Nuclear Weapons and the Abm Debate

Nuclear Weapons and the ABM Debate

At the beginning of our time on this earth, mankind was learning to stand up. Upon walking a good many steps on this world, mankind moved across the lands living off of its fruit and meat. Then we decided to stop moving and mankind developed cultivation skills to better serve us. Since then mankind has grown by leaps and bounds over the kingdoms and empires of old. Growth was spurred by conquest. It was almost as if man was born to kill or be killed. Although riddled with turmoil the age that would surpass these days would always be over the cliff of a far horizon. These events passed in cycles. Peace to follow war. Aggression came from suppression. Mankind moved through the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution in the same cycles only to develop to a more complex system of beautiful and tragic events. As the most tragic event to ever fall from the skies came the atomic bomb that shook the world into the nuclear age. Ever since this devastating event, the entire world is being held hostage by the people in power of these objects of destruction. As with any hostile situation, any person would want to prevent the offensive acts of an aggressor to end in bloodshed. However, this is all too different when dealing with the definitive defense of nuclear weapons. One can't merely deter an attack that can potentially destroy an entire city. This is what started the entire anti-ballistic missile debate. In this paper I will discuss three major points that I feel help support my position of being against the development of ABM systems: cost, effectiveness, and focus.

What are the basic forces behind ABM deployment and what do they really demand? A considerable answer to this question may be found in the testimony of Donald Hornig, Lyndon Johnson's Special Assistant for Science and Technology and Chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). Hornig served in these capacities for five years, from 1964 through 1968. He therefore had had the opportunity to watch the parade of the various versions of ABM from a grandstand seat for as long a time as anyone. Like all the other former Special Assistants to the President for Science and Technology, he opposed the deployment of ABM regarding the "Safeguard system". He said "If I were convinced that the protection of a credible deterrent was indeed the eventual goal and that Safeguard was the best way to protect that deterrent, I would support it. But the uneasy feeling persists that although Presidents may change, Secretaries of Defense may come and go, the philosophies enunciated by political leaders may change, and the design of our ABM system hardly changes at all. It includes the same radars, the same rockets, and largely the same deployment which was contemplated for the "heavy" defense. Safeguard continues to look like a first step toward a much bigger, more expensive and still ineffective system."(York 213)

This brings me to my first point: cost. The ABM appeared to have all the characteristics of a solution in search of a problem. This characteristic shows up all too often in defense research and development programs, especially in the field of nuclear weaponry. A possibly fundamental reason why the ABM decision came up in 1969 was that ten years earlier Secretary of Defense McElroy, in dividing up the space and missile roles and missions among the three services, assigned the ABM to the Army as its only sophisticated missile program. This decision created a situation in which for many years the lives and careers of many able persons had been closely entwined with the life and fate of one single program: the Army's ABM. This not only included the civilians employed in the program office and by the main contractors, it also included uniformed personnel and a slew of part-time advisers at all levels. The testimony given by persons who were part-time advisers to the defense establishment and who were also in favor of the deployment of the present ABM system, they for the most part favor Safeguard not as an end in itself, not for the purposes which the President laid down, but rather as a prototype of something else much bigger and much more complex and enormously more expensive. They wanted a grand system which they hoped could protect not only the deterrent but also the rest of what goes to make up the United States of America. (York 214) They wanted to do a job which certainly couldn't be done even with pixie dust. Looking at the problem this way, we can see why it is almost impossible for the United States to build even a "thin" ABM system. However, during the 1969 ABM debates, several ways for making a more effective system were discussed. These usually involved both making the system thicker with much larger amounts of equipment and removing the most serious spots of attack. Some suggested that this last be done by duplicating or even tripling the large missile-site radars. Others suggested that the radar part of the system be completely redesigned with the objective of replacing the current large single radar with a large number of small cheap radars.(York 217) Such ideas could certainly be a part of a system that would be effective in a political implication. However, such a system would be extremely expensive and would make a difference only in circumstances that poised everything else as looking favorable to a preemptive attack. In the 1960's the U.S. had spent $20 billion on ABM research and development. The Pentagon defense budget in 1969 was now up to $81 billion. In 1968 the world spent $200 billion for armaments. It is the responsibility of the civilians in our society to determine priorities. (Herbst 4)

After assessing how much this system would cost, there was the second question of was it going to work and was it going to be effective. There are three fundamental questions that one could ask about it working. First, will it work on the test range? That is, will it regularly and reliably intercept the best mockups we know how to make of enemy warheads? Studying this question is an essential part of the design and development of any system. Experimentally verifying these conditions in a test range will give a high promise that such confidence may be obtained. An ABM system that works only under these circumstances is a definite possibility in developing. Second, will it really work when the "balloon goes up"? That is, if an enemy launches a real warhead at a time of his choosing, will an operational unit manned by regular troops be able to intercept it? Here we are dealing again with the difference between the test range and the real world. It is impossible to be absolutely certain to this type of question. For these military systems we have to rely on theoretical