the arms race, unless these plans are prevented from turning into reality. SUMMARY I have presented technical evidence that the actual SAFEGUARD deployment contrasts sharply with the justification stated by the President: SAFEGUARD does very little if anything in protecting MINUTEMAN, and cheaper and sounder solutions are at hand. As an anti-China defense SAFEGUARD falls woefully short of the goal set by the President for a "virtually infallible" defense. Yet despite, and possibly because of, these inadequacies, SAFEGUARD can only be interpreted as an entering step toward a "thick" city defense-a move which will be enormously costly and which is universally adadmitted to lead to another round in the arms race. The sequence of events between last year's SAFEGUARD decision. and this year's request for expansion gives little confidence that we are embarking on an "orderly, phased" deployment, carefully tailored to changing circumstances. This is the time to halt the nuclear arms spiral-a race which is wasteful of our resources at best, and which endangers the survival of civilization. Thank you. (Additional information received by the committee subsequent to Dr. Panofsky's appearance follows.) STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER, Hon. JOHN STENNIS, U.S. Senate, Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR STENNIS: As a supplement to the testimony which gave before the Committee on Armed Services of the U.S. Senate on May 19, 1970, I should like to submit a graphical representation of the threat against MINUTEMAN together with the possible protection which SAFEGUARD can provide. I believe this graphical presentation documents better than any other testimony I have seen why there is so much difference in view among the various witnesses heard, while the facts are actually totally convincing how little protection SAFEGUARD buys for its total investment cost of $5.9 billion for the modified Phase II-a deployment. The attached chart, which is based on public information, shows the evolution of the number of warheads of sufficient accuracy and explosive power to destroy MINUTEMAN silos which the Soviets have deployed, or might deploy. Until today this number is identical to the number of SS-9's which the Soviets have deployed; as you know, there is at this time no evidence that a MIRV which can attack more than one MINUTEMAN silo has been developed and none of the other USSR missiles has the power to endanger MINUTEMAN. I am also assuming that once the number of potentially lethal attackers against MINUTEMAN silos reaches a "danger level" of 700, then the survival of MINUTEMAN as an independent component of the U.S. deterrent forces might be endangered because only 300 might remain. If you extrapolate the present rate of growth of the threat the "danger level" would not be reached until about 1980. This is all we can say definitely from today's knowledge; anything else is a speculative projection. If one assumes that Soviet installation of "silo killers" will level off or be limited by SALT the "danger level" will never be reached; if the Soviets decide to put a very large effort into developing and deploying MIRV's for the SS-9 force, or if the Soviets decide to upgrade the SS-9 force, or if the Soviets decide to upgrade the SS-11 force with extremely high accuracy re-entry vehicles, then the danger level can be reached before the middle of this decade. The graph indicates how the danger region (illustrated by diagonal shading) would be adjusted if the modified SAFEGUARD Phase II-a were deployed and worked as designed. In that case the danger zone would be raised to become the area shown in dots. It is clear from this graph that for SAFEGUARD to have any significant effectiveness at all the Soviets would have to "tailor" their threat to correspond to the very small area where the two danger zones differ; it would surely be improbable indeed if the Soviets were to choose to do just that. Clearly, for the Soviets to plan a counterforce strike against MINUTEMAN they would have to allow for a factor of safety to compensate for failure in performance of their missiles. This factor of safety is apt to be a great deal larger than that small area which designates the difference between the danger zones with or without SAFEGUARD deployment. It is on the basis of these facts that I have testified before your committee that the protection offered by SAFEGUARD for the MINUTEMAN force is "negligible." WOLFGANG K. H. PANOFSKY, Director. '71 COMMITTEE PROCEDURE Chairman STENNIS. Thank you very much, Doctor. That is a very impressive statement. Members of the committee, as I said, we have Dr. Wohlstetter here. We have an hour and ten minutes before 12 o'clock. I want '72 73 74 YEAR every member to have the best possible chance to ask questions that you may wish. Just to get something before you, shall we let our next witness get into his statement now and then ask questions? Unless someone is pressured, it seems that would be the most logical thing to do. Senator? Senator SYMINGTON. Mr. Chairman, I have to leave the hearing now and would hope that the executive session could extend into this afternoon. Chairman STENNIS. Oh, yes. Senator SYMINGTON. Because the witness states there are other additional reasons why he thinks this is wrong from many aspects, I would like a chance this afternoon to question Dr. Panofsky and also the other witnesses if possible. Chairman STENNIS. Oh. yes, Well, I am devoting the day to this and we will be right here. You would want to question in open or closed session or both? Senator SYMINGTON. I do not think we can get very far in open session because this is such a technical problem, I would rather wait for the closed session. Chairman STENNIS. I do want any member of the committee that wishes to ask questions in open session to have full opportunity. If it is agreeable with the membership, we will proceed to our next valued witness and get his statement. We will have questions in open session and then additional testimony in closed session. We do have two additional witnesses for the closed session, too. All right, Doctor, I have already expressed our pleasure in having you here with us and you may proceed in your own good way. STATEMENT OF MR. ALBERT WOHLSTETTER, UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PROGRAM SUPPORT Dr. WOHLSTETTER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am honored to appear again before you to present my views on the importance of continuing the SAFEGUARD program. SAFEGUARD is one part of a response to the problems presented by the growth of the Russian SLBM and ICBM force and by the new state of the art of strategic offense and defense weapons. These problems are extraordinarily complex. They involve not only many physical data but also much information and experience on production, construction, and deployment schedules for military systems; the coordination of large-scale military operations; estimates of the joint or separate marginal economic costs of multipurpose systems and their elements; judgments not only of costs but of effects-including indirect political and military effects on a variety of allies and potential adversaries, and on the stability of useful arms control agreements; and, finally, basic questions of strategic doctrine and objectives. While most of my professional life has been spent in evaluating precisely such diverse information as an aid to decisionmaking in defense and arms control, and though I have had direct experience on several of the components of this complex decision, it should be clear that no one is an expert on all its elements. I will, however, try to give you my best judgment as an individual. I am, of course, speaking for myself alone, not for my university, nor for any of the gov ernmental and nongovernmental agencies for which I consult. I shall deal with several specifics of the performance and costs of alternative ways of achieving some of the stated purposes of SAFEGUARD. I shall ask: Are there cheaper and quicker responsible ways to assure the goal of MINUTEMAN survival? How important and how feasible are the area defense objectives of SAFEGUARD? But I would like also to consider the relation of SAFEGUARD's several purposes to our basic political and military strategic objectives. RELEVANT ARTICLE ON ABM To reduce any unnecessary repetition and to economize on the committee's time, I would like to put into the record at this time my statements to the committee last year in a version that has some added documentation, and also a short article that I wrote during the summer, when it appeared that the serious and complex issues of the debate were in danger of caricature as a battle between the forces of light and darkness. The title of the article therefore is "Good Guys, Bad Guys, and the ABM." With your permission I would like to insert these in the record. Chairman STENNIS. Without objection, they will be placed in the record. (The documents follow :) |