projection is provid-
ed beyond 1982. The bad news is that
most of the data in Table Four are mis-
leading and fail to put the need for a
strong Navy in perspective.
The data on principal surface combat-
ants show only ship numbers, and not
relative displacement. This grossly exag-
gerates the threat because the Soviet
Union has many low-capability ships in
this category, and the US does not. Pre-
vious editions of the Military Posture
statement have always been careful to
make this point and show both curves.
In contrast, the Navy should have
thought long and hard about the curves
? for naval aircraft trends shown in Table
Four. Does it really serve anyone's inter-
est to ignore the Backfire and land-based
air threat to US and NATO naval
forces? Should air data be presented
without showing the missile threat?
Does the decline in Soviet forces be-
?
trend the US should plan for?
As for the other data in Table Four,
there is a serious need to analyze the
true amphibious balance, and not pub-
lisp nonsense numbers based on ship
counts. It is the trend in range, perfor-
mance, and lift capacity over time that
counts, and which should be used to
help defend the proposals to strengthen
USCENTCOM and RDF capabilities.
urgent the US building program is? Do
they give a picture of the changing na-
ture of Soviet capabilities? The answer is
obvious. The implied "balance" is far
too optimistic.
The Strategic Balance: No Report
on Effectiveness or the
Vulnerability Gap
There is a need for similar data on airlift The worst of the problems in both
and power projection capabilities in the posture statements is shown in Table
Persian -Gulf, particularly at a time Two. The weapons and delivery system
when the force improvement plans may shown for FY84 are the only data pub-
lose momentum because of a recession- fished on the strategic balance. They tell
induced "oil glut." nothing about the shifts in the vulnera-
Finally, does Table Four really show bility gap, the impact of the cruise mis-
what the American people need to know sile, the problems caused by the delay in
about the submarine problem? Do these the M-X program the timin and im-
tween 1980 and 19t:n .e., n., --- +u- i ,oo, r.-..-~. ---,,..._-- - _ ? -- t _ . _ .. ' _ g
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The Theater Nuclear Balance: The
Need to Inform the Alliance
The situation is just as bad in the case
of the theater nuclear balance. This is an
area where the Administration desper-
ately needs to state its case and issue a
warning. Both the US and NATO need
leadership and facts. The West has a
broad need to know that the SS-20 has
been improved and that a successor is
already in testing. It needs to see projec-
tions of the trend in SS-21, SS-22, and
SS-23 deployment. It needs to under-
stand just who it is who is deploying
more and more nuclear strike aircraft
while the US and NATO are cutting
their forces. It needs to see that the War-
saw Pact is building up its nuclear artil-
lery strength while NATO is cutting its
short-range forces.
The Joint Chiefs made a first step at
this last year. They provided three dif-
ferent estimates of the theater nuclear
balance. This year they were only al-
lowed to present one, and the data in
this year's Military Posture statement are
a travesty of what is required. They por-
tray the balance as 0 for US and NATO
systems to 581 intermediate-range Soviet
systems. This provides no new insights
of any kind. Worse, these figures are not
supported by any text that helps explain
the US analysis of the balance.
This is particularly critical in light of
the totally different figures issued by the
Soviet Union, the IISS, and US experts.
The Soviet Union faces no restraints on
propagandizing its view of the balance,
as is shown in Whence the Threat to
Peace, or in altering its numbers at the
?
trade-off between deploying the B-1B
and the removal of the B-52D from the
force structure, and the impact of deacti-
vating the Titan II.
While the Reagan strategic program
seems strong and fundamentally sound,
it is hard to dismiss the notion that this
deletion of information could be a delib-
erate effort to disguise the fact that the
"vulnerability gap" will grow to the
point where it might become far worse
under the Reagan Administration than
was projected under the Carter Admin-
istration. The delay in the M-X pro-
gram, problems in deployment of vari-
ous cruise missiles, and the timing of the
phaseout of Titan II and the B-52D hint
data on the strategic balance in his elec-
tion year posture statements that Caspar
Weinberger has eliminated from his
FY84 posture statements. There is also
no hint of the reappraisal-which Wein-
berger said (in his FY83 Annual Report)
was underway-"of our methods of as-
sessing the strategic nuclear balance."
arms control talks to eliminate large
numbers of Soviet systems and count
Western systems which have only a mar-
ginal nuclear mission at best. Where the
JCS counts 0 systems for NATO, the
Soviet balance in Whence the Threat to
Peace counts no systems for the Soviet
Union. It instead counts a totally exag-
gerated 2,200 nuclear artillery weapons
and 1,002 US nuclear strike fighters, and
projects a fantastic 8,000 nuclear Har-
poon and Tomahawk missiles for 1990.
The IISS has improved its counts in
recent years, but makes no projections
and still severely underestimates the size
and trend of the Warsaw Pact thrust. It
shows the Pact as having 2,297 war-
heads available vs. 799 to 1,199 for
NATO. Experts like Donald Cotter,
who served as the Chief Assistant on
nuclear matters to Secretaries Schlesing-
that if the Administration had nublished I said if Harold Brown had eliminated the I er. Rumsfeld. and Brown, have pub-
Approved For Release 2007/10/19: CIA-RDP85M00363R000901960021-8
the same data as it did in FY83, the
projections would be much worse.
This, however, is scarcely a reason not
to publish such data. Such a trend is
scarcely the fault of the Reagan Admin-
istration. It is, if anything, a powerful
warning to the Congress and those who
would rush into arms control before we
are ready. The Department of Defense
has simply thrown away a priceless op-
portunity to explain the need for US
strategic force modernization.
It also is not entirely possible to dis-
miss the issue of fair play. The Reagan
Presidential campaign capitalized on the
Stealth incident. One only has to imag-
ine what Candidate Reagan would have
 Approved For Release 2007/10/19: CIA-RDP85M00363R000901960021-8
fished convincing estimates that show
the Warsaw Pact has a 6:1 advantage in
total nuclear delivery systems and a 4:1
advantage in missile systems. Cotter,
however, counts a total of 6,985-7,535
warheads for NATO vs. 12,116 for the
? Warsaw Pact. This is far more warheads
than the IISS counts even if one makes
maximum allowance for definitional dif-
ferences.
This situation cannot be dealt with by
issuing a few "cartoons," which is how
some senior European officials described
to AF1 the artist's illustration of an
SS-20 in. Weinberger's 1981 edition of
Soviet Military Power. They had urged
the US to release a photograph of it, so
they could show protesters in Europe
that the SS-20 threat is a real one.
The Balance and the Need
for Hard Truths
There is something curiously alien
about what has happened in this year's
set of posture statements. One does not
have to refer back to the Federalist Pa-
pers or John Stuart Mill to realize that
one of the fundamental principles of our
democracy has always been to tell the
public as much as possible, and to let
our political system strike the balance
between requirements and resources.
Information and truth can be the
strongest defense of a strong defense-
and are needed most. Solid conservatives
like Senator John Tower have, in fact,
already pointed this out to the Adminis-
tration. Senator Tower struck just the
right note in a recent op-ed piece in the
Washington Post "I have urged the Ad-
ministration to declassify and release
Ifacts about Soviet military power] to the
American public. I am convinced that the
better Americans understand the nature
of the threat our Nation faces, the better
prepared they will be to deal with it."
Whatever the motive behind the dele-
tions of military balance data from this
year's posture statements, the results are
to deprive the people, Congress, and me-
dia of an intelligent explanation of the
defense budget they are being asked to
support.
There is no alternative source of the
information missing from this year's de-
fense reports. Private research groups
and other governments depend on open
US analysis to provide a meaningful per-
spective on the balance. No other group
has the resources.
Thus, the American intelligence com-
munity must take part, to the extent
possible within the limits of security, in
the debate and discussion of the threat it
-nillyzes. Without that, President Rea-
an's defense buildup will be crippled by
self-inflicted wounds. ^ * ^
Subscriptions: Call 202-296-0450
1 ? Non-Projections
STRATEGIC NucLEAR FORCES
i Nil
44
Approved For Release 2007/10/19: CIA-RDP85M00363R000901960021-8 d/March 1983