Originally OCRed 17 JUL 2010
Slightly Revised
27 OCT 2021
STUDY S-467
THE EVOLUTION OF U.S. STRATEGIC COMMAND AND CONTROL AND WARNING, 1945-1972 (U)
PART
TWO
1954-1960
XI. STRATEGIC CONTEXT
It is useful to recall the perspective from which American leaders viewed the strategic arms competition with the Soviet Union and the problem of command and control of strategic forces at the beginning of the 1954-60 period. Perhaps the keynote of that perspective lies in the earlier designation of 1954 as the "year of maximum danger" in the 1951-52 planning of the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Communist attack in Korea, following hard on the Berlin blockade, the fall of China, and Soviet attainment of nuclear status, had been viewed both in Europe and the United States as the opening round in a new expansionist phase of Soviet policy. One historian of the period described the reaction of American leaders as follows:
Within military circles—JCS and the Office of the Secretary of Defense—the feeling prevailed that general war with the Soviet Union was almost inevitable and might be imminent. The Korean war demonstrated, they believed, the Russians' willingness to employ war as an instrument of national policy. And by 1954--some said 1952—the Soviet Union would be able to devastate the United States with atomic bombs. Many national leaders also believed that limited wars had become abnormal, and that Korea might be the last such conflict. Therefore, the United States could not permit its involvement in the Korean war to divert it from preparing to deter or fight a general war with the Soviet Union.2
The strategic premise (chiefly propounded by the Air Force) had become widely accepted that in a future war with the Soviet Union there would be no time to arm, as there had been in the past, so that the forces with which the war was to be fought must be largely "in being" at its beginning. It was also generally agreed among US political leaders that US strategic-nuclear forces constituted the primary deterrent against Soviet aggression, and after the Korean attack, it had been decided that the strength of those forces must be accelerated on an urgent basis. Procurement of the B-47 medium jet bomber, which was just beginning to enter SAC's inventory in 1951, had been substantially increased and a series of measures to improve SAC's striking capability had been undertaken, including the provision of tanker support and the construction of a network of overseas bases. At the same time, development of the B-52, which had been initiated in 1946 and which promised to bring the Air Force much nearer to its dream of true intercontinental bombing capability, had been speeded up, with this heavy jet bomber coming into production in early 1954.3 In conjunction with the bomber acceleration, production of atomic weapons had been increased, and the development of new weapons, including the hydrogen bomb, had been given high priority.
Events in the Soviet Union had meanwhile heightened the arms race tension. It was known that since 1947 the Soviet TU-4 copy of the B-29 bomber had been produced in quantity, and that other aircraft and missile development programs were being urgently pushed. In 1953, the Soviets had carried out a flight test of what was to become their first operational MRBM (the 630-mile range SS-3). Then, in the same year, they shocked US leaders by exploding a thermonuclear bomb before US attainment of this stage of nuclear development, thus confirming the impression of a secretive and immensely powerful monolith-marshalling all its scientific and economic resources to surpass the United States militarily.
Spurred by these events, in October 1953 the National Security Council had concluded a long period of debate over US air defense requirements with a decision to intensify plans and actions for continental air defense. The mid-Canada radar warning line was accelerated, along with the Airborne Early Warning and Seaward Extension programs; a new program for development of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense control system was initiated; and plans for the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line were approved, with the objective of achieving three-to-six hours warning of aircraft attack. The US in-being warning capability was still relatively primitive, however, and the NSC decisions did not bring to an end the controversy that had raged for so long over the priority that air defense and warning should receive in the nation's strategic policies.
The Soviets, for their part, in 1951-53 appear to have gone through something akin to their own version of an assessment of "maximum danger"—and this at a time of touchy internal transition in their own top leadership.4 Whatever the internal difficulties, decisions clearly were made to accelerate Soviet strategic bomber production. Development programs had already been initiated under Stalin either just before or during the first years of the Korean war for three new aircraft: the Badger (TU-16) medium jet bomber, and two intercontinental bombers, the pure-jet Bison (M-4) and the turboprop Bear (TU-95). In May 1954, the Badger and the Bison were publicly flown in Moscow. A year later the Badger and Bison were flown in operational-unit numbers, and the Bear was unveiled. The ingredients were now all to hand that were to lead shortly to US predictions of a coming "bomber gap." Increasingly worrisome questions were also to be raised regarding the US ability to detect an in-coming bomber attack in sufficient time for SAC to avoid massive destruction, and even more regarding the effectiveness of the US process for launching and controlling the strategic-nuclear force in a retaliatory strike, under conditions of a Soviet surprise attack.
A. THE NEW LOOK
The Eisenhower administration thus entered 1954 with the conviction that "the crisis was permanent" and that war with the Soviet Union—if it came—might begin with little or no warning. On the other hand, the United States could not allow itself to be nibbled to death by a number of local aggressions, like the attack in Korea or the steadily worsening situation in Indochina. Financial limitations alone would not permit preparations to fight every kind of war. In October 1953, NSC-162 had already decreed that military spending for fy55 must be reduced below that for fy54. A "New Look" must be taken at US defense problems in order to bring requirements and capabilities into better balance. President Eisenhower summarized his new defense policy in his State of the Union message to Congress on 7 January 1954. He declared that the United States would emphasize air power, mobile forces that could be held in strategic reserve and readily deployed to meet sudden aggression, continental air defense, a mobilization base that could be swiftly converted from partial to all-out mobilization, and a professional corps of trained officers and men. Eisenhower envisaged a defense establishment that could meet "a twofold requirement—preparedness for the essential initial tasks in case a general war should be forced upon us, and maintenance of the capability to cope with lesser hostile actions—and aimed to satisfy this requirement with less drain on our manpower and financial resources."5
The most dramatic statement of the Eisenhower administration's new defense policy was in Secretary of State Dulles' controversial "massive retaliation" address to the Council on Foreign Relations on 12 January 1954.
Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.6
Dulles explained that the basic decision of President Eisenhower and the National Security Council was "to depend primarily upon a great capacity to retaliate."7 The address touched off a storm of discussion, among both critics and defenders, as to just what the new policy meant. In any event, it clearly implied a requirement for a national command and control system that would permit US decisionmakers to make precise assessments of distant crises and then to take rapid responsive action that might presumably even include initiating a nuclear World War III. No such precise, sophisticated system existed in 1954, however, and indeed the national concern was preponderantly with building the forces rather than the means for controlling them.
B. DISPUTE OVER STRATEGIC DOCTRINE
Even with the basic decisions taken in the "New Look," there was no consensus in the mid-1950s—even within the Air Force, much less in wider circles—as to just how US strategic air power should be used in a future war. Indeed, the entire decade of the 1950s was one of the most turbulent in the history of US strategic thinking, as both political and military leaders struggled to come to grips with the problems posed by unprecedented weapons and threats and vulnerabilities. There was general agreement that the most immediate threat was to Western Europe, because of the weakened condition of the countries there and the overwhelming Soviet military strength on the ground.8 It was also widely assumed that US strategic-nuclear power constituted the most effective US response to that threat. But there was little agreement as to how SAC would interact with other forces in the defense of Europe or even regarding the kinds of targets against which SAC's bombers should be directed. The future of the US command and control system would be significantly influenced by the manner In which these disagreements we're resolved.
The fundamental problem involved the delineation of the circumstances that might bring the strategic-nuclear forces into action. It appeared fairly clear, of course, that if the Soviet "hordes" launched a massive attack against Western Europe, and the attack were accompanied by Soviet nuclear strikes at airfields, depots, ports, and other rear-area targets, the war would probably lead quickly to a general nuclear exchange in which SAC would be totally involved. On the other hand, SAC's role was not nearly so clear If one posited a more limited Soviet aggression. Indeed, from the beginning it had been one of NATO's continuing (declaratory) objectives to build up its ground strength so that a plausible defense might be possible, using European forces alone, against a less-than-all-out Soviet attack.9 Also virtually from the beginning, however the British—already suffering from a chronic economic crisis— had argued against major preparations to fight a ground war and in favor of primary reliance upon British and American strategic nuclear capabilities committed almost Immediately against a Soviet attack. Not only would this strategy lessen the logistical and manpower burden on the Allies, they insisted out deterrence would thereby be maximized.
The doctrinal dispute extended well beyond the question of when the strategic air forces should be committed; it involved also the targets against which SAC should be utilized in the event of a Soviet attack. The Lisbon force goals, enunciated in 1952, had provided for the mobilization of 96 divisions during a period in which SAC would delay the Soviet advance by nuclear "retardation" strikes. Increasingly, however, European nations other than the British had come to see this objective as too costly in terms of manpower and too doubt-ful of success to be acceptable, and little progress had been made in meeting the Lisbon goals. Moreover, SAC itself was unenthusiastic about the "retardation" mission, both because of anticipated difficulties in locating and destroying the projected targets and, more importantly, because it called for a diversion of SAC capabilities from what were conceived to be more vital targets in the Soviet homeland.
With the New Look, and the advent of nuclear weapons that could be delivered by tactical air forces and even by the ground forces, the NATO Council in 1954 resolved that member nations would use nuclear weapons from the outset of a war, thus permitting a reduction in the size of the ground forces thought necessary. Under the new NATO strategy, the local defense forces would provide a "shield" at the forward defense line in Europe, while nuclear strikes flown by the Strategic Air Command, the British Bomber Command, and the US naval forces would wield the "sword."
The new strategy did not relieve SAC of all retardation strikes, however, and it raised additional problems not only of coordinating atomic strikes by the various force's but, even more important in the eyes of SAC, of priorities in the allocation of nuclear weapons—weapons that in the very recent past SAC had considered uniquely its own. Thus, for example, in June 1955, General LeMay, after reviewing the nuclear weapons allocations for US forces for FY56, wrote to General N. F. Twining, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, protesting the allocation of nuclear weapons to any fighters (including SAC's own) until every SAC bomber was allocated a high-yield weapon. The Strategic Air Command, he said, possessed the only force with a proven capability to deliver atomic weapons, almost regardless of circumstances, and the only control structure to launch a fully coordinated strike; yet, he noted, only 200 SAC bombing aircraft had been provided with weapons, which left one-third of the command's force, Including all fighter aircraft, without weapons. He was unable to see how such a decision could be justified:
In effect it indicates that more weight is being given to holding a defensive line in Europe than to the prevention of atomic attacks on US cities. It implies that there is as great a threat involved in retreat in any theater as In loss of the air battle. It means the American people have invested millions of dollars in aircraft and air crews for which collateral plans have not provided ample weapons.10
(k') General Twining rejected General LeMay's proposals, and this recognition by the Air Force itself of a wider set of strategic priorities than those of the Strategic Air Command was promptly dubbed by the SAC staff "obeisance to the theater concept."11 But the issues at stake in this controversy went well beyond the simple question of allocation of nuclear weapons among competing types of forces, or the problems of interservice rivalry. At bottom was the continuing strategic dilemma that the New Look had initially attempted to resolve—-whether the enemy could best be deterred, or defeated, by a capability to strike directly at his homeland (including his strategic forces), or by a more diverse capability to "contain" and counter his aggressive thrusts on a wide variety of fronts. Also contained within the dispute were the seeds of a parallel one with great significance for command and control. If SAC's point of view were accepted, regarding both its own role and preferred strategy, then the case could be made that the primary command and control problem was to get the execution order to SAC—and SAC did tend to see the problem thus. But If the nation's leaders wished to retain a wider spectrum of options, and to exercise those options as they themselves assessed the situation, then a much more complex command and control system was required. As the decade of the 1950s passed, and especially after the Kennedy administration took the helm in 196l, there was to be an increasing tendency by the nation's political leaders to insist upon greater control on their part of a wider variety of options in crisis situations.
Subsumed within General LeMay's use of the term "the air battle," in the previously quoted statement, was an implied point of view on yet another wide-ranging controversy that was also related to the targeting of US strategic-nuclear forces—the issue of "counterforce" versus "war potential." In insisting upon winning the "air battle," LeMay was emphasizing the counterforce side of the argument, although Air Force leaders had long accepted the fact that enemy industrial potential should also be a major objective of US strategic forces. Prior to 1950, LeMay said, he had been willing to "violate the principles of war and forget about the rulebook and go about leisurely destroying their war potential or taking on any other task that seemed desirable at the time."12 By 1953, however, the Soviets had an atomic stockpile plus a growing delivery capability, and LeMay accordingly concluded that "we have to go back to the rulebook and the principles of war and fight the air battle first, which means that we must as quickly as possible destroy their capability of doing damage to us."13 In February 1954, General Twining gave full Air Force approval to the counterforce doctrine, stating: "We can now aim directly to disarm an enemy rather than to destroy him as was so often necessary in wars of the past."14
Thus, in 1954, as a result of the perception of a growing Soviet strategic threat and an increased US capability to counter, it, "blunting" the enemy's ability to launch a nuclear attack on the United States was the JCS-assigned, first-priority mission of SAC, followed next by retardation of the massing and launching of enemy ground forces, and then by the systematic destruction of enemy war-sustaining resources.15 The command and control system to support a US counterforce war—including repeated restrikes against surviving Soviet targets—was, once again, in a primitive state at best in 1954, especially in a context not only of Soviet strategic retaliation but presumably of a Soviet first-strike. The controversy over strategic targeting did not die, meanwhile, and was repeatedly to be revived in the future, especially in connection with new weapons developments, such as the Polaris submarine or proposed deep penetration bombers, that appeared to emphasize one type of capability over another.
C. SAC OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS
We have commented earlier on one of the reasons for SAC's lack of enthusiasm for the "retardation" mission-—i.e., the difficulty in locating and striking specific, and perhaps moving, targets. This lack of adequate target intelligence, while most severe in the "retardation" case, was only one aspect of a more general operational problem that was to plague SAC throughout most of the 1950s and was not to be alleviated until major returns were received from the U-2 and satellite intelligence sources. Prior to this time, and especially in the first two-thirds of the decade, virtually all conceivable sources, including defectors, public libraries, commercial and cultural records, and the like, were assiduously exploited for bits of information that might add to the little already known concerning most targets.16 Meanwhile, SAC's potential effectiveness, especially against limited-area or moving targets, was to remain much more of an open question than was ever acceptable to the responsible military leaders.
Another major operational problem faced by SAC in 1954 and that persisted in one form or another for a number of years thereafter, was the protracted and enormously complex nature of the strike itself, once the decision was made to launch it. Without a true intercontinental bombing capability—i.e., aircraft that could depart the United States, fly to the most distant targets in the Soviet Union, and return to the United States without refueling—a variety of auxiliary measures, entailing countless minutely planned and costly preparations, were required to get bombing aircraft over their targets. Most important of these measures, of course, was the construction of overseas bases. The United Kingdom had at first constituted almost the sole available location for SAC's purposes, but the UK's vulnerability was a source of continuing and growing concern. After the Korean war, there was developed as a matter of the greatest urgency the network of pre- and post-strike bases, chiefly in North Africa, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Greenland, and Japan, as well as the United Kingdom, from which SAC proposed, in effect, to fight the strategic war after the requisite aircraft, supporting equipment and supplies, and personnel had been moved there. As much as possible in the way of housekeeping personnel, maintenance and repair capabilities, and war-reserve materiel could be prepositioned, but the additional requirements for combat personnel, staffs, supplies, and equipment were enormous, and these had to be transported on a schedule of unprecedented complexity and precision. Included in the problem, of course, in addition to those elements related to strategic bombing itself, were the requirements for ground and air defense of the bases, aerial refueling units, and other supporting capabilities. The implications of all this for detailed command and control by SAC, pre-, trans-, and post-strike, were clearly immense.
One last problem must be mentioned, in itself perhaps as significant for SAC operations, for warning, and for the command and control function as all the others, even though its actuality was not to manifest itself until near the end of the decade of the 1950s. That problem was the looming threat of intercontinental missiles. Even though these were possessed oy neither side in 1954 and were not imminently expected,17 and though the Soviet ICBM tests as early as 1957 came as something of a surprise, the entire period of 1954-60 was intimately affected by the realization that long-range missiles, when they appeared operationally, would change all the rules and make obsolete many of the plans, procedures, and existing capabilities of the US strategic-nuclear force. Thus, even while plans went forward to extend at immense cost the early warning network into the Arctic, through construction of the DEW line 2,000 miles north of the US-Canadian boundary, it was fully recognized that the system would be useless against ICBMs and that, even if an effective ballistic missile warning capability should be developed, warning time would then be counted in minutes instead of hours. It was also realized that operational IRBMs with sufficient range to reach SAC overseas bases would be available even earlier. Indeed, as the 1958 Gaither Report gloomily warned, the coming "missile gap" promised to relegate the United States to the position of a second-rank military power.
Every decision, therefore, regarding the Improvement of an existing capability, or the development of a new one, had to be made in the recognition that almost everything would be changed when ICBMs appeared on the scene—and there were wide differences of opinion as to when that might be. The best was the enemy of the good, and throughout the last half of the decade SAC leaders found themselves contending with both the US missile advocates and the threat of the Soviet ICBM in their unending effort to improve SAC's existing capability to perform Its function. Thus, in regard to the prospects for a US ICBM and its implications for strategic bombers, General LeMay was to declare as early as 1955: "I believe it would be courting disaster, to decimate the conventional proven force and its follow-on of the true intercontinental supersonic manned bomber aircraft before the missile system has proven a progressive replacement."18 Meanwhile, as the threat of a Soviet ICBM moved inexorably closer, there was to arise a steadily growing concern with the survival both of the strike force itself and the command, control, and communications systems on which it depended. In turn, as new procedures were implemented to provide for survival even in the face of a surprise missile attack, the resultant problems for the maintenance of effective command and control in a state of advanced readiness and in a post-strike environment were to demand an increasing share of attention from both military and political leaders.
XII. SAC ORGANIZATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
A. BASIC ORGANIZATION
While details of the organization of SAC changed during the period 1954-60, basically the command arrangements were as follows. First, CINCSAC, with headquarters at Offutt AFB, Omaha, Neb., operated as commander of a specified command under the direct operational control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the Air Force as executive agent. Under SAC Headquarters were three numbered air forces—the Second, with headquarters at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport, La.; the Eighth, at Westover AFB, Chicopee Falls, Mass.; and the Fifteenth, at March AFB, Riverside, Calif. There were also three independent numbered overseas air divisions—the 3rd, at Anderson AFB, Guam; the 5th, at Sidi Slimane AFB, French Morocco; and the 7th, at South Ruislip, United Kingdom—all of which were administratively and logis-tically under the control of SAC Headquarters. Operationally, the 3rd and 5th Air Divisions were under the control of the Fifteenth and Second Air Forces, respectively, and the 7th Air Division was under the direct operational control of SAC Headquarters.
In addition, there were five "phonetic" commands and several task forces. A phonetic command, as stated by Headquarters SAC, "is a provisional command element established in a forward area in order that this command may fulfill its responsibility to support other commands under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to insure proper coordination of mutual support requirements."1 Essentially, the phonetic commands were headquarters units established overseas in close proximity to unified commanders, to coordinate planning for retardation missions, to serve as a source of expertise on nuclear operations, and to maintain command control of any SAC units that might be temporarily assigned to the area. The ZEBRA and YOKE phonetic commands had their headquarters adjacent to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE); VICTOR at Headquarters Alaskan Air Command (AL); X-RAY at Headquarters Far East Command (FE); and OBOE at Headquarters Northeast Air Command (NEAC). The phonetic commands were directly under CINCSAC but also coordinated closely with the senior SAC commander charged with responsibility for the area in which they were stationed. These intra-SAC coordinating relationships were as follows:
OBOE - Commander Eighth Air Force
X-RAY - Commander Third Air Division/Commander Fifteenth Air Force
VICTOR - Commander Fifteenth Air Force
YOKE - Commander Fifth Air Force/Commander Second Air Force
ZEBRA - Commander Seventh Air Division
B. GENERAL OPERATIONAL SITUATION IN THE 1954-60 PERIOD
The years from 1954-60 represented for SAC a time of unending struggle to improve the speed of response of the bomber fleet in the face of reduced warning time. In the beginning of the period, the threat was that of the growing Soviet bomber force against the limited air defense system of the United States, and in the last years of the decade the problem was compounded by the perceived threat from Soviet intercontinental missiles affording warning in minutes, at best. Beginning in 1954, the quick-strike capability of the command was developed to the utmost. Nuclear bombs began to be stored on bomber bases, and the SAC Alert Concept was evolved whereby approximately one-third of the force would be on a ready status at all times, with bombs and fuel loaded and crews standing by. Also, to counter reduced warning time (and in view of the sheer length of time required for takeoff of an entire wing), a plan was established for the dispersal of the B-52 force to satellite bases.2 The latter plan also reduced vulnerability, of course.
The most important development in improving the speed of SAC's response in the early part of the period was the evolution of the FULLHOUSE concept. Conversion to B-47s and vastly improved aerial refueling equipment and techniques enabled SAC in 1954 to develop a new war plan for launching its primary attack from home bases. Under the FULLHOUSE concept, which went into effect in 1955, multi-wing deployments in night and day all-weather conditions became possible, and units could be deployed directly to targets by means of air refueling and post-strike service at forward overseas bases.3 At the same time, though overseas bases were no longer to be the primary stations, they would continue to play key roles in SAC strategy. Aircraft operating from them would complicate enemy targeting. Also, SAC could employ those that survived an initial attack for post-strike recovery and turnaround.4
The evolution of the FULLHOUSE concept and the development of a capability in those types of operations affected all aspects of command operations. FULLHOUSE-type operations made necessary a tremendous logistics and base development program in the northeast Atlantic area and the northeastern United States; SAC even began to look to Canada for more tanker bases. Other direct results were the movement of Hq Eighth Air Force from Carswell AFB, Tex., to Westover AFB, Mass., and the activation of two refueling wings in the northeastern United States. As a concomitant, the B-36 force was freed for deployment to the Far East and French Morocco. Meanwhile, the enhanced mobility of the command was evidenced by the routine rotation of combat units to all parts of the world.
The changing philosophy of overseas strategic bomber basing had its greatest Impact in the United Kingdom. Here SAC eliminated all but four bases from its plans for major peacetime deployment, and completely reorganized the 7th Air Division, changing its mission from operating and pre-strike support to principally post-strike support. Beginning in January 1958, SAC experimented with reducing the size and duration of deployments by dispatching small B-47 bomber and KC-97 tanker "reflex" forces to two of the UK bases. Operating on a 1.5-to-l crew-to-bomber ratio, each reflex force remained 21 days on station rather than 90 days as before, and each individual crewman served two weeks on alert and one off. In the event of nuclear war, these forces would undertake post-strike missions in support of primary launches of the main forces from US bases. By the end of 1958, all SAC overseas forces operated on the reflex principle.5
The Soviet ICBM capability so dramatically demonstrated in 1957 brought to an acute stage SAC's problems in assuring the necessary warning, quick response, and command and control of alert forces. Ground alert procedures (for which planning had begun in 1956) were developed to provide for takeoffs within 15 minutes; "Fail Safe" and airborne alert concepts were developed, tested, and perfected; and additional means of preserving SAC control through further hardening of fixed command posts and institution of an airborne command post were being sought.
Thus, in the short period of some five or six years after 1954 SAC progressed from a strike concept envisaging massive and protracted deployment of the entire bomber force and its supporting elements to overseas bases and then launching the strike from there, to a concept wherein the greatest part of the alert force would be launched on 15 minutes warning from bases within the ZI, with other alert aircraft launching from overseas bases on the same or less warning.6 At the end of the decade, steps were being taken to withdraw all SAC forces to the ZI at the time the vulnerability of overseas bases made them untenable—a time that was reckoned to be about 1962.7 Meanwhile, in September 1959 the first ATLAS ICBM launchers attained initial operational capability (IOC) and were accepted by SAC s 1st Missile Division. The Strategic Air Command had entered the missile age itself.8
C. SAC COMMUNICATIONS9
Four major objectives dominated SAC s approach to its communications systems during the period 1954-60: (1) acquisition of greater control over its own communications so as to be independent of Air Force common-user systems for operational purposes; (2) expansion of the use of voice as opposed to record communications in the control of aircraft and operations; (3) increasing the speed and reliability of message transmission (particularly in the difficult northeast US area) through improved equipment, redundant systems, realistic operator training, and frequent command post exercises (CPXs); and (4) reduction in the vulnerability of communications to nuclear attack—a concern that increased rapidly in the latter part of the decade.
1. Worldwide Point-to-Point and Air-Ground Communications
During the early 1950s, SAC had developed what it called its "full pipeline philosophy," which meant that the command's communications lines should be busy—if not loaded— at all times. (It might be noted that this was in direct opposition to established Air Force policy.) The basis for SAC's approach was the belief that operators should be trained, the equipment ready, and the system already operating beforehand as it would in an emergency. Also, there would be no Increase in traffic to be detected by an enemy during the emergency, and the enemy's task of interpretation would be made more difficult by the sheer volume of traffic to be "read." One aspect of the new philosophy involved increased operational realism in CPXs. Before February 1954, SAC CPXs had been essentially "communicator-to-communicator" exercises with "canned" messages. But In 1954 SAC established a combat reporting system during the CPX whereby commanders and staffs and control teams deployed to the maneuver areas of the world and prepared and sent actual operations-reporting-type messages composed by the staffs and sent to multiple addressees. Aircraft were also physically deployed and sent on strike missions, in addition to the utilization of simulated aircraft. Wartime conditions were simulated by deliberately saturating the teletype system.
The new SAC approach highlighted major bottlenecks in GLOBECOM, the common-user worldwide communications system. During Exercise GAMETIME, for example, from 5-11 August 1957, messages backlogged in Japan and the Middle East. SAC immediately requested from Headquarters USAF additional full period on-call teletype circuits for US-Japan channels as a vital requirement for SAC's mission. This request was turned down as too expensive; indeed, said the Air Force, SAC's needs during the previous exercise had been filled "by denying service to other commands." SAC insisted that its requirements could not be taken care of by simply making commercial channels available during an emergency, as was proposed. In a letter to Headquarters USAF, 14 November 1957, CINCSAC declared "it seems foolish to spend billions of dollars to build up a strategic strike force and then fail to provide the communications required for effective control and use of this force."10 Finally, in December 1957, Headquarters USAF approved a SAC requirement for three additional teletype channels from the ZI to Yokota (one full period and two on call), and four channels to Guam with a single channel from Guam to Itazuke. While this still did not provide the independent system that SAC craved, it at least helped remove a major bottleneck.
(¥) The common usage of GLOBECOM (or STRATCOM as it was later renamed) continued to fester for SAC throughout the decade. In 1958—by which time SAC had its own tactical ultrahigh frequency (UHF) and very high frequency (VHF) channels and its own single side band (SSB) net—a determined campaign was launched for a SAC indigenous high frequency air-ground system, but every request was repeatedly denied by Headquarters USAF. The USAF maintained that the proposed SAC system would, in effect, duplicate STRATCOM. SAC, on the other hand, insisted that its system would be an integral part of STRATCOM, with SAC "controllers on the line" conducting SAC tactical matters, such as transmission of "go" instructions, recall, diversions, recovery, and recycle mission-type instructions, as well as initial strike reports.
Headquarters USAF refused to abandon the position, however, that the underlying concept of the USAF global communications system was the support of air striking power and its supporting elements, including intelligence, air movements, weather, and logistics. Moreover, the capital investment already made in STRATCOM of over one-third of a billion dollars would be doubled in the near future with modernization and expansion of the system. In short, while the strategic strike mission was undoubtedly the most important one in the Air Force, it was still only a part of the total Air Force responsibility and SAC's worldwide communications had already been provided for. The Air Force simply could not ask for yet another system:
In light not only of its dollar investment, but also of its manpower and frequency resources together with its presentations before OSD, BOB and the Congress, the USAF cannot support another communications program which would appear to duplicate the services provided by STRATCOM and which would be in competition for the same limited manpower, dollar and frequency resources.11
SAC did not give up the struggle for its own worldwide HF system, but the battle was lost for the time.
2. Communications within the ZI
The development of the Strategic Operational Control System (SOCS) in 1950 had given SAC command levels a means for rapid control of operations through instantaneous voice communications. The SOCS circuits originated at Headquarters SAC, with lines to the numbered air forces and, In turn, to SAC bases. Top secret conversations could be held by installing special encipherment equipment on the line. One of the more advanced features of the SOCS system was a built-in instantaneous and simultaneous alerting capability to all SAC bases. By picking up a designated handset, the Headquarters SAC controller could dial a number that automatically seized all SOCS circuits to SAC bases and terminated those circuits in a loud speaker at each SAC zone-of-interior wing control room. Alert instructions transmitted by the controller were heard by all in the control room.
Headquarters SAC remained concerned, however, with the problem of transmitting warning in sufficient time to effectively launch the force. A poor reliability factor had proven inherent in the "Red Telephone" system, In which daily alert tests showed a high percentage of malfunctions persisting as late as mid-1958. SAC had requested USAF approval for a Hot Line Alerting System to all SAC bases with a reliability factor of as close to 100 percent as possible, and in 1958 a plan for this system was approved by Headquarters USAF. SAC's goal was a communications system that utilized only a minute and a half of the 15 minutes alerting time for the strategic strike force.
3. Single Side Band--A Further Step in Voice Control
A further outgrowth of SAC's constant efforts to improve communications, first at command levels and then between commanders and aircraft, was the development of the Commanders' Radio Telephone Network, a single side band (SSB) system. Independent of landline cable, SSB was an extension of the SOCS complex to the cockpit. It enabled the commander to reach all areas in the SOCS system, as well as aircraft, by radio.12
Two events marked the origins of SAC's enthusiasm for SSB as a key to solving its problem of long-range control. The first was a flight on 4 July 1956 that carried Col. John B. Bestie, then chief of SAC's Communications-Electronics Division, to Goose Bay, Thule, and Alaska. On this trip, using SSB, Colonel Bestic talked to the South Pole from Thüle and to Australia, New Zealand, and Pakistan. The marked improvement in long-range transmission by SSB, and in particular its ability to cut through the auroral absorption zone, resulted in its first being utilized as the commander's back-up net, before it was established on aircraft.
The second event was the highly successful use of SSB during Operation POWERFLIGHT, a global exercise of B-52s, in January 1957. "The commander of the flight declared that single side band HF radio equipment performance was far superior to normal HF and AM contacts with SSB relay stations affording constant mission-following throughout the entire operation.'"13 In the autumn of 1957, Headquarters USAF approved a program for development of an SSB point-to-point network for global control of SAC aircraft. By December 1957, SAC had in operation 19 SSB stations throughout the world.14 In addition to improving SAC s control of long-range aircraft, SSB also met General LeMay's requirement for reaching any wing commander in 30 seconds. As a technique, SSB cut through the more difficult propagation and over greater ranges than any HF known up to that time. Single side band, then, fulfilled two major functions for the command: (1) a backup for the SOCS point-to-point network, and (2) a means for extension of voice communications to the aircraft.
4. "Positive Control "
One of the major Justifications put forward by CINCSAC for procurement of SSB equipment was the requirement for "positive control" of strike aircraft. The Soviet ICBM test in 1957 had emphasized a problem with which SAC had been concerned for some time, i.e., the recognition that, in view of rapidly decreasing warning time, normal communications lag, and the time required by the current decision-making procedures, it might be necessary to launch aircraft prior to the receipt of a strike execution order. In October 1957, General Power (now CINCSAC) had written to General LeMay (Vice Chief of Staff, Headquarters USAF) that "it would be next to impossible to effect High Frequency (HF) radio re-direction of the strike force once it is launched."15 While CINCSAC was probably overstating his case, it is still true that the Air Force radio system relied upon distant offshore Aircraft and Airways Communications Service (AACS) stations, which could be reached only through Indirect channels. The CINCSAC argued that the current concept of staging and supporting the SAC force from the ZI should apply to communications systems as well. The command's experience with the SSB point-to-point net, meanwhile, led General Power to direct the perfection of a high frequency SSB air-to-ground system for control of the strike force. Because procurement of such an SSB system would be a multimillion dollar program, however, SAC first Implemented a test of the "positive control" or "Fail Safe" concept.
The test, code name NOAHS ARK, was conducted between 15 November 1957 and 15 January 1958. For testing purposes, the outbound strike routes of the alert force were broken down into 12 general routes along which several HF and UHF ground radio stations were located. During the testing period, each numbered air force and applicable overseas air division was to schedule a minimum of six missions over each route. One or more aircraft would constitute a mission. While on the mission, the air crew was directed to make radio contact with selected stations along the route in an attempt to receive the "go" code prior to reaching the "Fail Safe" point. The "go" code would be relayed from Headquarters SAC through the Air Force global communications network to the applicable ground stations. These stations would then relay the "go" code to SAC aircraft upon contact. After the mission was completed, the air crew would transmit a message to Headquarters SAC enumerating the message received.16
Sixty-five "Fail Safe" missions were flown in the test, of which 50 were successful. The main difficulties were determined to be inadequate briefing of crews and deficiencies in supporting NORAD and AACS facilities. The "Fail Safe" concept proved basically reliable, however, and SAC continued to press for approval of the SSB radio system. This approval was soon secured, and by March I960 the new system, consisting of four SSB air-ground stations, was in operation.17 SAC could now count on its "positive control" system with a high degree of reliability: i.e., the bombers could be launched under orders to fly to a designated point outside enemy territory; upon reaching that point, they would automatically return to their home bases unless they received orders—the "go" code—to proceed to their targets.
The high frequency SSB system was by no means completely without problems, however. In the event of an attack, the system might be blacked out by nuclear explosions. Also, its transmitters were soft and in fixed locations, and thus vulnerable to destruction.
5. The Northeast Air Command: A Unique Communications Problem
A special word should be said regarding communications in the Northeast Air Command (NEAC) area. After SAC's initial CPX in September 1950, it was found that communications between Limestone Air Force Base, Me., and Goose Bay were very poor.
Moreover, communications in the entire NEAC region (Massachusetts, Maine, Labrador, Frobisher Bay, Greenland, and Iceland) were bad. Early attempts to improve the situation met with little success. The problem was especially acute because the region was a critical one strategically and became steadily more so with the implementation of the FULLHOUSE concept.
The breakthrough came late in 1953 and in early 1954. Among the various concepts explored had been the applicability of VHF forward scatter research in achieving a voice-teletype system. Forward Propagation by Ionospheric Scatter (FPIS) and Forward Propagation by Tropospheric Scatter (FPTS) techniques had first been used with success by the National Bureau of Standards, and other pioneering work had been accomplished by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In cooperation with these organizations, SAC found that operational equipment could be designed using forward scatter techniques, and in the period 1954-56 the USAF converted to this system for its primary communications network in the NEAC zone.18
Between 1954 and 1957, still further studies were made In the development of the forward scatter system, especially in voice transmission—though the peculiar NEAC difficulties were by no means solved. It was to remain for SSB to make further substantial improvement in communications in the NEAC region. Continuing problems existed, however, because of sun-spots, equipment outages, auroral absorption, and other factors, so that NEAC remained a major problem area for SAC, requiring a number of alternative and redundant measures to assure successful communications. A SAC communications study written In December 1959 made the following assessment:
Today SAC could—in all probability—reach any station In the NEAC region at any given time through one means or another. The multiplicity of channels, the moving of control points, and the addition of FS and single sideband have given the command reliable communications in the Northeast for the first time.19
One has the impression that the SAC communicators always kept their fingers crossed, however, where the NEAC region was concerned.
XIII. SAC PRE-ATTACK AND POST-ATTACK COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
By the end of the 1950s, SAC had become an enormously complex organization. In 1960, an average of 122 bomber and tanker aircraft were airborne each day, with in-flight re-fuelings taking place at the rate of one every 6.8 minutes. Large-scale exercises of the command often involved more than 500 aircraft. The sheer size of SAC, with 260,000 men and thousands of aircraft scattered around the globe—not to mention intercontinental ballistic missiles just beginning to enter the force—further compounded the problems of command and control.
In order to provide for the supervision and control of this far-flung organization, the Air Force and SAC had built by 1958 a worldwide communications network consisting of (1) a primary alert system of voice communications between SAC's underground control center at Offutt AFB and all base control rooms in the United States and overseas; (2) a single side band, high-frequency, point-to-point radio system; (3) a telephone system for day-to-day operational control purposes; and (4) a teletype system to convey printed operational information.
These various systems generated huge amounts of data that were continuously processed and displayed In the SAC control center. As early as 1954, however, the flood of information had become so great that the CINCSAC had expressed concern over the center's ability to remain current with the disposition of the force. The primary difficulty involved the center's machinery for data reduction, correlation, and display. Seeking to resolve this problem, SAC recommended on 17 December 1954 that the Air Force initiate research and development of "electro-mechanical devices capable of highspeed performance of a major portion of the sorting, summarizing, correlating, and displaying" of status information.1 The requirement was approved by Headquarters USAF, and the resultant studies led in time to the installation of a closed-circuit, color TV system and an IBM 704 computer in SAC's underground control center. Beginning on 20 May 1957, the computer was exercised along with the existing manual system and soon proved the feasibility of using electronic data processing for command and control purposes.
These early experiments also uncovered serious communications problems in the course of attempting to integrate electronic data with manual communication and posting techniques. The SAC battle staff found that the control center remained an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes behind the force, and in extreme cases the center fell 6 hours behind. The CINCSAC Insisted that, in the era of the ballistic missile, such "historical data" were unacceptable.2 Three months after installation of the 704 computer, the command requested a follow-on system that would consist of electronic computers at Headquarters SAC and the headquarters of the numbered air forces, means for integrating the computers with a secure communications network, and display equipment. Three major subsystems—for data transmission, data processing, and presentation—were prescribed. The Air Force approved the requirement, which was designated the 465L development program, and thus began the search for a "real time" capability for command and control of the strike force. More than six years would elapse before the program achieved even a limited operational capability. 3
A. 465L FUNDING AND SCHEDULE DIFFICULTIES
On 11 February 1958, Headquarters USAF published a General Operational Requirement (GOR) that delineated the SAC control system and specified an initial operational capability (IOC) of January 1960 and a complete operational capability (COC) of January 1962. Sixteen days later, USAF assigned the system a 1-A priority. Virtually from the moment of the selection of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) as the major contractor, however, the 465L program began to go through a seemingly endless series of funding limitations, cost increases, program stretch-outs, and retrenchments that, in the final analysis, postponed the COC more than three years.11
Almost simultaneously with the contractor selection, the Air Force on 16 September 1958 submitted a request to the Office of the Secretary of Defense for $29.8 million in FY59 funds. The OSD insisted on a thorough briefing on the proposed technical approach before it would release funds. Representatives from Headquarters USAF, the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), and SAC gave the briefing on 31 October and obtained tentative OSD approval and $18 million. In its authorization, OSD emphasized that system acquisition should be on a "fly before you buy" basis.5
Since OSD's actions constituted a "stretch-out" of the earlier development and funding plans, ITT requested a new IOC date and revised its program costs upward—from $107 million to $137.8 million. The Air Force agreed to a new IOC date of January 1962. It also approved plans to build a prototype test facility at Paramus, N.J., to demonstrate the operational feasibility and integration of the various parts of the 465L system.6
During 1959, there began a series of uncontrollable cost increases that were to plague the entire history of 465L system acquisition. These were attributed to the OSD funding limitations placed on the program, the original lack of specific details on SAC's operational needs, unexpectedly high subcontractor costs, and growing system complexity. All told, these factors contributed to boosting the estimated costs of system acquisition first to $198.1 million, then to $228.3 million, and finally to $339.7 million by October 1959. This last figure was $200 million above the estimate given only 12 months before.7
It was hardly surprising that, when the Air Force approached OSD for release of $62.3 million in FY60 funds, the request was rejected. Headquarters USAF then reviewed the whole program in detail and deleted some of the planned equipment to cut costs. A revised program was submitted to OSD, which was approved on 1 December 1959; however, obligations were limited to $40.6 million. The inability to obtain the full budget amount in turn caused further slippage of the projected IOC date to April 1963, and of the COC date to January 1965.
Much of the Air Force difficulty in securing funding for the program was grounded in OSD doubts regarding the validity of the entire 465L concept. Essentially, the question was why the system should be built at all if, as was increasingly expected, the war would begin with a sudden Soviet missile attack that would destroy it even before it could be used. The answer from SAC was that the system would be worth the cost, if only for peacetime training and exercises. The OSD did not find the logic compelling—especially as 465L costs continued to spiral upward.8 U
Headquarters USAF itself had become greatly concerned by the cost and system complexity of 465L and early in 1960 had cautioned SAC that it was essential to take "a most austere approach" to the system configuration. At the end of May, SAC and ARDC officials briefed Headquarters USAF on the latest proposed system configuration, but Air Staff representatives found it "too sophisticated to be financially palatable." SAC undertook a new review of its requirements and, with ARDC, made further changes and deletions, although they felt these would erode system capability. However, even with the revisions, total program cost was now estimated at $387.6 million.9
As a result of the latest cost increases, the Air Force encountered still greater resistance from OSD. And by now the question of the 465L system's survivability was becoming a major issue. One proposal increasingly being heard was that the Air Force would do better to rely on mobile command posts rather than on ground facilities that could be eliminated by a determined enemy—even if some of the facilities were hardened. For here the question arose of the survival of the entire system as an operational entity: if it could not so survive, what would be gained by having parts of it survive, and what was the need for the system in the first place?
Meanwhile, the Air Force had renewed its attack on the problem of system costs. An ad hoc study group proposed an even more austere 465L configuration, which was approved by the Air Staff and submitted to OSD on 7 December I960. The OSD then released additional funds and gave authority to proceed with the program. Despite these actions, the Air Force knew the 465L program was still in trouble, chiefly because the problem of survivability had not really been faced up to.
B. THE PROBLEM OF SAC COMMAND AND CONTROL SURVIVABILITY
In January I960, the Air Force had organized the Winter Study Group "to examine critically and objectively from a technical viewpoint the entire complex of existing and planned" USAF command and control systems. An eight-month review followed, conducted by USAF and civilian consultants working with the Mitre Corporation and supervised by a senior advisory committee under Dr. A. G. Hill of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In its final report of 15 September 1960, the group generally endorsed the Air Force approach to automated systems, but it noted that the type to be built depended on the basic strategy the United States intended to pursue—one based on immediate second-strike reaction in the face of an incoming Soviet ICBM attack, or one based on surviving the attack and then striking back as a deliberate action. The group felt that a strategy of relying entirely on quick reaction to warning was too risky and should be rejected. "The chances of either failing to get warning or 'retaliating' on a false alarm are too great," they said.10
The group further observed that there was a danger that USAF command and control systems would, on the one hand, be neither sufficiently reliable to launch a quick retaliation on warning nor, on the other, survivable enough to control the remaining force after a first strike. In the group's opinion, the best solution to the problem of compressed time was not elaborate electronic equipment "to make quick reaction safe" but a survivable system to eliminate the need for quick reactions or "snap judgments."11
Long before the Winter Study Group recommendations were made, the Air Force had been studying the problems of survivability and quick reaction. It had recognized that US political leaders would probably not agree to launching nuclear weapons at Soviet targets without definite proof of an enemy attack and, therefore, that US missiles would be required to "ride out" a Soviet first-strike. The Air Force had also realized that command and control systems—which involved thousands of miles of "soft" communications, in addition to numerous other vulnerable components—could be hardened only at prohibitive expense and that under the Eisenhower administration the necessary funds would not be forthcoming. As a compromise, a plan had been submitted to harden the 465L combat operations centers but the money for it had not been provided by Congress. After the Winter Study Group made Its recommendations, the Air Force renewed its efforts to harden the four centers—but here the Justification tended to fall apart (as OSD had insisted all along) in the face of the obvious fact that all other component of the system were "soft" and vulnerable to attack.
C. POST-ATTACK COMMAND CONTROL SYSTEM (PACCS)
In July 1961, the Department of Defense redirected SACCS 465L to a pre-strike system and established a separate post-attack command control system with air and ground elements. The key PACCS segment was an airborne command post complex, including communications-relay aircraft. The Air Force had never intended to put its entire faith in the hardening of control centers as an answer to the problem of command and control survivability, and in fact SAC planning for an airborne command control network had antedated the formal establishment of the SACCS 465L system. SAC was fully aware that, of the four major networks on which its command control communications depended in the late 1950s—single side band HF radio, teletype, long line telephone, and the primary alerting system (SOCS)— single side band remained vulnerable to jamming, natural phenomena, and nuclear aftereffects, and the other systems were keyed to leased facilities that employed soft communication lines. Thus, the existing systems failed to meet the stringent requirements for survivability that were mandatory for the new PACCS confronted with the Soviet missile threat. Also, the existing systems gave decisionmakers little assurance of time for deliberation and continuing command and control of forces in a trans- and post-attack environment.
This situation had prompted a SAC qualitative operational requirement (QOR) to Headquarters USAF, dated 13 September 1958, that in turn resulted in a new communications plan, designated the National Survivable Communications System (NSCS). As envisioned in 1958, the NSCS included an airborne command post and radio relay system, hardened low-frequency stations, emergency communication rockets, and redundant landline circuits. In essence, the NSCS—with the airborne command post as its principal element—became SAC's post-attack command control system. However, by mid-196l only a beginning had been made.12
The original goal of the system had been to establish a survivable execution capability, and the airborne command post was seen as the means of transmitting the execution message for launch of the SAC strike force. The following responsibilities were to be the heart of the airborne command post operation: (1) maintain contact with the SAC ground command post; (2) keep In touch with the joint war room-alternate joint war rooms; (3) maintain contact with the NORAD command post; (4) be prepared to relay message traffic between USAF and SAC command posts; and (5) keep contact with SAC numbered air forces and overseas air divisions.13
On 1 July 1960, SAC initiated a 15-minute ground alert of the command post aircraft at Offutt Air Force Base. The operation was supported by five KC-135 aircraft and an alert team from Headquarters SAC on 24-hour alert. All rated general officers, except the CINC and the VCINC, took turns serving as head of the alert team—with authority to implement any DEFCON required; to launch the alert force under positive control; to carry out instructions from higher headquarters, including passing the "go" code to aircraft and launching follow-on aircraft and missiles; and to assume the duties of CINCSAC. This last could only be done under dire circumstances, however, when there was no way of contacting Headquarters SAC or the numbered air forces, and then only until contact could be reestablished.14
Between 1 July 1960 and 2 February 1961, SAC executed 42 no-notice flights of the airborne command post; the average time elapsed from execution order to takeoff was 11.4 minutes. Early in the test program, Headquarters USAF authorized SAC to develop a detailed plan outlining concepts and procedures for maintaining a continuous airborne command post operation. Subsequently, on 1 February 1961, USAF directed General Power to begin continuous airborne operations as soon as possible. These flights were instituted on 3 February. The resultant system possessed a rudimentary capability to alert and direct the SAC force.15 Shortly after, Headquarters USAF approved several new development projects to enhance the survivability of command and control communications, including an emergency rocket communication system (ERCS) and a hardened, low-frequency communication system.16
XIV. COORDINATION OF STRATEGIC OPERATIONS
A. ATOMIC COORDINATION MACHINERY PRIOR TO ADVENT OF THE POLARIS
Early exercises of the Joint Coordination Centers, established in late 1952 to provide a means for lateral coordination of planning for atomic operations (see Chapter IV), had disclosed a requirement for pre-hostilities coordination of the various commanders' atomic plans.1 Accordingly, in 1954, the JCS asked each appropriate commander to submit an atomic annex, i.e., a target list to his war plan, and to coordinate it with theater commanders and CINCSAC. In 1955, SAC was directed to act as host for a conference of appropriate commanders to determine a methodology or modus operandi for coordination of nuclear strikes. This conference failed to agree on anything except the requirement for periodic coordination of atomic war plans. The JCS approved this requirement, and the resultant conclaves became known as Worldwide Coordination Conferences (WWCCs). They were held each subsequent year through 1958. After plans were developed at these conferences and approved by the JCS, they were deposited with the Joint Coordination Centers for operational coordination as required by an exercise or by the initiation of hostilities.
The total coordination activity, pre- and post-hostility, was known as the atomic coordination machinery. On the positive side, the worldwide conferences did enable commanders to appreciate more fully each other's capabilities, tasks, objectives, and plans. Target lists, forces, and strike timing were discussed and compared. Some conflicts were undoubtedly avoided. The defects of the program, however, were clearly more evident than its successes—especially in the eyes of SAC.
The Chief objection of SAC was that the conferences did not solve the problem of target conflicts. In the 1957 and 1958 meetings, duplications and triplications (two or more commands delivering weapons to the same target) were not significantly reduced. Neither did they achieve mutual support or unity of strategic effort among the JCS commanders.
The ineffectiveness of the ponderous atomic coordination machinery could be attributed at least in part to the inability of the coordinators to know for sure just how many weapons would be available and, therefore, which strikes would be made and which would not. The only Information exchanged at the coordination conferences was a listing of targets of Interest to the various commanders, and no consideration was given to the latter's actual intention or capability of attacking the targets on a timely basis.2 This was partly attributable, in turn, to the special nature of the arrangements for allocating and maintaining custody of nuclear weapons. On the one hand, SAC had complete nuclear weapons at its disposal and available for use. On the other hand, the JCS also allocated each year a significant percentage of the nuclear stockpile to the various JCS commanders for planning purposes. These were known as "allocated weapons"-—but the fact that they were allocated did not give the commander possession either in fact or in principle of them. 3 Coordination of strike planning under such circumstances was inevitably imprecise, at best.
(Ü) An even larger part of the problem in coordinating the strategic offensive had to do with the still considerable amount of operational coordination required and the resultant dependence on a highly sophisticated communications system at the JCCs. During peacetime exercises, the communications time lag between the sending and receipt of messages tended steadily to increase, causing a backlog; under combat conditions, the system's efficiency would undoubtedly be reduced even more.
Not only SAC was critical of the system's complexity and inefficiency. If the following extract from a memorandum by the Director of Naval Communications can be taken as an indication, the Navy too was at least as dissatisfied as the Air Force with the atomic coordination machinery—though it was also to resist Air Force proposals to improve the system. The Navy at this time was, of course, at loggerheads with the Air Force over the latter's dominant role in the total strategic mission, especially since the Polaris submarine was about to make its appearance. The following Navy memorandum rests its case basically on the JCC communications and operational deficiencies, however, rather than on arguments for an increased strategic role, and is quoted at length for this reason:
The present organization, methods and procedures are the "clay feet" in the "deterrent posture" because of overdependence on vulnerable communications links.
The functions performed by the Joint Coordination Centers are duplicative of functions which must be performed anyhow in the operations centers of major commanders and only serve to introduce complexities and time-consuming "extra" requirements in reporting and coordination procedures.
Reporting and coordination procedures require naval forces to transmit by radio which defeats any efforts made to employ the unique advantages of mobility, concealment and surprise which are inherent in naval forces. Such transmissions make the job of locating a naval force relatively easy thus reducing considerably its advantages over a "fixed base."
Reporting and coordination procedures impose requirements for special communication circuitry which introduces special equipments and antennas, special frequencies, and special handling requirements in our already overcrowded ships.
There are undoubtedly many facets other than those cited which have bearing on this problem. However, it appears possible by determined effort to devise the means, methods and procedures necessary to maintain the centralized control required, achieve a considerable reduction in reporting and coordination exchanges, and provide for our naval striking forces a considerable degree of survivability through concealment, stealth, mobility and surprise which they do not now enjoy because of the necessity for acting as a radio homing beacon while employing present coordination procedures.4
While both the Navy and the Air Force were thus dissatisfied with the JCCs and the atomic coordination machinery, neither was disposed to budge from a basic position that was at the same time unacceptable to the other—i.e., the Air Force insisted on a unified strategic command and target planning organization that would in operation clearly be dominated by SAC, while the Navy insisted on a cooperative interservice relationship securely buttressed by a "joint" charter. Meanwhile, the looseness and lack of coordination in strategic execution plans continued. In each of the exercises of the JCC machinery from 1958 to 1960, there were over 200 time-over-target conflicts. In wartime, with disrupted communications, this could obviously result in needless losses of aircraft and crews. Some new approach to the coordination problem appeared to be required, since the net gains from several years of past effort seemed to come down to a comparison of target lists and some minimal conflict resolution. General N.F. Twining, Chairman of the JCS, finally declared that one fundamental principle had evolved from the previous coordination activities and should be implemented as soon as possible—i.e.,"atomic operations must be pre-planned for automatic execution to the maximum extent possible and with minimum reliance on post-H-hour communications."5 The organizational and interservice obstacles confronting such a prospect remained as formidable as ever, however.
B. DEFENSE REORGANIZATION ACT OF 1958
The Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 seemed to open new vistas for better coordination of the strategic offensive. President Eisenhower, in outlining his plan to the Congress, emphasized the vital necessity of complete unity in US strategic planning and in basic operational direction of combat forces. It was necessary, he declared, that the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have the authority to take action in these matters. The Air Force was strongly behind the President's program, as was the Army. The Navy was considerably less enthusiastic.
Since the eventual resolution of the strategic target coordination problem was accomplished in the context of the 1958 Reorganization Act, it is appropriate here to review the latter's main features. Since 1947, there had been a steady trend toward strengthening the decision-making power of the Secretary of Defense. Now, on 6 August 1958, when the Department of Defense Reorganization Act went into effect, the authority of the Secretary of Defense in relation to both the service departments and the JCS was even further increased. The civilian departmental secretaries were at the same time removed from the chain of command. The line of operational control now ran from the President to the Secretary of Defense, then through the JCS to the commanders of the unified and specified commands. The Secretary of Defense thus had under his jurisdiction the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the JCS to provide staff assistance, the military departments to prepare forces for effective prosecution of their missions, and the unified and specified commands to carry out specific military missions assigned to them. The JCS, rather than the departments, now exercised operational control.
One of the most significant results of the Reorganization Act was that the Secretaries of Defense began to play an increasingly active role in decisionmaking. The Chairman of the JCS was specifically directed to keep the Secretary Informed on issues upon which the JCS had not reached an agreement. In December 1959, Defense Secretary Gates was to state that he intended to meet personally with the JCS on such matters and to keep himself fully informed. If necessary, he declared, he would bring the matter to the attention of the President for his decision.6
The Reorganization Act also served to strengthen the authority of the commanders of the unified and specified commands. Firm force structures for these commands were established, and were not to be altered by any military department unless authorized by the Secretary of Defense. The authority of the unified and specified commands was further strengthened through the establishment of clear-cut lines of command and communication to replace the cumbersome executive agency system.7 The 1958 reorganization directed the unified commanders to communicate directly with the JCS on the preparation of plans, strategic and operational direction of forces, conduct of combat operations, and any function needed to carry on their missions. In addition, they could deal directly with the chief of a service on matters of sole interest to that service. Some of the unified commanders, for a time, appeared also to be under the impression that they were authorized to communicate directly with the Secretary of Defense, but in August 1959 the JCS reminded all commanders that the proper chain of command went through that body to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.8
C. COMMAND AND CONTROL OF THE POLARIS FBM SYSTEM
It was in the context of the new Defense Department reorganization that, in the latter part of 1958, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy examined plans for the new fleet ballistic missile (FBM), or Polaris, and on the day before Christmas sent a memorandum to the JCS requesting that they furnish a concept for command and employment of the system. The JCS (in JCS 1620/209) circulated the Secretary's memorandum to the services for their views. With this act, a major interservice dispute that had been simmering for some time broke into a boil. During 1958, it had become increasingly apparent that the Polaris nuclear submarine weapon system would become operational within the next two-to-three years. It was also clear to all, on the one hand, that the Air Force intended to marshal all its efforts to secure a single strategic command that would include Polaris, and, on the other, that the Navy would resist to the bitter end any attempt thus to consign its unique and prized strategic weapon to Air Force operational control.
In January 1959, Admiral Arleigh Burke, CNO, forwarded to the JCS a comprehensive staff study that he recommended be used as the basis for the JCS reply to the Secretary of Defense. This study will be quoted below at some length, since it embodied the Navy's carefully developed views on the subject— views that were never basically departed from—and since it also contains the concept that was in the end victorious.
The Navy study saw Polaris as a part of a "mix" of strategic weapon systems: "Its most significant asset is its high survivability, which enables it, independently of vulnerable warning systems, to insure inevitable retaliation, either immediately, or with deliberate response." The study then proceeded to emphasize—an emphasis that was underscored repeatedly throughout the study—the peculiarly naval character of the Polaris. It outlined a concept of employment of the system in the Norwegian-North Seas, the Mediterranean, and the Western Pacific, with immediate logistic and administrative support supplied by deployed tenders and other support "closely integrated with normal naval afloat and shore facilities." In regard to communications, the study stated:
Communications must be reliable, secure and rapid, in that order of importance to this system.
Direct communications will be provided from the Joint Chiefs of Staff at their regular or alternate headquarters to Unified Commanders to whom the forces have been assigned. The Naval Component Commanders of these unified commands will be provided with facilities for communicating with the submarines. Provisions also will be made for direct transmission of information on Presidential decisions.
The programmed communication system includes the use of, and adaptation of, existing naval communication facilities and techniques. The primary method of communicating will be by utilizing the very low frequency, VLF, band. A chain of VLF stations is in being. Others are planned, and programmed.
To enhance reliability through multiplicity, other techniques utilizing standard high frequencies will be in use simultaneously. Additionally, further developments in the naval communication system have been planned to increase the sensitivity to reception, increase speed of transmission and enhance the security.
In a section entitled "Command and Control," the study summarized the basic Navy philosophy in regard to Polaris (U):
Operations of POLARIS forces must be closely coordinated and integrated with naval-strike, anti-submarine, submarine, mining and barrier operations in the same general sea areas to insure safety, to avoid mutual interference, to compound the enemy's Intelligence problem, and to get the maximum effectiveness from the POLARIS system. This control and coordination of both offensive and defensive operations In the same general area will be exercised by the unified commanders through their naval component commanders.
The POLARIS weapon system will operate in mutual support of other offensive systems under the targeting and coordinating concepts established by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The study concluded (U):
Existing naval communications systems, and those planned and programmed, will support the POLARIS weapon system.
The POLARIS weapon system should be assigned to unified commanders exercising operational command of major naval forces, and command should be exercised through their respective naval component commanders.9
The Navy then recommended that "the POLARIS weapon system initially be assigned to CINCLANT, and later to USCINCEUR and CINCPAC, as numbers permit, and in accordance with the current strategic concepts."10
In commenting on the Navy position, on 5 May 1959, the Chief of Staff, USAF, weighed in with rather heavy rhetoric (U):
The nature of general war in this period of unprecedented scientific advance requires more than ever before that this nation and the entire Free World place unique and crucial reliance on the effectiveness of U.S. strategic military strength. As one measure toward assuring greater effectiveness, it is essential that all weapon systems directed toward accomplishment of the strategic mission be planned for and controlled in a manner which will permit our over-all strategic effort to achieve the necessary effects in minimum time. Therefore, irrespective of the Service that develops and mans such systems, they should be assigned to a single unified strategic command responsible to the President, through the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Air Force went on to point out the absolute importance of unified command in executing the strategic strike mission, as well as the necessity for intimate coordination in target planning. For these reasons, insisted the Air Force, a unified US strategic command should be created to encompass Air Force bombers and missiles and the Navy Polaris.11
The Army, Navy, and Marine. Corps lined up in opposition to the Air Force proposal. The Chief of Staff, US Army, declared that the entire investigation was premature, and that the JCS should avoid making a hasty decision. They should take into account "the concept and command structure for our retaliatory forces as a whole in the 1962-64 time frame." Polaris should be assigned initially to commanders of the unified and specified commands exercising operational command of major naval forces. Once tried, proven, and attaining a reliable operating status, a careful review should be made by the JCS to determine the command structure that would make it most effective operationally.
The CNO, for his part, reiterated in even stronger terms the Navy's basic recommendation from the earlier study. He stated further that the view of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force "clearly indicates that the Navy-Air Force divergencies on the concept of command stem from basic differences of philosophy which extend far beyond the scope of the questions asked" in the Secretary of Defense's memorandum. The Polaris, he declared, was designed as a "naval weapon system with a national strategic mission. It cannot, and was never intended to stand alone as a missile-submarine combination awaiting only a directive from any authorized source to fire. Intimate to and inseparable from the system are the many facets of naval operations at sea such as communications, and the close integration and coordination with other naval forces."
Regarding coordination of target planning, the CNO stated (U):
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have the responsibility for target coordination, as well as the power of decision to prevent gaps or undesirable duplications in target and weapon planning. The unified and specified commanders prepare their target lists in accordance with damage criteria established by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Responsibility for the coordination of these vital atomic offensive plans properly belongs at this level. Although there may be some need for strengthening of procedures, this should not be interpreted as a requirement for basic changes which would tend to spread and weaken authority which properly belongs to and has been assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The CNO also declared that the Polaris was to be targeted against "the industrial base and governmental control structure of the enemy—a relatively stable target system which readily lends itself to preplanning." Hence there would be no target coordination problems.12 "Assignment of all weapon systems to a single command, on the other hand, would disrupt and alter the U.S. defense organization."13
The Marine Corps favored making the JCS responsible for selection of targets, after which the unified commanders would assign them to attack forces. It feared that assignment of the strategic targeting functions to one commander would create a "monolithic" structure to control aircraft and land and fleet missiles, which would have great internal coordination problems and be vulnerable if communications were destroyed.14
As a result of the disagreement among the services, a split-decision paper was presented to the Secretary of Defense. Secretary McElroy in the meanwhile had apparently concluded that a decision on command arrangements for the Polaris was not urgent, since the system would not become operational until late in 1960; on the other hand, it was clear that he intended to continue to press for improvement of target coordination procedures. In late July, following a briefing at Headquarters SAC on emergency war operations, he requested that the Chairman of the JCS present his views on the target coordination problem.
In his reply, General Twining reviewed the history of coordination to date and declared that "not much more progress can be achieved under the present arrangements." He rejected modifications to the existing machinery, advocating instead fundamental changes to the system. The problem divided, he declared, into three aspects: (1) targeting policy, (2) development of integrated operational plans, and (3) control of strike forces. Regarding the first, he inclined toward the Air Force counterforce philosophy, believing the target system should include (in order of priority) long-range nuclear delivery capability, government and military control centers, warmaking resources, and population centers.15 On the second question, the Chairman believed an integrated operational plan was definitely needed. He would charge CINCSAC with its development. Naval carriers should not be assigned any preplanned strategic targets, but when Polaris developed a significant operational capability, it should be brought into the integrated plan. On the third issue, the Chairman reasoned that if the above actions were taken, the question of operational control and problems of mutual interference would be simplified. The promulgation of a national strategic target list (NSTL) and a single iantegrated operational plan (SIOP) would, in General Twining's words, "provide a sound basis for necessary coordination of operational plans of local commanders with CINCSAC's plan."16 Only after decisions on these issues were made, in the form of a command decision, and enforced, would there be progress in the area of target coordination.
The Chairman also sought the positions of the services on the issue of targeting coordination by requesting answers to 18 questions. There was wide divergence of opinion in the answers, as on the issue of command and control of Polaris. No action was taken, therefore, during 1959- In December 1959, Secretary McElroy left office, and the task of resolving the problem of target coordination fell to his successor, Thomas S. Gates.
D. ESTABLISHMENT OF JOINT STRATEGIC TARGET PLANNING STAFF
On 16 August 1960, after over a year of consideration by the JCS and two Secretaries of Defense, the issues of command and control of strategic systems and strategic targeting became the subject of a Secretary of Defense decision. It was a clear compromise, endorsing neither the Air Force position favoring a unified command, nor the Navy position that existing JCS machinery could do the work. In his decision, Secretary Gates recognized CINCSAC's extensive experience in strategic planning and stated that the individual designated as CINCSAC, acting as the agent of the JCS, should collect at Headquarters SAC a team of experts from all services to prepare a plan for all US forces committed to the initial strategic strike effort. CINCSAC's duties as Director of Strategic Target Planning (DSTP) were to be an additional and separate responsibility to that as commander of SAC. On 18 August, Secretary Gates assigned Rear Admiral (subsequently promoted to Vice Admiral) Edward N. Parker, an expert in nuclear weapons and former head of the Defense Atomic Support Agency, as deputy to General Powers, in the latter's role as DSTP.17
The initial Joint Table of Organization of 269 requested spaces was divided as follows: SAC resources—140 officers, 57 airmen, and 22 civilians; Army—10 officers; Navy—29 officers; Air Force—8 officers; and Marine Corps—3 officers. (Subsequent changes were made in the personnel authorization but these figures provide an indication of the division of responsibilities.) On 1 September 1960, the JCS approved the proposed organization, officially designating it the Joint Strategic Target Planning Agency (JSTPA); on 29 September I960, the JCS redesignated the organization as the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff (JSTPS).18
After almost a decade of dissatisfaction with the procedures for coordination of the strategic offensive, a major forward step was thus at last taken. The shortcomings of the old target planning process had been made more glaringly obvious by the prospect of the imminent entry of a completely new strategic weapon system into the US inventory. Yet the JCS command structure was not in itself unified enough to push through a decision to change the process, at a time when the two services primarily involved—the Air Force and Navy—were strongly opposed to each other's position on basic principles. The Secretary of Defense, strengthened by his increased decision-making role under the Reorganization Act of 1958, therefore took it upon himself to resolve the problem. While his solution was In many respects a compromise, it finally created a new and unified entity, the JSTPS, to accomplish the strategic target planning function.
E. CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON COMMAND OF POLARIS
On 15 November 1960, the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, the first US nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, departed Charleston, S.C., on operational patrol, carrying 16 Polaris missiles having a 1,200-nm range.19 The vessel was, as the Navy had insisted, placed under command of CINCLANT. The Navy had won its battle against a unified strategic command hands down, after it increasingly became clear that the Air Force was isolated in the JCS. Indeed, fairly early in the dispute the Air Force appears to have retreated to diversionary tactics On 4 April 1959, the Air Force had requested from J-2 an estimate of Soviet capabilities to react to SSBNs under the Navy's concept for deployment of Polaris. The resulting J-2 estimate was then nonconcurred in by the Air Force, on the grounds that the Soviets possessed greater capabilities and intent to neutralize Polaris than was attributed to them by the estimate. The Army and the Navy, however, supported the J-2 estimate. In October 1960, over a year later, the dispute barely broke the administrative surface again when J-2 recommended that the Air Force position on Polaris vulnerability be rejected by the Chairman JCS. The Chairman concurred with the J-2 recommendation—and six months later, in April 196l, the majority-approved estimate was finally forwarded to the JSTPS. Neither the initial frontal attack nor the retreating rear-guard action of the Air Force had been remotely successful, and we hear no more (at least for the time being) of, in effect, assigning Polaris to the Air Force.
An interesting side incident, with less significance for strategic target planning than for relations between the unified and specified commands and the Secretary of Defense and JCS, also surfaced during this dispute. In early 1959, when the services were preparing their positions on command and control of Polaris, CINCSAC (General Power) asked the JCS to recommend to the Secretary of Defense that the weapon system be assigned to SAC "in view of its strategic capabilities." CINCSAC at this time also sent a similar letter directly to Secretary of Defense McElroy. General Power was in this case, according to the official SAC history, "exercising his new prerogative of going directly to the Secretary of Defense on matters involving strategic operations."20 Air Force Headquarters was not impressed. General Power's letter was returned unopened to him, with an attached comment by Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White that "General Power should readdress his letter to the Secretary of Defense thru JCS and should put it in the straight official form in my opinion."21
The concept of a single strategic command did not die with the failure of the Air Force campaign in 1959, and it was to be revived periodically in subsequent years. Thus, when President-elect Kennedy in 1960 was choosing his top personnel and planning his administration, prior to his inauguration, he appointed a task force under Senator Symington to study the organization of the Department of Defense; the Symington task force brought in a recommendation for (among other things) a unified strategic command.22 To leap ahead in the story to 1970, a group appointed by President Nixon to study the organization and operations of the Department of Defense—the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel—again proposed establishment of a single strategic command. Neither group's recommendation was to make any visible headway, however.
The particular form taken by the decisions on command of Polaris—and for that matter, on creation of the JSTPS—appears to have been motivated largely by individual service considerations and by the dynamics of intra-DoD relationships, rather than by any specific concern for the Soviet threat. At second remove, of course, the Reorganization Act of 1958 was itself motivated to a considerable extent by the Soviet ICBM and space achievements, the Implied increased threat to the United States, and the concomitantly shorter time in which to react to it. But a drastic Soviet strategic threat to the United States had been perceived throughout the 1954-60 period. From a logical standpoint, the Air Force case for a single strategic command and unified target planning was clearly a good one—and had been so throughout the period. In the final analysis, the Air Force failed to secure operational control of Polaris chiefly because the Navy was too powerful to be forced to release it. Under the circumstances, creation of the JSTPS appears to have been the minimum that the strategic situation called for, and the maximum that could be accomplished in practical political terms.
XV. WARNING OF STRATEGIC ATTACK
A. WARNING SITUATION AT BEGINNING OF 1954-60 PERIOD
1. Heritage of Confusion
Whereas the nuclear strike forces, and preeminently SAC, had never had to concern themselves over their relative priority in US strategic thinking, the importance of warning and air defense had always been (i.e., since World War II) a matter of debate. In the first place, the two latter functions were usually considered together, and the fortunes of one tended to move with the other, though warning was required not only for air defense but for the strategic retaliatory forces and for the remainder of the nation's political and military elements. Second, there had never been a consensus regarding the necessity for an elaborate warning and air defense system, so long as the United States possessed overwhelming strategic power. Imbedded in the above controversy had been a further dispute as to the effectiveness that a warning and air defense system could realistically hope to achieve in the face of a determined strategic-nuclear attack, which created basic doubts as to the usefulness of investing billions of dollars in such a system to start with. Further US ambivalence had existed concerning the division of responsibilities between the Army and Air Force in air defense and warning, and also regarding the part that civilian and reserve elements should play in these functions.1
2. The Basic System in 1954
It will be recalled from Part One (Chapter VIII), that at the end of 1953, 87 stations of the radar network were operational. Although 79 additional mobile and semimobile stations had been authorized, these were still being sited at the end of 1953 and were not expected to become operational until late 1954 and 1955. Only 3,500 of the 16,000 planned observation posts of the Ground Observer Corps (GOC) were operating, and of the 900,000 civilian observers the Air Defense Command (ADC) felt were necessary, only about 100,000 were active. Thirty-two GOC filter centers were operating around the clock, but most were vastly undermanned. Plans for increasing the range responsiveness and kill capability of the basic air defense system had been approved by the end of 1953, but delivery of the needed hardware had not begun.2
Also as noted in Part One, Operation TAILWIND (an exercise conducted in July 1953, in which SAC sent 94 bombers against the air defense system at night, in bad weather, and under other conditions difficult for the defense) had demonstrated serious inadequacies in the system. The Alsop brothers, Joseph and Stewart, published the results of the test and accelerated their newspaper campaign against what they called the "big bomber mentality" in the higher levels of the Air Force. 3 The "New Look" military posture promulgated by the Eisenhower administration had been denounced by air defense advocates as a red herring designed to hide the fact that insufficient funds were being spent on air defense.
Despite partisan complaints of foot-dragging, however, the air defense system was improved significantly during 1954. All 33 radar stations of the Canadian Pinetree line were completed and began operating. The Alaskan portion of the system, consisting of 1 control center and 10 radar stations, also began operating in early 1954. The modernization of the interceptor force was completed, and by the end of 1954 all 55 squadrons controlled by the ADC were equipped with jet, all-weather interceptors of the F-86D, F-89D, and F-94C types. Twenty-six Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft had been received and airborne surveillance off the west coast had begun. The differences with the Navy had been resolved and two radar picket ships were operating in the Atlantic. The Ground Observer Corps continued to have difficulty in recruiting and retaining volunteers, but the 1,400 observation posts that were fully manned and operated around the clock in the Skywatch area along both coasts and the northern border added to the air defense system a low-level surveillance capability that it would not otherwise have had. The ADC wanted more than 10,000 observation posts fully operational in the Skywatch area, but neither the general public nor, for that matter, the US political and military leadership was prepared to take the program that seriously.
Organizationally, five loosely coordinated air defense systems had emerged on. the continent by 1954. In the United States, the USAF's Air Defense Command operated the radar sensor network, the fighter interceptor squadrons, and the combat control centers. The Army's Antiaircraft Command operated what was in effect a second air defense system employing antiaircraft artillery, a few Nike missiles (which soon would replace the artillery at all installations), and a well-developed network of fire control centers and target acquisition radars. The top administrative headquarters of both the Air Force and Army systems were at Ent AFB, Colorado Springs. The main battle control center—called the Combat Operations Center (COC) was also located there. The Air Force had concentrated its radar stations and interceptors on the northern and coastal perimeters of the country, and its interior stations afforded unbroken aircraft tracking (though at high altitudes only) between defense areas and along logical approach routes. The Army sited its fire units around major military and industrial areas. The philsophy of the defenses was that interceptors would engage bombers as far from critical targets as possible and that both interceptors and Army weapons would engage those bombers that penetrated the outer defense. Defense Department directives and interservice agreements empowered the Air Force to assume operational control of all weapons during an attack. However, the Army maintained that the Air Force command and control network was insufficiently reliable to permit proper control of Army weapons in a crisis, and as a result the two services were, from a practical standpoint, poles apart on the issue of single control of weapons.4
In Alaska, the unified Alaskan Air Command (AAC), established soon after the end of World War II, was responsible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for air defense. Another system, deployed in the area of US interest in the Canadian northeast and Thüle, Greenland, was similarly organized as the US Northeast Air Command (NEAC). In both areas, the unified commanders delegated the actual task of air defense to the USAF component, whose commander worked out mutually acceptable terms of antiaircraft participation with his Army counterpart. The Royal Canadian Air Force's Air Defense Command (RCAF ADC) operated the fifth of the air defense systems.
3. Creation of a Joint Command for Continental Air Defense
After seven years of discussion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January 1954 authorized the creation of a joint command to control air defense. In doing so, the JCS had to overrule the Air Force, which wanted to retain its primary role in air defense as a service rather than a joint responsibility. The following excerpt from the Chairman's (Admiral Radford) memorandum to the service chiefs of staff makes it clear that he felt the time had come for the JCS to make some visible response to political pressures for greater unity and effectiveness in the national air defense system:
In response to my request of 16 October 1953, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force submitted on 16 December 1953 in JCS 1899/89 a report on command arrangements for the defense of the United States which concluded that no change in the present command arrangements for air defense is advisable or necessary at this time.
In an era when enemy capabilities to inflict massive damage on the continental United States by surprise air attack are rapidly increasing, I consider that there is no doubt whatsoever as to the duty of the Joint Chiefs to establish a suitable "joint" command.... The command will be composed of forces of each of the services and provide for the coordinated accomplishment of functions of each of the services for the air defense of the United States.
In this connection I invite attention to the specific emphasis which has been accorded to the air defense of the continental United States by the President, the National Security Council and the Senate Committee on Armed Forces.
The Chairman then proceeded to recommend command and organizational arrangements that basically formalized existing understandings among the services. Thus, command should be under a senior general of the Air Force, with the Air Force as executive agent. But no provision was to be made for a joint command staff, and the terminology in the proposed new command's mission statement remained vague.
The Chairman's memo continued:
The command should include all air forces regularly assigned to the air defense of the United States; land based early warning stations and sea based forces assigned to contiguous radar coverage; those antiaircraft forces of the Army involved in the permanent air defense of the United States. Furthermore, provision should be made for the exercise of operational control of other air units of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and antiaircraft units of the Army and Marine Corps which can temporarily augment the air defense forces in event of emergency. Forces involved in the seaward extensions of the early warning system should continue under CINCLANT and CINCPAC, and early warning installations in Alaska and the NE Command under CINCAL and CINCNE, but should be responsive to the needs of the commander of the Air Defense Command as part of a coordinated system.5
During the six months after January 1954, the nature and function of the new JCS command were determined and in August 1954 the Secretary of Defense announced the establishment of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) at Ent AFB, Colorado Springs, with the order to be effective 1 September 1954. The CONAD was to operate as a joint command directly under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was charged with responsibility for correlating and integrating the air defense capabilities of the three military departments into an air defense system responsible to the control of one military commander. As proposed by the Chairman of the JCS, all three services contributed forces to CONAD: the Army supplied the antiaircraft artillery assigned to the Army Antiaircraft Command; the Navy contributed its radar picket ships, assigned to a new organization known as Naval Forces CONAD; and the Air Force added the resources of the Air Defense Command.
Many of the changes remained formal rather than actual, however, and it was not for another two years that truly significant strengthening of the air defense structure came about. In September 1956, as part of an overall revision of its unified command plan, the JCS appointed a separate commander for CONAD, clarified and strengthened his authority, and furnished him with a joint staff. At the same time (as we shall note later more specifically in connection with the DEW Line), the JCS transferred responsibility for the air defense systems in Alaska and the Canadian Northeast from the unified commands in those areas to CONAD. Firm authority over US air defenses everywhere on the continent at last became centered in Colorado Springs. Meanwhile, by early 1957 both Canada and the United States had agreed on the wisdom of integrating their air defense systems, and on 12 September the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) was born with headquarters at Colorado Springs.
It is interesting to note that while the Air Force had failed in its attempts to acquire the Army's antiaircraft batteries in the immediate postwar years, the new CONAD, commanded by an Air Force officer, assumed operational control of this joint defense weapon. The interservice differences over control of these weapons were by no means completely resolved, however, and were to break out again in late 1955 in a dispute between the ADC and ARAACOM (Army Antiaircraft Command) over a CONAD plan for SAGE control of antiaircraft guns and Nike missiles.
Throughout these early years, and indeed throughout the period 1954-60, the basic priorities of OSD and the JCS in regard to the relative importance of air defense and the strategic strike force were never to change—i.e., air defense of the United States would remain secondary to the attack against the enemy. Thus, again and again we find the same statement of JCS policy as the "Concept of Operations" for defense of the continental United States:
The concept for defense of the Continental United States is founded on the principle that in case of war the war objectives of the United States can be gained only by employment of the main war effort offensively against the enemy. In order to make available the maximum force for offensive employment, the United States will commit to defensive employment only that portion of its total force which is necessary to provide a reasonable degree of protection for the essential elements of the war-making capacity. Other less critical areas and installations will be relatively undefended except for the incidental protection offered by their proximity to defended areas or by units in training in the vicinity.6
4. Increasing Cost of the Air Defense System
Of even greater significance for the eventual shape of the US aircraft warning and defense system was the fact that, as the mid-years of the 1950s passed, both the Congress and the Department of Defense felt increasingly burdened by the huge costs to which they had committed themselves in NSC Paper 162. The National Security Council, in deciding that the air defense system should be expanded and improved, had recognized that this decision would result in the expenditure of several billion dollars. At the time, however, there was the general feeling that money was no object, that this was a task that must be accomplished regardless of cost. As a result, a number of very expensive projects were quickly approved—DEW Line, SAGE, Texas towers, airborne early warning, additional ground radar, gap-filler radar, advanced interceptors, and BOMARC. During 1954 and 1955, the costs for these systems were not excessive because most of the items required were still undergoing development.
By 1956, it was becoming possible to write firm contracts for the actual hardware involved and the costs of the various systems began to command more attention. When the total cost of the improved air defense system became apparent, it was obvious that the proposed expenditures would be too great in terms of current defense budgets. Nearly every aspect of the air defense program was to suffer reduction during 1956 as a result of the shortage of funds. Beginning with the budget for FY57, cost-cutting exercises became commonplace In the Department of Defense, the USAF, and the ADC. And Congress, which had not quibbled about costs in the years since the beginning of the fighting in Korea, began to show increasing interest in the matter.7
B. THE DEW LINE
1 . Background--The Changing Soviet Threat
The major addition to the aircraft control and warning system in the 1954-60 period was the construction of the DEW Line—an undertaking for which original planning had begun as early as 1948.8 While the combined AC&W effort in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Iceland patched together some measure of warning capability against Soviet bombers of the B-29 type, it would not, according to intelligence estimates of the early 1950s, cope with the threat envisioned for the 1956-60 time period. Production of jet-powered Soviet bombers comparable to the B-47 was predicted for the late 1950s, with even speedier models in the offing. The faster the vehicle, of course, the sooner it would have to be detected over North America to brace air defenses for the coming attack. It seemed only reasonable to ensure additional warning by moving the air defense system even farther north and using the Mid-Canada Line and the others as backup.
2. Construction of the DEW Line
On February 1954, President Eisenhower formally approved the DEW Line project, for which the Air Force was made the agency of implementation. Much has been written regarding this unprecedented technological feat. Suffice it to say here that the line was to be built along the extreme boundary of the North American Continent, several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. With a view to achieving a minimum of two hours early warning of a Soviet supersonic bomber attack from every conceivable angle of the polar attack route, the joint US-Canadian planning committee generally endorsed a route across North America from Herschel Island to Padloping Island, Canada. On the western end, the DEW Line would become integrated with the radar network ringing Alaska, and thence extended from Kodlak to Hawaii by way of airborne and seaborne patrols furnished by Navy AEW&C aircraft and picket ships. Eastward, the DEW Line would be pushed into Greenland proper, then from Cape Farewell, Greenland, would be carried to the Azores by Navy AEW&C aircraft and picket vessel patrols. Certain changes in the seaward extensions were proposed by the US Navy and were eventually accepted: instead of Kodiak to Hawaii, the Navy proposed Midway Island to Adak in the Aleutians; and in the Atlantic, Greenland to Scotland in addition to the Azores. Also, a DEW West Aleutian segment, consisting of six sites approximately 100 miles apart, was eventually added.
The main DEW Line sites numbered 57, spaced along the 69th parallel about 50 miles apart. The FPS-19 was to be the main search radar, with a detection range up to 160 nautical miles, at altitudes as high as 70,000 feet. The FPS-19 was limited at low altitude, however, and the FPS-23 continuous wave (CW) radar was created to fill the low-altitude gaps. Both radars were equipped with automatic alarming devices, both aural and visual.
Construction of the DEW Line started in the spring of 1955 and ended in early 1957, which was an achievement of epic proportions when the natural obstacles are considered. On 13 August 1957, the Air Force formally took possession of the DEW Line from the Western Electric Company, the contractor for the project. While two-thirds of the decade of the 1950s had thus been consumed in planning, experimenting, engineering, and erecting the main segment of the DEW Line, the rest of the decade was spent operating and further testing DEW stations, simplifying procedures, realigning jurisdictional responsibilities, and stretching the DEW Line's reach, eastward and westward.
Responsibility for the DEW Line had first been parceled out among several USAF commands, but was later to gravitate more and more to the ADC's control. Operational responsibility, prior to the DEW Line's completion, had been vested in the Alaskan Air Command for the western portion, and the Northeast Air Command for the eastern. When NEAC was deactivated in 1957, operational control was assigned to the ADC, and exercised by the 64th Air Division (Defense), which the ADC inherited from NEAC as of 1 April 1957. Next, the ADC on 15 February 1958 assumed operational control of the main segment in its entirety under the aegis of CINCNORAD. For its part, the Alaskan Air Command was limited by the USAF to operational control of the Alaskan and Aleutian radars, which comprised the land portions of the DEW western extensions.
The DEW Line rearward communications—in their way as important' as the initial radar detection—at first left much to be desired. NORAD complained that -the preponderance of DEW Line communications traffic over the four main circuits of the Colorado Springs COC arrived garbled. A number of reasons were postulated as the cause: the absence of "repeat-back" radio facilities, of VHF backup equipment, of coordinated efforts among the 16 separate companies involved in transmitting messages between DEW main stations and Colorado Springs, and the lack of a published manual standardizing and systematizing procedures. In fact, so bad was the network connecting the Barter Island main station with Anchorage that no operational transmissions were passed over it during the last months of 1957.
The next few months saw a major campaign to improve DEW Line rearward communications. These efforts were increasingly successful until at last the NORAD COC, once troubled with receiving as much as 98 percent of DEW Line transmissions in garbled form, by the end of 1958 received DEW Line data relatively free from this bothersome defect.
A major test (code name RED SEA) was conducted 1 May through 2 September 1958 to determine the operational capability of the DEW Line. All told, 12 SAC aircraft of the B-52 and KC-97 varieties penetrated the DEW Identification Zone (DEWIZ) in 73 separate flights, at altitudes ranging from 2,000 to 45,000 feet. Not one slipped by the chain of FPS-19 search radars unnoticed. Seventy-two of the 73 flights were reported rearward, 71 of which were appropriately received by personnel manning the COCs at NORAD and the RCAF Air Defense Command.
This is not to say that the test showed the system to be free from problems. Some lax operators reported nothing, and their targets were reported by others. As a result, it was recommended that a better training program be instituted for civilian operating personnel. Some of the worst difficulties, however, involved the automatic alarm systems of the FPS-23 and FPS-19 radars. During the test, both alarm systems triggered more false alarms than actual ones. In the case of the FPS-23, at times as many as four false alarms per minute went off, to the point that the operators lost confidence in the system. As for the FPS-19 search set, while it performed excellently in general, its alarm system actuated some 9,750 alarms in all, of which only 14 percent were assessed as genuine. Cloud formations, ice flows, and electronic interference, among other things, were believed to be the causative agents responsible for the false alarms. Once again, major development programs were set in motion to Isolate the problems and secure solutions to them.
3. DEW Line Extensions
On 1 April 1959, the Aleutian sites became officially operational, operated largely by USAF rather than contractor personnel like the remainder of the DEW Line. Joined on one side by the AAC's land-based radars ringing the Alaskan Peninsula, and on the other by the Navy-operated Pacific Barrier, the three systems in combination extended DEW Line coverage to Midway Island.
During the construction phase of the Aleutian segment, the Navy's Pacific Barrier, which began operations on 1 July 1958 with four DEW picket stations and four AEW&C stations, compensated for the lack of radar coverage by patrolling from Midway to Kodiak Island. When the Aleutian stations became operational in April 1959, the Navy's Pacific Barrier assumed its regular Midway to Umnak coverage, estimated to comprise a distance of some 2,840 miles—practically the length of the DEW Line proper. The number of DEW picket stations, increased from four to five in 1958-59, was later reduced to two. Indeed, the Navy Department, for reasons of economy, in late 1960 sought to abolish the entire Pacific Barrier by early 196l, but the Secretary of Defense turned down the request.
Regarding the DEW eastern extensions, a USAF-Danish agreement was consummated on 19 March 1958 authorizing four sites in Greenland, to be separated by an average distance of 163 miles. Construction began in July 1958 and in October-November 1960 the Air Force accepted them, whereupon Western Electric commenced installing the electronic equipment. On 1 August 1961, the Greenland sites became operational. In the next month they were tested and all targets, whether employing chaff or not, were successfully detected and tracked out to a maximum distance of 200 nautical miles. Meantime, when the Greenland sites became operational, the Navy-operated Atlantic Barrier (which had worked four DEW and four AEW&C stations between Argentia, Newfoundland, and the Azores since July 1957) was switched to the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (G-I-UK) configuration. Radar coverage thus extended from Greenland to Iceland, thence by water to the Faeroes Islands, and finally to Scotland.
4. Retrenchment and Contraction
By late 1961, DEW Line operations had been stretched both ways to their utmost limit. They reached halfway around the world, from Scotland clear across the top of North America to Midway Island—close to 12,000 miles in all. The DEW Line thus lay fully manned and equipped: poised to detect, track, and report any bomber attacks aimed at North American targets. While refinements and improvements to the network continued, what was to follow in later years was for the most part retrenchment and contraction of DEW Line coverage.
The chief reason, of course, was the shift In the enemy threat from manned bombers to ICBMs. The justification for DEW Line now became that of acting as a surveillance net calculated, simply by virtue of the differing speeds of aircraft and missiles, to delay manned bomber attacks planned to follow up an Initial strike by ICBM weapons. While the ADC insisted that this modified role was essential to the nation's safety, It was considerably less than "the first line of strategic defense" status formerly enjoyed by the DEW Line.
The DEW Line's changed role was perhaps best put by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara:
The surveillance, warning and control network constructed during the 1950s was oriented to manned bomber attack through the northern approaches over Canada and around the flanks through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.... But [during the 1960s], in any deliberate, determined attack upon the United States, we can assume that the enemy would strike first with his missiles and then with his aircraft. Thus, the arrival of the missiles would, in itself, signal the attack long before the bombers could reach their targets. As a result, large portions of the existing surveillance, warning and control system constructed during the 1950s are either obsolete or of marginal value to our overall defense.9
As the 1954-60 period had begun, so it ended for the US aircraft control and warning system—in dissension, ambivalence, and yet a continued deep concern over US vulnerability to Soviet strategic attack. Just what, on the other hand, were the principal motivating forces for the direction taken in the US aircraft warning system is not easily answered. The massive initial efforts resulting from the October 1953 decision to expand US warning and air defense capabilities, of course, were clearly a reaction to the suddenly heightened perception of a dire Soviet strategic-nuclear threat to the United States. But the other forces that then began to act almost immediately upon the incipient warning system—i.e., the growing demands for economy by both the Congress and the Department of Defense, the severe technical requirements for equipment operating in an unprecedentedly rigorous environment, and the lack of either a political or military constituency for air defense and warning that could compete with the strategic forces for national resources—can be only indirectly related to the weapons, forces, and actions of the US strategic adversary. At the end of the decade, the changing threat—the anticipated "missile gap"—appears once again to have heightened the influence of a specific strategic interaction with the Soviet Union.
C. SEMI-AUTOMATIC GROUND ENVIRONMENT (SAGE)
1. Origin of SAGE
Development of SAGE began in 1953 when the Air Force contracted with MIT's Lincoln Laboratory to set up an experimental automatic air defense command and control system on Cape Cod, Mass. Several long-range radar stations and gap-filler stations were netted into a small direction-center operation built around the Whirlwind I computer, With this test system, MIT scientists worked out the techniques of converting radar sightings to digital bits and feeding them back over special communication lines for storage in the computer. Programs were then devised that enabled the commander to draw from the computer the up-to-date picture he needed to make his battle decisions.
By 1954, the experimental project had evolved into what seemed the answer to the data transmission and display problem. In January of that year, the National Security Council decreed that SAGE should be installed with all practicable speed and thereafter kept current with threat developments. On this authority, the Air Force ordered equipment and drafted plans for computerizing the continental US portion of the system.10
The heart of the SAGE system was to be the direction center, consisting of a duplex computer and its attendant input, output, and display facilities. Initially it was projected that 46 such direction centers would be built, with highest priority accorded to those in the northeastern United States. It was anticipated that the first subsector would become operational by 1 January 1957, and the forty-sixth by 31 January 1961. The complete system was expected to cost $1.128 billion.11
2. Planning and Production Problems
Even the early R&D planning for such an ambitious and technologically advanced system as SAGE experienced numerous unforeseen difficulties and revisions, however, and these problems did not end with formalization of an official program. Indeed, they multiplied. R. F. McMullen, an ADC historian, states :
The Transition System Program [the name was changed to SAGE a few months later] of 18 January 1954, which called for 46 computerized direction centers divided among 16 sectors began to spring leaks soon after publication. Almost immediately it was discovered that the Washington and Chicago target areas were so divided that the responsibilities of commanders of adjoining subsectors were not adequately defined; the closely integrated Cleveland-Detroit target complex was divided among two subsectors; the small size of some subsectors unduly complicated weapons handover and radar overlap problems and the geographical irregularity of some subsectors made it difficult to display the area on a cathode ray tube. Revision of the January program began 15 February 1954 and produced a revised plan which called for 42 subsectors (two of which—covering Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming— would not be automated) and only nine sectors.... The locations of the first seven subsectors were also substantially changed.12
Air Force approval of the 9 sector-42 subsector concept came on 17 May 1954 and work began on a SAGE Operational Plan, which was completed and made available to the ADC staff for comment in late November 1954. When the various comments had been written and studied, Maj. Gen. Kenneth P. Bergquist, DCS/O, ADC, noted "a general air of pessimism concerning the practicality of the Plan":
There was skepticism concerning the ability of IBM to deliver FSQ-7 computers according to schedule, the continued lack of complicated components (such as Slowed-Down Video—SDV—and Fine-Grain Data—FGD) needed to make the system work, doubt about the timely availability of the necessary communications circuits and qualms about the readiness of Congress to provide the necessary funds. There was also some doubt that all 40 subsectors required automation.13
The final plan was published 7 March 1955, however, and submitted to USAF on 20 April 1955. The principal difference from the draft plan was a reduction from 42 to 34 subsectors (now known as sectors and given geographical names) and from 9 to 8 sectors (now known as numbered air divisions).
Hints that the SAGE installation schedule contained in the ADC's SAGE Operational Plan of March 1955 might require revision began to be heard in the summer of 1955. A July USAF "management survey" of SAGE suggested that it might not be necessary to implement SAGE as rapidly as planned and that perhaps the ADC could absorb a proposed cut in FY56 funds without greatly harming the total semiautomatic system. The ADC replied that, on the contrary, it was essential that SAGE be completed as rapidly as planned in order that the threat posed by Soviet supersonic bombers could be met in a timely manner. "In the ADC view, the biggest danger SAGE faced was the lack of adequate funds."14 Despite ADC protests, a revised SAGE schedule was prepared, which reflected reduced funding in FY56-FY58 and put off the proposed completion date of the total system from November 1960 (the date set in the Operational Plan) to March 1962. Essentially, the USAF's revised installation schedule was intended to reduce the financial risks involved in a concurrent development-production program.
By the end of 1955, SAGE equipment assembly and building construction had begun. Production of the FSQ-7 computer was basically on schedule. However, technical problems with the AN/FST-2, the Coordinate Data Transmitting Set through which data gathered by long-range radars would be transmitted to the FSQ-7, slowed the delivery schedule by some six-to-nine months.15
3. Interservice Difficulties U
A major jurisdictional problem involving SAGE operations arose in late 1955 when CONAD attempted to write an operational plan for SAGE control of antiaircraft weapons.16 On 15 December 1955, CONAD called a conference to discuss the question, explaining that such a plan was required by USAF, the JCS executive agent for CONAD. One of the representatives of the Army Antiaircraft Command (ARAACOM) immediately pointed out that ARAACOM and CONAD already had operational plans for the use of antiaircraft and wondered what type of plan it would be possible for CONAD to write. Another ARAACOM representative added that he would be unable to serve on the proposed working group in connection with the CONAD plan until he had checked the USAF-furnished guidelines with ARAACOM to determine their consistency with Army concepts of operation.17
The planning project then came to an immediate dead end, because ARAACOM was unalterably opposed to any type of SAGE control over antiaircraft. "The USAF Directive," wrote Lt. Gen. S. R. Michelsen, ARAACOM commander, "furnishes detailed guidelines ... which embody principles with which this headquarters has expressed disagreement in the past, since they operate to weaken the capability of the antiaircraft weapons available to this Command...."18 Thus was reopened the old controversy that had exacerbated Army-Air Force relations in the air defense field for many years. The crux of the difficulty lay in the Impingement of the Air Force "area defense" concept, based on longer range interceptors, upon Army "point defense" based on short-range antiaircraft guns and missiles. An interceptor engaged in hot pursuit of a target might enter the airspace defended by antiaircraft, and interceptor crews were convinced that antiaircraft gun crews shot at anything airborne.19 As a result, the Air Force had continually attempted to impose controls on the unrestricted use of antiaircraft, and the Army steadfastly resisted any restrictions on its freedom of action.
Early in February 1956, the Secretary of Defense asked the JCS to provide him with an interpretation of the extent of CONAD's authority to control antiaircraft weapons. The JCS thereupon asked CONAD for a briefing on the matter and on 21 February 1956, Maj . Gen. Frederick H. Smith, CONAD deputy commander, presented the CONAD point of view, i.e., that it was imperative for antiaircraft weapons to be taken into the larger air defense family, where SAGE would assign targets and generally direct the air battle. The Army Signal Corps presented the case for divorce between SAGE and Missile Master (the Army's own control system embodying a long-range radar and automation).
In April 1956, the JCS answered the Secretary of Defense's query with a split opinion, the Air Force backing the CONAD position and the Army and Navy taking a contrary view. Secretary of Defense Wilson came to a "something for everybody" decision in June 1956. He agreed that SAGE should have complete control of all weapons intended for air defense of the United States. At the same time, he agreed that the Army should have Missile Master and that SAGE commands should be relayed to antiaircraft batteries through Missile Master. CONAD raised no objections, and plans were made for the integration of Missile Master with SAGE.20
4. Beginnings of an Actual System
During 1956, the SAGE system began to take physical shape. Two blockhouses were completed, four others were near completion, and construction was under way at six more. Two FSQ-7 computers were delivered and the production line moved into high gear. Delivery of AN/FST-2 coordinate data transmitters was about to begin. Meanwhile, however, the installation schedule for SAGE suffered a series of setbacks. The defense budget for FY58, presented to Congress in early 1957, recommended that air defense expenditures be "stretched out" over a number of years. The House subcommittee to which the budget was initially presented was Itself particularly irritated over the sharply rising trend of operations and maintenance costs in the air defense field. As a result, the completion date for SAGE dropped back even further to September 1963.21
The SAGE system first reached token readiness in 1958. The New York sector was declared operational on 26 June 1958, the Boston sector on 11 September 1958. Also, the Syracuse sector and the 26th Air Division (also at Syracuse) reached operational readiness on 1 January 1959. The first SAGE "module," involving control of the New York, Boston, and Syracuse sectors by the combat center at the 26th Air Division, was in operation at the end of the year. An area running from southern Vermont and New Hampshire to Delaware along the east coast and inland to Ohio was now covered by automated air defense.22
The continued slippage of SAGE operational dates stopped in the latter part of 1958. A new schedule, approved by USAF in June 1958, indicated that the date for completion of SAGE could be moved forward from September 1963 to July 1963 through speedier construction and shorter test periods. By the end of the year, the blockhouses for 11 additional direction centers and 2 combat centers were completed. Seven other direction-center blockhouses were between 27 percent (Phoenix) and 99 percent (Spokane) completed at the end of 1958. As to the FSQ-7/8 computers, 14 systems had been shipped by IBM by the end of 1958 and production was on schedule. Production of the AN/FST-2 coordinate data transmitters was also on schedule.23
5. "Hardened" SAGE?
Throughout 1958, however, planners for the SAGE system were increasingly confronted by a looming strategic fact that would not go away: on 4 October 1957, the Soviets had put Sputnik I into orbit and, suddenly, the intercontinental ballistic missile age had arrived. It was painfully obvious that SAGE could contribute nothing to the destruction of ballistic missiles. Moreover, SAGE blockhouses were conspicuous structures that dominated the landscape wherever they were located. A mere handful of enemy missiles, therefore, could severely cripple US defenses against the manned bomber. This problem now began to dominate the thinking of air defense planners.
(Ü) It was perhaps fortuitous that about this time—the spring of 1958—IBM announced the development of a transistorized, or "solid state," computer. By substituting transistors for vacuum tubes, the construction of a computer that would do more and occupy less space was possible. In view of the reduced space requirements, the possibility that ground environment control centers might be placed underground and hardened against ICBM attack began to be explored. In early May 1958, the ADC plans organization launched an investigation of the solid state computer.24 IBM suggested that the new transistorized computer—designated the AN/FSQ-7A—be incorporated in the last 10 direction centers and also substituted in earlier locations, where it was deemed imperative. A study was made of the funding ramifications, as a result of which major changes in the installation plan were deemed feasible. An Operational Employment Plan (OEP) was then developed for nine "Super Combat Centers (SCC)" in the United States and one in Canada. One salient feature of the SCC was that any center could perform the direction-center function for any or all of the other sectors within the SCC if necessary. In short, each of the nine hardened SCCs could conduct the detailed air battle anywhere in the country.25
The hardened SAGE concept was approved by Headquarters USAF on 5 February 1959. Because of problems involving feasibility of occupancy by the desired dates, however, and lack of agreement on the desired degree of hardness for the centers, a revised OEP was issued on 19 June 1959- This deployment schedule called for the first SCC (the first of 10) to be operational by August 1963. But on 19 June, the Department of Defense also published its Master Air Defense Plan, which was considerably less ambitious. The DoD plan reduced the total program from 10 to 7 hardened sites. After a vigorous ADC and NORAD réclama, DoD placed a hold order on the purchase of all SCC equipment pending an evaluation of the total program.26
When the DoD study was completed, about 1 February 1960, DoD recommended that SAGE assume an all-soft configuration, because of the cost of hardening. Once again there was a vigorous ADC-NORAD rebuttal, but the DoD concept prevailed. On 30 March 1960, USAF canceled all Super Combat Centers. Meanwhile, the basic SAGE system was completed in December 1961, when the Sioux City Direction Center became operational. McMullen states: "It was perhaps ironic that SAGE was completed at about the time plans for operating the ground environment following the destruction of SAGE became solid."27
D. WARNING OF MISSILE ATTACK
1 . Ballistic Missile Early Warning System
With the growing threat in the last years of the decade from Soviet ICBMs, the problem of attaining warning of a missile attack was given high priority. While much of the actual accomplishment in the missile warning program falls in the next period (Part III), most of the planning and a considerable amount of construction took place in the last years of this one. On 14 January 1958, the Secretary of Defense gave initial approval for the construction of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) being developed by the Air Force. It was directed that the Thüle site be operational in 1959 as a first priority, a site in Alaska as the second priority, and a site in Scotland as the third priority. Interim computer and display facilities at NORAD were to be activated for the Thüle station and later expanded to provide capability for the full system. Scanning radars were designated for initial site capability pending development of tracking radars, which would later be installed to supplement the target verification and prediction capability.28
On 9 May 1958, after extensive reviews of costs and system designs, the Secretary of Defense directed the Air Force to proceed with the radar stations at Thüle and Alaska and a computer and display facility at NORAD. The total cost for this portion of the system was estimated at slightly over $800 million. Authorization to proceed with the station in Scotland was deferred pending negotiations with the United Kingdom for a joint venture.29
On 13 October 1958, Headquarters USAF approved the BMEWS final operational plan. The total system would consist of three radar installations, associated rearward communications and the computation and display facilities in NORAD headquarters Operational target dates of September I960 for Thüle and September 1961 for Clear, Alaska, were now established.
The program remained in an unsettled state throughout 1958-59, however, largely because of funding difficulties. It became necessary for the Air Force to aim at only a limited operational capability in order to remain reasonably close to the projected target dates. The time of construction of the planned third site, to be located at Fylingdales Moor in the United Kingdom, was also thrown into doubt. By June 1959, after much discussion, DoD confirmed the USAF proposal for an interim BMEWS program to include all three sites and to be carried out in two phases. An interim display facility was approved for installation at the existing NORAD combat center, to be operational in September 1960 and used until the hardened NORAD combat center was completed, possibly in 1963.30
(X) On 30 September 1960, the Thüle BMEWS site did reach IOC, as scheduled. This constituted a major step toward a warning capability against missiles, since the Thüle location covered four sections with a total azimuth scan of 160 degrees. Also in September 1960, work began on installation of a SAC display warning system, with three display consoles to be eventually installed at SAC headquarters. Plans for sending ICBM raid information directly to SAC from the BMEWS site were disapproved by Headquarters USAF, however; instead, SAC would receive data from NORAD.31
In the meantime, experience was being gained with the system. On 5 October 1960, moon echoes appeared in one of the Thüle fans and were mis-identified as a potential missile threat. However, impact points were not predicted, and both NORAD and SAC treated the alarm as false. Subsequent investigation showed that it was indeed radar echoes from the moon that had caused the false alarm. Improved "gating" procedures —i.e., means of filtering out interference or aurora from a radarscope or system—were later instituted in order to prevent another false moon alarm.32
2 . Bomb Alarm System
The Bomb Alarm System (BAS) was designed to detect detonations, locate precise blast locations, and indicate the intensity and pattern of attack. The complete system, leased from the Western Union Company, depended upon three optical sensors sensitive to thermal radiation and located within 11 miles of each target site. Each sensor was connected to a signal generator, which was linked by telegraph line to one of six remotely situated control centers. In turn, the control centers were Integrated with the system users.
The bomb alarm prototype system began operation in March 1960. Covering 97 targets in the continental United States—including SAC bases—and the Thüle and Clear BMEWS sites, the BAS was accepted by the Air Force on 10 February 1961.33 Like so many of the other highly sophisticated systems in the US command, control, and warning setup, the BAS was later to be plagued by a series of outages and false alarms. It was also dependent on public power sources, and thus limited in its survivability as an operating system.
3. Other Sensor Systems
Other major sensor systems being developed at the end of the decade of the 1950s were the Satellite-Missile Observation System (SAMOS), which would use both photographic and electromagnetic sensing satellites to collect Intelligence data (contributing to strategic warning), and the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS), a system for establishing a series of reconnaissance satellites in polar orbit. The MIDAS satellites would carry payloads consisting of infrared-detection scanners capable of detecting emanations from ballistic missiles as the missiles rose above the atmosphere, thus providing tactical warning of attack.34 On 26 February 1960, the first MIDAS flight test vehicle was launched from the Atlantic Missile Range, and on 24 May 1960, MIDAS II was launched successfully.35
E. SUMMARY COMMENTS ON SAGE, BMEWS, AND OTHER SENSOR SYSTEMS
The story of SAGE is essentially that of a technologically advanced system, whose pioneering achievements were to be of incalculable benefit to the entire US computer and defense industry, that was nevertheless behind the times in regard to the strategic environment. It became increasingly difficult to justify such an immensely expensive air defense system that only began to attain partial operational status after the Soviets had demonstrated an initial ICBM capability and that would not be finally completed until the Soviets were expected to have a substantial number of intercontinental missiles in their inventory. The initiation of SAGE stemmed directly from the growing Soviet strategic bomber threat, and SAGE's decline can largely be attributed to the ICBM's replacement of the bomber as the major threat to the United States. The BMEWS, the Bomb Alarm System, SAMOS, and MIDAS were all initiated in recognition of the new environment in which missiles would be the dominant threat and warning would be a matter of minutes at best. Increasingly, moreover, such systems were to reflect a strategic environment in which the United States was almost totally dependent upon advanced technology and split-second procedures for warning indications whose implications human decisionmakers were nevertheless not fully prepared to accept.
XVI. NATIONAL COMMAND POSTS
The Air Force command post in the Pentagon, established at the time of the Korean war, constituted the first major step toward a national command post. Subsequent US governmental concern with such a center arose from the same environment that produced a number of other measures, in late 1953 and early 1954, to heighten the nation's preparedness against strategic air attack. In February 1954, President Eisenhower had approved the NSC-recommended DEW line, and soon afterwards Canada had agreed to build a second line of radars along its 55th parallel to close possible gaps in DEW coverage and provide more precise headings on enemy penetration. The ADC headquarters operations center in Colorado Springs would assess the meaning of DEW sightings and, on suspicion or confirmation of attack, simultaneously alert the SAC control center in Omaha and the Air Force command post in the Pentagon. While the ADC and SAC alerted their forces, the Pentagon command post would pass the warning to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If the intruding aircraft were positively identified by the ADC as enemy forces, air defense weapons were authorized to be utilized immediately against the attackers. Meanwhile, SAC bombers would fly to launching points and there await orders which only the President could release. In accordance with this policy, the National Security Council in 1955 officially designated the Air Force command post as the nation's air defense warning center. As T. A. Sturm, an Air Force historian, states:
This did more than merely confirm what the post had been doing all along. It stimulated a greater sense of urgency among non-defense agencies in Washington toward their emergency action preparations. This in turn eased the way for JCS and the Air Staff to improve and test communications between the command post and all agencies and military commands that had important defense responsibilities.1
A. THE AIR FORCE COMMAND POST
While the Air Force command post had almost from its Inception in June 1950 been serving as the de facto national air defense warning center, the post-Korean emphasis on massive retaliation and defense against Soviet bomber attack had nevertheless shifted the priority for funds, personnel, and equipment to the ADC and SAC. These two commands, in turn, had eventually established command posts of their own that surpassed that of Headquarters USAF in both accommodations and effectiveness. In late 1954, the chief of the Air Force command post complained that the war room had "deteriorated into a show place tending to stagnate around long-range presentations." He urged that the operation be staffed and equipped so that it could, If occasion arose, "depict the current operational situation of the major combat commands during actual hostilities."2
This was a period of considerable interservice sensitivity, however, regarding the precise means and locations through which command and control of the nation's combat forces would be exercised in wartime, and Air Force officials did not feel confident enough to attempt to push through OSD a request for funds for the costly and major improvements that would have been required In the Air Force command post system. Instead, such limited improvements as were feasible with existing funds were made in staff planning and attack warning communications, and meanwhile preparations continued for emergency evacuation of the Air Force Battle Staff to the JCS Alternate Joint Communication Center (AJCC) at Fort Ritchie, Md. In September 1955, the Air Force did replace the command post's outmoded telephone system with a modern switchboard with 100 long-distance lines and room for more, so that 20 people in various parts of the country could hold as many as four conferences at a time. T. A. Sturm refers to this modernization as evidence of the "ambiguous national command and control objectives" at the time and notes that the Air Force Directorate of Operations declared .the added equipment was far more than needed under "the present approved concept of operation that direction of a future war" would come from the Fort Ritchie site. However, he continues, "since the switchboard backup equipment was being provided and maintained by the telephone company at no cost to the Air Force until a line was activated, the post had at its disposal a long line capacity which required very little expenditures of resources."3
(i/) In December 1955, the command post assumed greater importance when the JCS adopted a more reliable procedure for holding conferences in an emergency. It was decided that during duty hours the Secretary of Defense, the JCS, and operations deputies of the services would go immediately to the USAF command post for emergency sessions before carrying out evacuation plans. For after-duty hours, the JCS directed the Air Force to make the command post the hub of a communication system that would permit key figures to hold telephone conferences while in their individual homes." In December 1956, the USAF facilities became in effect a JCS command post for sending messages that implemented the decisions made at these after-duty telephone conferences.5
This establishment of the Air Force command post as the crisis alert link between the JCS and joint commanders around the world foreshadowed later changes that were to be made after the 1958 reorganization in NCA relations with the joint commands. President Eisenhower had repeatedly expressed his concern over the time that elapsed before field commanders received operational orders in a crisis. The new procedures now required the command post to augment communications In such a way that the Joint Chiefs could go directly to the joint commanders, bypassing executive agents. As a result, a dangerous rigidity in US top-level communications was eliminated, and at the same time a further dimension in US national command and control was created:
While nuclear attack would remain the primary threat, it became increasingly accepted that joint commanders would frequently encounter non-nuclear crises which would require immediate, secure, and constant communication directly with the Joint Chiefs. This meant, in turn, that the Ft. Ritchie site alone could not afford the central, decisionmaking facilities required to satisfy this broadened concept of national command and control requirements—not unless the Joint Chiefs and other military leaders were prepared to deploy there every time a crisis occurred.6
These new considerations led the Defense Department to initiate studies and actions that were to contribute to the decision made during the 1958 reorganization to open a direct operational channel from the President to the Secretary of Defense and then through the Joint Chiefs to the joint commands, after the Congress and the administration had been shocked into a reappraisal of top-level command and control procedures by Soviet space and ICBM advances in 1957-58.
The new philosophy of command and control in crises less than all-out war was soon to be exercised. In April 1958, Communist-inspired demonstrations against Vice President Nixon in Caracas prompted President Eisenhower to dispatch four companies of US troops to the Caribbean to help the Venezuelan government protect the Nixon party, if necessary. The Air Force command post installed communications from the Joint Chiefs' conference room to all service operation centers in the Pentagon, and, since only the Air Force had direct landline contact with military bases in the Caribbean, it generally functioned as the JCS communication center throughout the affair. The Venezuelan episode was followed by the Lebanon and Taiwan crises of July-September 1958, which uncovered serious defects in US nonnuclear war preparedness and worldwide communication reliability and security.
B. THE JOINT WAR ROOM
Up to this time, Air Force command post personnel had also staffed and operated for the JCS what came to be called the "Joint War Room Annex," established by the JCS early in 1952. In May 1957, the JCS considered setting up a war room of their own and using it for emergency sessions instead of the USAF command post, but the Director, Joint Staff, decided that existing facilities and procedures were adequate. After the 1958 emergencies, however, the Joint Chiefs assumed operational control of the annex. Finally, in August 1959, the JCS established their own Joint War Room (JWR) and, during the next year, acquired the trained staff to operate it. In December 1960, although continuing to provide JWR communications, the Air Force command post formally relinquished its joint and national duties to the JWR and became in fact, as well as name, a strictly USAF agency.7
At the time the JCS decided to establish their own JWR in the Pentagon, a highly controversial issue arose as to whether the Army should procure, install, and maintain JWR communication-electronic equipment. The Army, which was responsible for communications at the AJCC and certain other agencies in the Washington area, argued that JWR communications had to be compatible with its systems. The Air Force was adamantly opposed to Army control over the JWR and to the prospect that USAF communication systems supporting the JCS would have to be routed through and controlled by Army facilities. The Air Force argued that JCS communication with the unified and specified commands was the issue, and not compatibility with the AJCC. It pointed out that the USAF command post had a great deal of experience in the kind of communications required, and that the Air Force had a larger network than the Army. Following the time-honored pattern of the services in a dispute over functions (i.e., the function should if possible be assigned to the service itself; if not possible, the function should be a joint responsibility; and last choice was assignment to another service), the Air Force argued that since the JWR was to be a national command post for strategic direction of the unified and specified commands, its communications systems should be a joint responsibility of all the services.
The issue was resolved in December 1959 in favor of the Air Force, and in 1960 the Air Force was assigned the task of designing and installing the JWR communication-electronic facilities for the JCS War Room. As noted above, at the end of 1960 the JWR replaced the USAF command post as the primary emergency and wartime command and control facility, with communications systems compatible with those of the major Air Force operating commands.8
C. THE ALTERNATE JOINT COMMUNICATION CENTER
The Soviet acquisition of a nuclear capability In 1949, and the further leap to thermonuclear weapons in 1953, created for US political and military leaders a dilemma that was never really to be resolved—how to maintain top-level command and control of US strategic offensive and defensive capabilities when the base for such control, the national capital, was subject to sudden and total destruction in wartime. Throughout the decade of the 1950s, the nation's leadership failed to settle fully on either of the two possible answers to the dilemma—"emergency evacuation" or "stay set and take it." As noted in Part One, an Alternate Joint Communication Center (AJCC), with elements both above and below ground, had been established by the JCS at Fort Ritchie in 1953, to serve as an alternate headquarters in the event Washington became untenable. But even though it became official policy that, if the President declared a strategic alert and the JCS placed the AJCC in operation, the Battle Staffs of the services, the JCS, the Secretary of Defense, and perhaps the President would relocate to the underground site and direct the combat forces from there, numerous critical questions for effective command and control remained unanswered.
Some of the most troublesome of these questions involved the precise set of circumstances that would trigger the activation of the AJCC, the amount of warning that might feasibly be expected before an attack, just who would go to the AJCC and how they would get there, whether the AJCC and (even more significantly) its communications would be likely to survive a direct attack, and whether control of combat forces could be maintained in a post-attack environment. All these questions remained subjects of dispute throughout the decade, until the importance of the AJCC itself was reduced by the arrival of the missile era.
In 1954, however, a vast amount of time and effort were devoted by OSD, the JCS, and the services to the detailed planning of the procedures and actions required to operate from the AJCC. To make this planning even approximately reasonable, favorable assumptions were usually necessary regarding warning time and the speed of presidential decisions. Thus, in May 1954, the Secretary of Defense wrote as follows to the JCS and the services:
It is considered that we should continue to place primary reliance on the predesignation of field activities to assume command. In view, however, of planned increases in warning time and the possibility that the President may direct an emergency relocation based on strategic warning, consideration should be given to the development of plans for the movement of all essential activities of the Department of Defense from the Washington area in advance of an actual attack.9
One-quarter of the space in the AJCC was allocated to OSD and the JCS, and one-quarter each to the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and Air Force. This space in turn was suballocated, which required an almost infinite number of time-consuming decisions to determine the personnel and functions authorized to occupy the all-too-limited space.
Beneath the problem of space assignment at the AJCC resided a much larger question concerning both the nature of the war to be fought and the roles of civilian personnel and agencies In the strategic direction of that war. As early as December 1953, the JCS had suggested that the President and certain designated advisers might wish to go to the AJCC in an emergency, and it was generally assumed that the President or his representative might under some circumstances wish to take up that option. The presence at the AJCC of any sizable increment from OSD was a different question, however. When this issue surfaced several times in conceptual planning for operation of the AJCC, the JCS stated their policy firmly, as follows
Current facilities at the AJCC are not adequate to provide both a center for strategic direction of U.S. armed forces and a center for the overall operations of the Department of Defense.
A concept which will insure continuity in the joint strategic direction of the U.S. armed forces in wartime should be confirmed.10
For the JCS, the AJCC was a combat center from which the strategic war would either be initiated or continued, and the decisions pertaining to the overall direction of that war were military decisions—after, of course, the President or his representative had given the initial approval. The eventual statement of the official DoD concept for the. AJCC was something of a compromise, but in essence it accepted the JCS position:
The Alternate Joint Communication Center is a facility In a protected location, under the management service of the Army, for use as an emergency relocation site by an element of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, other elements of the J.O.S. organization, and staff groups representing each Service, to insure continuity in the joint strategic direction of the U.S. armed forces in wartime.11
In October 1957, the JCS approved a plan for a Joint War Room at the AJCC through which they would exercise strategic direction over the unified and specified commands if the Pentagon were destroyed. The Secretary of Defense in April 1958 approved the inclusion of the JWR in the program for new construction. After the Reorganization Act of 1958 strengthened the position of the JCS, the AJCC became in effect the emergency command post of the Armed Forces.12
The issue of space allocation in the AJCC for non-service and JCS personnel was to surface again, however. In September 1958, the Secretary of Defense approved plans to assign AJCC space for a member of the executive branch (not necessarily the President). The thrust of this decision, of course, was in accord with JCS philosophy. But when OSD proposed on several subsequent occasions that it receive additional space, JCS and USAF planners became increasingly perturbed. Greater OSD representation at the AJCC would have to be at the expense of staff support for the JCS, as well as the services. It was feared that moves were afoot to change the character of the AJCC from a JCS operational command post to an OSD support facility. The Air Force maintained that people should be located in the AJCC according to the direct contribution they made to wartime strategic control of combat forces. To each OSD request, the JCS replied that the wartime use of the AJCC had to be limited to those who directed the combat forces.13
It was becoming apparent to many in the administration, however, that, with the Soviet acquisition of an intercontinental missile capability, the decisions made in the AJCC (if any were made there at all) had much less chance than formerly of being straightforward military Implementations of presidential directives. If there should be a Soviet missile attack on Washington without tactical warning, the staff in the AJCC —whether prelocated or moved there on strategic warning— might be required to make what were in effect national decisions. For in spite of the optimistic assumptions regarding the possible presence of the President at the AJCC, there was also an increasing recognition on the .part of the JCS that in the real world the President would probably not move to the AJCC (leaving his regular advisers) in the absence of fairly unambiguous warning—and that such warning might not be forthcoming. And whatever happened, the Joint Chiefs themselves believed that they must remain close to the President. Thus, as early as 1954 we find the JCS stating:
In order that necessary military decisions may be formulated and implemented, a close and intimate relationship must exist between the principal military planners and advisors (the JCS) and the President and civilian heads of various Executive Departments. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in particular, should be immediately available to the President, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defense whenever their professional advice and assistance is required. Whether In peace or in an emergency situation, wherever the Executive Office of the President is established, the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be located in close proximity. Present indications are that the President will continue to maintain his office in Washington until such time as an emergency develops. During an emergency he will probably utilize Camp David initially as an alternate headquarters. Until such time as it is determined by proper authority that the United States is faced with a grave emergency, and alternate headquarters and emergency relocation plans are placed In effect, it is considered that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should remain In Washington.14
It must be remembered that the underground site at Fort Ritchie was intended to be the military command post for uncodified strategic direction of the war. It had been expected that most of the civilian agencies requiring a protected site during a nuclear emergency would be located at High Point in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But if the President was going to remain in Washington or at Camp David until the very last minute, and if most of his advisers (including the JCS) were to remain near him, then the center of governmental decision would fairly clearly be where the President was—and not at High Point. On the other hand, if the President relocated to Fort Ritchie, than he would probably want his civilian, as well as military, advisers near him. In any event, it began increasingly to appear that only one emergency center, if any at all, was going to have substantial influence on US national decisions in an emergency—and that was the military command post at Fort Ritchie. Moreover, if the Secretary of Defense himself expected to have any significant influence on military operations during an emergency (and the 1958 reorganization had increased his decision-making role), then he too would want to have members of his staff available for consultation. In short, the question of space allocation at the AJCC raised the entire issue of civilian influence on military direction of the war.
In 1960, the JCS approved a limited number of spaces in the AJCC for the National Security Council staff, and then took up the question of providing room for other agencies at the Center. President Eisenhower suggested the possibility of granting space to the State Department, and as a result the JCS began to review requirements for additional space and construction. Since available funds were slated primarily for hardening, additional construction to provide more space was delayed.15
During the latter half of 1960, Secretary of Defense Gates proposed that the JCS give additional space and facilities to the White House Office of the President and to the State Department. The JCS replied that military requirements made this Impossible.16 Gates then directed the allocation that he had requested, and the space for the JCS and services was readjusted accordingly. In January 196l, the JCS submitted a plan limiting the number of AJCC occupants to 3,000. In May, however, the Director, Joint Staff, informed the JCS that the number had to be cut to 2,200 until further construction was completed. The Joint Staff and the services then reexamined space requirements and submitted a minimum number for operating on an austerity basis.17
Late in 1959, the Air Force revived Its 1952 proposal that the AJCC be activated and constantly manned with permanently assigned and experienced personnel. After considering current national intelligence estimates and requirements for personnel and support, the JCS decided not to approve the proposal at that time. On 20 October 1960, however, the JCS accepted the Air Force view and directed the Joint Staff to prepare plans for establishment of a Joint Alternate Command Element (JACE) that would be prelocated at the AJCC to ensure survival of military leadership. When completed, the plans called for full activation of the JACE on 1 July 1961. There would be five battle staffs and a command and administrative section, or a total of 228. The battle staffs would be stationed In the Washington area and rotate to the AJCC for temporary duty. On 11 July the JACE became operational.18 In the Interim, on 13 April, JCS Chairman Lyman L. Lemnitzer appointed Brig. Gen. Willard W. Smith, USAF, as Chief, JACE.
D. MOBILE COMMAND POSTS
There was no guarantee, of course, that the AJCC itself would survive in a nuclear war, and by the end of the 1950s it was recognized that increased missile accuracy—and therefore a rapid increase in the vulnerability of the AJCC—was only a matter of time. In September 1960, the Winter Study Group suggested interlocking the various fixed command posts so that unclassified, one succeeded another as necessary, as well as backing them up with a mobile center to ensure survival and continuity of command for the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the JCS. A month later, WSEG Report 50 also called for a coupled command system (discussed in Chapter XVII). This would consist of primary fixed command centers and one or more mobile centers closely coupled to them by communications and a bomb alarm system. These mobile centers would assume control once the bomb alarm data told them that the fixed centers were no longer operating.
There was no question, of course, of a mobile center duplicating the capabilities of a large, fixed facility like the Pentagon or even the AJCC. But at the end of the 1950s, with the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack and little or no warning, the problem was increasingly seen as one of guaranteeing retaliation against a surprise attack, and hence strengthening deterrence. To ensure such authorized and directed retaliation, only three functions would be required: the decision as to whether the situation warranted such action, the selection from preplanned operations of the appropriate actions, and the transmission of short execution messages to all strategic forces. These functions did not require large numbers of people or large amounts of equipment and could be contained in modern mobile vehicles.
The Weapons Systems Evaluation Group maintained that a soft mobile center had a better chance of surviving than a hardened fixed site, whereas the Air Force felt that primary reliance should be placed on the latter, even though the hard sites should be backed up by alternate mobile centers. With both hardened and mobile centers, the Air Force believed that the US command structure could not be knocked out by the Soviets at a single blow. To USAF planners, an airborne command post was clearly the best type of mobile center, and they believed that successful tests of airborne command communications, both at Headquarters USAF and SAC, supported the conclusion.
In November 1960, Admiral Burke presented the Navy proposal for a mobile center. He advocated use of the cruiser USS Northampton as an alternate National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA), arguing that a naval flagship would not only be the least vulnerable emergency post for the President and his key advisers but could also be an alternate command post if those officials were caught unawares by a surprise attack. The ship would cruise on the Chesapeake Bay and on random routes in coastal waters, communicating with facilities ashore by various types of high frequency networks. The President and his staff would move to the ship by car, helicopter, speedboat, or submarine. On 1 December this proposal was referred to a JCS study group for analysis.
The Air Force was highly critical of the Navy's proposal, maintaining that a nuclear attack that might destroy the AJCC might cover the Northhampton's cruising areas as well, and also that the cruiser would be vulnerable to surveillance and attack by enemy submarines, trawlers, and armed reconnaissance aircraft. While the JCS were considering the Navy's concept, the Air Force readied Its own proposal, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP). On 14 December, the Weapons Board of Headquarters USAF recommended that the Air Force propose the NEACP to higher authority, and on 26 January 1961 It was submitted to the JCS.19
In presenting the USAF argument, General White noted that communications equipment was already available for transmitting execution orders from the NEACP to field commands and other government agencies. Either before or after tactical warning, the President and key officials would go to an airfield by helicopter and be airborne and out of the Washington area within 15 minutes (the time expected to be available from warning by BMEWS). The NEACP would orbit an area west of the city until the initial strikes were over, then proceed to a surviving fixed site as quickly as possible. While in flight, it would contact ground stations and SAC's airborne command post by ultra high and very high frequency, single side band communications. Three aircraft (that could be bought off-the-shelf) would be needed on 24-hour alert.
On 9 February, the JCS study group decided that mobile national emergency command posts were sufficiently practicable to warrant further study. It not only considered using ships and aircraft but also a train that the Army had fitted out as a mobile command post. On 22 March, the JCS decided that command posts both afloat and airborne were feasible. In the preliminary phase, the cruiser Northampton would be used as a command post afloat and modified KC-135 aircraft would be used for the airborne command post.20
E. ENSURING COMMAND POST DECISION IN THE ABSENCE OF THE PRESIDENT: EXPLICIT RETALIATORY DOCTRINE
The actions considered above, decreasing the vulnerability of the national command and control system by hardening or mobility, would increase the chances of survival of command authorities. But if the President or his successors were not able to man the alternate centers, there would be no assured continuity of command. In view of the political leadership's vulnerability to attack and the nation's requirement for political control over military decisions, the JCS raised the question of an explicit retaliatory doctrine.21
Under this concept, subordinate commanders with operational control of nuclear weapons would have available to them systems that provided warning data and displays of nuclear detonations in an enemy attack. This equipment would tell them why command channels were interrupted and when the enemy attack reached a point that should trigger an agreed response – i.e., specific measures previously agreed upon by political-military leaders. The JCS believed that adoption of such an explicit retaliatory doctrine would act as a restraint upon the Soviet Union; on the other hand, if the restraint failed, then the United States would be assured of a more closely coordinated retaliatory response.
In addition to an explicit response, the JCS proposed a simple, direct, and clear national chain of command in order to ensure effective command and control arrangements during a period of grave peril. As the system stood In 1960, the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the JCS would participate in reaching a decision to use US forces in a general war. If the President were not able to make such a decision when one was required under emergency conditions, however, the decision was supposed to fall to an official in the political line of succession to the presidency.22 Attempting to follow this procedure, the JCS were convinced, would be too time-consuming and would also involve officials who were not fully qualified to make such a fateful decision.
On 20 October 1960, the JCS recommended a new three-level national chain of command for a critical emergency: (1) President or Vice President; (2) Secretary of Defense or Deputy Secretary of Defense; and (3) Chairman, JCS, or senior service chief. In this chain of command, the second official in each echelon would be empowered to act for the first, and the responsible official within each echelon would also act for individuals in upper echelons if they were not immediately available. The JCS recognized that these procedures would apply only when survival was at stake and that this condition had to be clearly and specifically defined.
The JCS were primarily concerned, of course, with ensuring a capability to retaliate effectively in a sudden nuclear attack, whereas the laws affecting presidential succession had been primarily aimed at securing an orderly succession of government in the event of the death or Incapacitation of the President. The JCS were convinced, in any event, that the existing laws and procedures were not adequate for the missile age. Yet the JCS recommendations themselves offered no firm assurance of survival of the top-level chain of command, as the extracts from WSEG Report 50 (see following chapter) point out. And the JCS made no provision for the traditional American concern for maintaining political control over important military decisions—especially one that would launch US strategic-nuclear forces in a vastly destructive attack against another country.
XVII. NATIONAL COMMAND AND CONTROL VULNERABILITY AS PERCEIVED AT THE END OF THE DECADE: SYNOPSIS OF WSEG REPORT 50
In September 1960, the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group published (some two months ahead of the main body of its Report 50) Enclosure C, a study of national command and control procedures and vulnerabilities.1 The entire report constituted a comprehensive review of strategic weapons systems in the anticipated environment of the years 1964-67 and was, of course, specifically concerned with the growing Soviet ICBM threat. Enclosure C is particularly useful for the purposes of this study because of the incisive picture it gives of the national command and control situation at the end of the 1954-60 period. For that reason some extensive extracts are included below.2 (Emphasis has been added in selected portions.)
A. EXTRACTS FROM WSEG REPORT 50
Enclosure C of WSEG Report 50 made the following strategic assumptions:
Only ballistic missiles will be in the first wave, and the Soviets will aim part of the attack in such a way as to jeopardize the national political and joint military command structure, control systems for strategic nuclear delivery forces, and supporting communications for these structures and systems.
The study's basic conclusions were that:
Under surprise attack conditions, there can be little confidence, if the present configuration is continued in the 1964 to 1967 time period, that the Presidential decision would be made and military execution orders be received by the combat elements of the strategic nuclear forces before the high command is disrupted.
The problems of assuring control are problems first of the national political-military command apparatus since delivery systems and local weapons control capabilities could outlive the national political and military command structure common to all.
A few Soviet weapons on the U.S. high command structure could seriously reduce the effectiveness of the retaliatory attack.
It is the vulnerability of the terminals at which high command is exercised that dominates the problem. Communications between terminals are also vulnerable but solving this problem would not in itself significantly increase the probability that the political and military high command structure could operate during and after enemy attack.
In the 1964 to 1967 time period, command succession arrangements would promote survivability of viable command only if command passed to commanders in significantly less vulnerable Installations.
In the 1964 to 1967 time period, alternate high command centers that are not constantly operationally manned can be ascribed little confidence of effectiveness. Operational manning in this context means manning by individuals of authority, rank, and responsibility commensurate with the decisions and actions for which they may be responsible.
Hardening of a small number of fixed command centers does not promise a high confidence solution to the problem against weapons with the CEP and yield characteristics possible in the 1964 to 1967 time period.
Mobility can provide a high confidence solution to the problem of preservation of command facilities. Vehicles of the general nature of ships or trains, or possibly even smaller types, would provide the weight and volume capacity to contain, and thus to provide high confidence of survival of, the facilities and personnel for the essential trans-attack functions, but not the preattack functions.
Installations, such as damage assessment centers, whose capabilities are needed by command in the period after the initial strikes would be less certain of destruction in the initial attacks if they were not collocated with important primary targets that an enemy must include in his counterforce attacks....
All primary communication modes for missile and bomber system control are vulnerable to direct enemy attack on terminal facilities. This includes wire systems for land-based missiles and aircraft, HF systems for airborne aircraft and VLF systems for POLARIS SSBN's. HF systems are susceptible to nuclear blackout effects. HF and VLF communications to forces deployed outside of CONUS (including SAC aircraft under Positive Control and SSBN's) are susceptible to enemy jamming interference of increasing effectiveness as forces are deployed closer to enemy targets.
The report then proceeded to lay out the basis for its conclusions:
The general nature of the process designed to make possible the Presidential decision and to give it effect is as follows. BMEWS and other tactical warning systems feed data to an interpretive center at NORAD so as to: (a) provide air defense alert and permit defensive combat action; (b) provide alert to offensive strike forces; (c) provide alert to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense; (d) provide alert to the intelligence and political advisors to the President; and (e) provide alert to the President himself. The President may, on the basis of military intelligence and warning and political advice, order military offensive action. If he does, his decision must be transmitted through the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the striking forces....
* * * *
[The national political and joint military command structure] ... is highly vulnerable and could not be counted upon to complete its minimum essential retaliatory functions if attacked.
On the basis of tactical warning, the time the President may confidently think he has for the response decision, prior to bomb impact, is between zero and about 15 minutes. In using the upper extreme of 15 minutes he will be assuming that every procedural and physical element in the whole warning and strategic command and control structure works perfectly and that the enemy will not employ SLBMs or sabotage effectively against it. A President could not be confident, based on operating experience or exercises, that the whole system would work perfectly.
In a deliberate attack on the national political and military command structure under present circumstances, the enemy might wish to attack all major centers of command from the President, through the Secretary of Defense-Joint Chiefs of Staff (SecDef-JCS) level, to include nuclear capable CINC's and their alternate command posts and designated successor command posts. To do so he would have to attack 14 such installations. The allocation of some 35 ICBM's typical of those possible in the time period 1964 to 1967 would give the enemy more than a 90 percent probability of destroying the entire higher political-military command of strategic nuclear forces. In many instances, the first weapon delivered at an installation will wipe out its communications if not destroy or incapacitate the installation itself. Of these installations, only six are not collocated with important strategic delivery system targets. Two of these six are collocated with each other.... Only five additional aiming points over and above those provided by counterforce target systems need be targeted. From about 7 to 11 additional Soviet weapons would be required to achieve more than 90 percent probability of complete destruction of the higher political-military strategic command structure if the attack were viewed as part of an overall counter-force attack.
Table I shows that only a few Soviet weapons, with CEP's of one mile or less, are needed to eliminate the U.S. capability to make or transmit either a political or a high-level military decision at or from any of the five places in which such command would be centered as the structure is presently configured. In routine states of alert even fewer than these five centers might need to be targeted, because alternate centers, such as the Alternate Joint Communications Center (AJCC) and HIGHPOINT are not normally operationally manned....
|
Table
I |
|||
|
Installation |
CEP (n. mi.) |
||
|
2.0 |
1.0 |
0.5 |
|
|
White
House |
12 |
4 |
2 |
|
Camp David |
15 |
5 |
3 |
|
AJCC |
6 |
3 |
2 |
|
HIGHPOINT |
10 |
3 |
2 |
|
TOTAL |
43 |
15 |
9 |
|
a.
Yield: 8 MT |
|||
Both the Presidential and the SecDef – JCS levels of command are presently subject to operational incapacitation by the same events. Surviving military commands may be without political direction for some time while political reconstitution is in process.
This outcome would appear to be unlikely to be modified by actions associated with or following from the present law with respect to Presidential succession . In the first place, under many circumstances nearly all of those on the succession list would be as likely to be incapacitated as the President and by the same event....
In the second place, it appears that there is no mechanism for nor organization charged with, locating, identifying, and providing essential defense communications to the senior, non-incapacitated member of that list in the event of a nuclear attack presumed to have removed the President from control.
Members of the list are provided with a telephone number to call, from any place in the U.S., which connects them to the Joint War Room (JWR) in the Pentagon. The intent is to enable members of the list to assume responsibility should they hear or believe that the President was Incapacitated. Successful operation of this procedure would require:
a. That the JWR and its communications survive the event which removed the President from control.
b. That circuits between the surviving members of the list and the JWR remain in service.
c_. That a judgment be made by the senior officer on duty in the JWR as to when he has in fact received a communication from the senior non-incapacitated member of the list. The situation could develop such that the first calls were received from junior members of the list and the fate of other, more senior, members remained unknown. The possibility exists that the man to wield Presidential authority in dire emergency might in fact be selected by a single field grade military officer.
Finally, it is noted that, of all those posts on the succession list, only the Vice President, in addition to the President, is fully briefed at all times by the intelligence, political and military authorities. Only these two men may be presumed to be fully cognizant of all of the Inputs potentially required to classify threatening situations and select actions most nearly appropriate to all aspects of the situation—the decision process.
Of the remaining members of the list, those from the legislative branch of government are, and have historically been, rigidly excluded from access to documents and Information privy to the executive branch. Often one or both of them are a member of a political party In opposition to that of the President and Vice President. These facts raise particularly serious obstacles to adequate regular briefings of the nature required to discharge Presidential responsibilities without notice and under potentially dire circumstances....
[Of the others] one or two have duties resulting presumably in deep and continuous knowledge of some of these elements [intelligence, political and military], but the duties of most lie outside areas closely related to them.
* * *
It might be assumed that the situation a President would be most likely to desire--and might be willing--to make provision for, by advance delegation of his authority and responsibility, would be an all-out Soviet nuclear attack on the U.S., a holocaust situation. He might be assumed to desire assurance of a full-scale reflex retaliatory response on the part of all possible U.S. nuclear delivery forces. The discussion ... [above] shows, however, that, if even a small fraction of such a holocaust attack were directed at the U.S. strategic command structure, there would not be a high probability that any of the instructed commanders or their command apparatus would survive the President. His instructions could have little effect in such an instance. If there were a retaliatory response it would not have been influenced by whether or not prior Presidential instructions had been given to and held by a few senior commanders.
A political leader who contemplated giving instructions in advance to his military leaders to cover circumstances less than a holocaust would have to accept the risk that he may well have issued instructions which he would wish to change if he could when the occasion actually arose. He would also have to accept the risk that his instructed military commanders may not in real life perceive and classify equivocal events (of less than holocaust violence) in the same way he had envisaged. An instruction for one contingency might evoke action he had intended for another. If he had instructed more than one commander, possibilities for confusion would increase if they were isolated from each other.
Briefly, in the one situation for which it is relatively easy to contemplate prior instructions, a holocaust, the central command structure as presently configured is so vulnerable as to prevent the instructions from having effect; in less than holocaust situations, a President could not have adequate confidence that a prior instruction would result in actions he would judge to be in the best interests of the nation at the time of the real event.
* * *
If the nuclear capable CINC's and their command apparatus were also Incapacitated before execution orders had been issued, delays and confusion would be increasingly likely and severe and the probability that large-scale or well-coordinated retaliatory attacks could be mounted would be small. Subordinate officers at launch control centers, at airfields, on board POLARIS submarines, or in the airborne aircraft would, in present circumstances, have no way of assessing the situation with confidence and no explicit doctrinal instructions to carry out if they could. In the context of the present high command apparatus, it is not practicable to give doctrinal instructions to subordinate commanders because of the liability to destruction of the high command or Interruption of its control by accident and the current lack of any means by which subordinate commanders could assess the situation. Such a procedure would be dangerous in the extreme. Under present circumstances the most that would be likely to be launched against the Soviets would be a delayed, uncoordinated, and ragged response of reduced size. (Delay of even a few hours would allow fixed-base retaliatory systems to be struck by Soviet missiles and manned bombers and U.S. mobile systems to be subjected to search and kill efforts.) If the Soviets knew of these possibilities they might consider this an efficient use of a modest fraction of their weapons in an attack on the U.S. No other target system can at present offer equal potential returns from so few weapons. They may or may not know it or come to know it In the future. The important fundamental point is that, should even a few weapons fall on the central high command structure, the results to our retaliatory capabilities could be catastrophic.
Although estimates of overall command and weapons control primary systems response times vary from two to sixteen minutes, it is academic to speculate whether one strategic nuclear delivery system is more responsive to control than another in the event of nuclear attack. All delivery systems and local weapons control capabilities could outlive the central political and military command structure common to all. The problems of assuring control are problems first of the national political-military command apparatus.
One of four is little more likely to survive or to survive longer than one of one.
* * *
... the only succession which can be meaningful in the future is one in which command would pass to commanders in significantly less vulnerable installations. If the reduction in vulnerability is not large, no real benefits can be confidently ascribed to succession plans in terms of survivability of viable command. The small size of the overall target system provided by the high command structure will dictate that minor changes in weapons requirements can easily be absorbed by the Soviets, should they wish, in the time period of interest.
Communications between high command centers are vulnerable ... [but] it is the vulnerability of the terminals at which high command is exercised that dominates the problem.
... the surest way to retain a capability to arrest pre-planned and direct strategic military action before capabilities are exhausted would be to preserve political control on both sides.
All primary overseas communications [to strategic forces outside CONUS] are dependent upon the survival of a relatively small number of soft, fixed gateway stations.
B. SUMMARY COMMENTS
While the threat posited in WSEG Report 50 was that anticipated from intercontinental missiles in the 1964-67 period, the national command and control system described was as it existed in 1960. Essentially, that system, despite the fact that it contained certain highly sophisticated elements, was fragmented, inelastic, fragile, and highly vulnerable to a surprise nuclear attack. Even assuming the maximum of two hours warning hoped for against a Soviet bomber attack, the system contained glaring weaknesses – e.g., the rigidity and yet uncertainty of the political chain of command, the lack of flexibility in nuclear options, and the vulnerability of communications to nuclear attack.
A major portion of the problem, of course, was simply endemic in the task of attempting to maintain effective political-military control under nuclear war conditions—and these difficulties would certainly have been shared by the Soviets.
Thus, the nearest to a practicably effective national decision-making structure was undoubtedly the system as it operated in peacetime, embodying an accustomed chain of command and division of functions and utilizing tens of thousands of people, scores of agencies, and uninterrupted communication and control procedures. The further one departed from this peacetime system (and the sheer transition to the emergency mode of operation required drastic departures, aside from the possible fracturing of the system by a nuclear attack), the more one entered a decision-making environment in which the chain of command would be ad hoc and unaccustomed, consultation and deliberation hurried and incomplete, and the transmission of instructions uncertain and difficult.
During the period 1954-60, the problem of command and control had been seen primarily as one of ensuring execution of the retaliatory strategic strike, and not as one of devising a structure capable of carefully weighing the circumstances of a crisis, apportioning the means suitable to the occasion, and if necessary carrying on a continuing war and perhaps bringing it to a close by negotiation. Ironically, the US command and control system in 1960 had only a questionable capability to accomplish even the objective of ensuring retaliation against the force of manned bombers and missiles possessed at that time by the Soviets, and had considerably less against a determined attack by the enemy in what was anticipated to be the coming "missile gap." As for ensuring effective political control of all aspects of the process through which the nation might become engaged in a nuclear war, and of the continuing decisions that might be required before the war's close, this was a problem that the US command and control structure in 1960 had only just begun to turn its attention to.
XVIII OVERVIEW, 1954-60
This period was essentially one of building the operational systems for command and control of the nation's forces for waging strategic war. So much was accomplished, indeed, that one must guard against the impression that nothing existed before. That inference, of course, is incorrect. In 1954, SAC possessed a basically workable system—though it was plagued with many problems—for command and control of Its forces. A rudimentary warning capability against strategic attack also existed. But it is apparent that in the years between 1954 and 1961 most of the basic requirements usually associated with command, control, and communications—e.g., redundancy, reliability, and survivability—were all given significantly heightened operational meaning. Additional systems were added —systems with vastly increased capabilities—and those systems were operationally tested to ensure that their potential contributions were made actual. Most of the impetus for the improved systems capabilities came from the responsible services, and within the services from the operational commands charged with the respective functions.
The keynote of the drive for increased systems capabilities during this period—overridingly in the case of SAC and only slightly less so in the case of the ADC and NORAD— was the attempt to Improve speed of reaction, while at the same time maintaining reliability. These requirements necessitated technological gambles that were often near the boundaries of the "state of the art." Systems became inordinately complex, modifications were frequent, costs spiraled, budgetary revisions were necessary, and schedules were delayed. From a technical standpoint, however, the advances made in this period were enormous.
During the years 1954-60, SAC developed from a force that had had to deploy overseas in order to launch the strategic strike, to an intercontinental bombing force that by the aid of refueling could attack directly from the United States. Command, control, and communications were further centralized to accord with the new concept of operations; increasingly larger portions of the force were placed on an alert status from which an attack could be launched within 15 minutes after warning; and capabilities were developed for "positive control" of aircraft already airborne prior to receipt of a strike execution order. Ever more sophisticated communications and data processing and display systems were required to maintain control of the strike force under such conditions.
Major advances were also made in US warning capabilities against strategic attack. The outermost line of radars was moved over a thousand miles closer to the Soviet Union; radar detection and rearward communication capabilities were vastly improved; and the entire air defense and warning system was increasingly automated and centralized. By the end of the period, an initial capability for warning against missile attack also existed—and it was only the fact that intercontinental missiles at one technological bound had revolutionized strategic warfare that now caused all the immense achievements in warning against bomber attack to appear obsolete.
Many of the "incongruities" noted in the discussion in Part One of the 1945-53 period were eliminated during the years under consideration here. The US armed services substantially accepted the implications of nuclear weapons, whereas in the early years they had been cautious and even resistant. The services increasingly geared their planning to the use of these weapons and service operational capabilities (and intent) to use them became very real, where before the nuclear forces had constituted at best a specialized contingent within a military structure that was overwhelmingly conventional in equipment and thought. On the other hand, some incongruities remained. Despite the almost total emphasis on nuclear weapons, skepticism regarding the actual wisdom and utility of strategic nuclear war remained widespread in the American nation at large, and in some isolated cases even within the military. Despite continued, though somewhat abated, interservice rivalry over "shares of the atomic pie," military unanimity continued to prevail regarding the primacy of the strategic offensive over the defensive. Despite the clearly increasing Soviet strategic threat to the United States, building an effective warning and air defense system remained an uphill fight throughout the decade.
The dominant strategic fact of the period—especially after 1957 but with a long shadow cast before—was the recognition that intercontinental ballistic missiles would reduce warning to minutes or to nothing, that the aircraft control and warning system so laboriously constructed would be useless against these weapons, and that command and control of the nation's combat forces in the face of a surprise missile attack would be an enormously difficult and chancy task—even to secure an effective retaliatory strike. By the end of the decade, the problem of survivability dominated all other considerations in regard to the exercise of political and military command and control.
Through the decade, and especially after the 1958 reorganization of the Department of Defense, there was a growing centralization of top-level control of the nation's Armed Forces. Most notably, the role of the JCS in relation to the services was strengthened, and the decision-making power of the Secretary of Defense was increased. Throughout the period, command and control procedures at top level concentrated upon the execution of a retaliatory strike in the face of a surprise attack. As the period ended, there was beginning to be an increasing awareness of the necessity of flexibility in response options and of continuing political direction of a war once it was initiated, as well as the potential problem of negotiating to end such a war.
The question of the influence of an action-reaction process upon US command and control developments during this period can be given only a limited answer. In the broadest sense, of course, everything was geared to the Soviet threat. Even in some specific respects the action-reaction process appears at work. Thus, the heightened US concern with survival of the command and control system toward the end of the decade was In direct response to the Soviet demonstration of an imminent ICBM capability. Throughout the decade, the concern with speed of reaction by US strategic forces was motivated by the threat of a Soviet surprise attack. The entire development of the US air defense and warning system was obviously a direct reaction to the threat of a Soviet bomber attack.
Many of the subordinate developments in US strategic command and control during this period, however, appear also to have been driven by an internal dynamic, either to replace an existing system with a better one or to shoulder out another service that might contest the alignment of "roles and missions." Thus the air defense and warning forces continued to evangelize for Increased funds and capabilities when their raison d'être had already become secondary to the threat of missiles. And the decisions on command and control of Polaris, as well as the apportionment of functions in air defense and warning, appear to have been governed at least as much by the necessity to compromise among competing interservice claims as by logic or the Soviet threat.
By the time the 1954-60 period ended, the basic US command, control, and warning systems were largely either in existence or under development. Problems of division of functions among the services had been essentially resolved. For the future, the problem was increasingly to be seen as one . of ensuring effective political control of strategic decisions.
FOOTNOTES
Chapter XI
1(U) The concept apparently originated even earlier, in the spring of 1950, when NSC-68 predicted that 1954 would be the "crisis year." Too much should not be made of the term, of course. As Glenn Snyder states: "The 'year of maximum danger' concept was somewhat suspect in that it just happened to correspond roughly with the lead time for attainment of the force goals which the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended in October 1951.... Nevertheless, there were fairly solid reasons for selection of the year 1954 as a crucial year," e.g., by 1954 the Soviets should attain a nuclear capability substantial enough to cause serious damage to the United States, based on US experience in building up its own nuclear stockpile; NATO force goals had 1954 as their objective, and the Soviets would know their chances of overrunning Europe would be lessened if they waited until completion of the buildup; the rebuilding of Soviet industry, and the relocation of much of it beyond the Urals, would be largely completed by 1954. Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics3 and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 402-3.
2(U) George P. Lemmer, The Air Force and Strategic Deterrence, 1951-1960 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, December 1967), p. 4, TOP SECRET.
3(U) Office of the OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Corn-petition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. I, Chronology-US, 1945-1960 (U), October 1974, p. 187, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
4(U) Thomas W. Wolfe and Fritz Ermarth, The Interaction Process and Its Influence on Major Soviet Arms Decisions (U), R-1180-PR, (Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., August 1973), p. 44, SECRET.
5(U) Quoted in Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine : A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1964 (U), 2 vols. (Aerospace Studies Institute, June 1971), 1:381, UNCLASSIFIED.
6(U) Quoted in ibid., p. 384.
7(U) Ibid., p. 385.
8(U) From the end of World War II, Soviet forces in Eastern Europe were far stronger than could reasonably be required o for policing purposes. It does not necessarily follow, however, that they were intended for the conquest of Western Europe. As Thomas Wolfe has written: "Although the extent to which Stalin had actually embraced a specific concept of 'hostage Europe' remains subject to historical dispute, it would appear that the Soviet postwar stance In Europe was g> shaped to a significant degree by Stalin's having banked on the threat of Soviet land power as the main counterpoise to U.S. nuclear power." Soviet Naval Interaction with the United States and Its Influence on Soviet Naval Developments (U), P-4913 (Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., October 1972), p. 5, UNCLASSIFIED. See also Robert Endicott Osgood, NATO: The # Entangling Alliance (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 14-17 specifically, and passim, for the view that the Soviets saw their large ground forces as a lever for political advantage rather than for military attack.
9(U) Osgood, NATO, pp. 35 ff.
10(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1954-30 June 1956 (U), 1:73-74, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
11(U) Ibid.
12 (U) Quoted in Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, p. 390.
l3(U) Ibid.
14(U) Ibid.
15(U) General LeMay In US Congress, Study of Air Power, 84th cong., 2nd sess., pp. 126-27.
16(U) Interview with SAC Historical Office personnel, 13-14 March 1975-
17 NIE 11-6-54, published October 5, 1954, concluded that the Soviets had undertaken an extensive guided missile program, giving highest priority to air defense missiles. It was predicted that the Soviets would make a concerted effort to produce an ICBM and could have this weapon ready for series production in 1963, or at the earliest, in 1960. However, it was thought that at least until 1958, the USSR would continue to rely primarily on high performance bombers, because of their superior range and accuracy. The estimate warned that if the USSR should produce an ICBM before the United States developed adequate countermeasures, it would acquire a military advantage that would "constitute an extremely grave threat to US security." Quoted in OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1:193.
18(U) Speech at Quantico, Virginia. Quoted in History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1954-30 June 1956, I:l4.
Chapter XII
1 (U) Quoted in Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1954-30 June 1956 (U), Vol. I, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
(U) The phonetic commands had been established in 1951 because of concern by the Air Force that in the event of another worldwide conflict the strategic air forces in overseas theaters might be relegated to tactical and close support roles. The phonetic command structure was therefore established, with the commander a deputy to CINCSAC and exercising command and control of SAC forces operating through the various theaters. As CINCSAC's personal representative, this officer could deal directly with the theater commander on an equal footing. This arrangement, of course, reflected SAC's 1951-55 concept of operations wherein the numbered air forces would deploy to forward bases and fight the war from there. The numbered air force commander was thus designated as the commander of the phonetic command, with the SAC overseas air division commander as his deputy. SAC also established a liaison office within the theater command headquarters, headed by a Senior Representative (brigadier general), with a planning staff and communications. This office made a rapid exchange of information concerning theater support possible and provided the theater commander with a staff experienced in atomic operations—experience that in the early 1950s was very rare.
(U) The phonetic command system gradually deteriorated as SAC's war plans and organization changed. Colonels eligible for overseas duty began to be appointed as Senior Representatives, instead of brigadier generals. These officers often had little real experience in SAC operations and intelligence. Meanwhile, SAC's command and control emphasis had been shifting to the ZI and to air refueling areas. But the formal phonetic command structure continued to survive, as an increasingly useless anachronism, until near the end of the decade.
2(U) Ibid, p. 10.
3 Ibid., p. 8. In a 15 July 1955 speech at Quantico, Va., General LeMay said SAC had the potential to launch a predominantly intercontinental attack of 80 atomic and thermonuclear strike aircraft within 12 hours of alert and to launch additional strikes each 12 hours until at the end of 48 hours a total of 880 strike aircraft would have been dispatched. If given 3 to 4 days alert time, "over 1,000 aircraft can participate in the first simultaneous strike against Soviet objectives.... Most of these sorties would be directed against Soviet air power targets. The air battle must be won first, and as quickly and decisively as possible." Ibid., p. 78.
4(U) Thomas A. Sturm, USAF Overseas Forces and Bases, 1947-1967 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, March 1969), p. 23, UNCLASSIFIED.
5 Ibid., p. 12.
6 On 30 June 1960, SAC had 696 aircraft on alert in the ZI and overseas (113 B-52s, 346 B-47s, 85 KC-135s, and 152 KC-97s). SAC's Emergency War Order (EWO) called for all alert aircraft to be in the air 15 minutes after notification, with the first airborne within 8 minutes. Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1960-30 June 1960 (U), p. 135, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
7(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1959-31 December 1959 (U), p. 41, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
8(U) Office of the OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. I, Chronology-US, 1945-1960 (U), October 1974 , p. 383, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
9(U) This section depends primarily on Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, SAC Communications in an Age of Transition : A Consideration of Problems Past and Present (U), Historical Study No. 78 (30 December 1969), SECRET; and Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964 (U), Historical Study No. 98 (October 1965), SECRET.
10(U) Hq SAC, SAC Communications in an Age of Transition, p. 19«
1l(U) TWX, Hq USAF to CINCSAC, 12 February 1958, in ibid., p., 10.
l2 Early SAC efforts to this end had been focused on the Military Affiliated Radio System (MARS), and through this means the aid of amateur radio operators was enlisted. This willingness to consider unorthodox solutions was typical of SAC's approach to problems. When coupled with an intense conviction of both the overriding importance of SAC's mission and the superiority of SAC's ways of doing things, it helps to explain SAC's high esprit de corps and professionalism.
13(U) Hq SAC, SAC Communications in an Age of Transition, p. 38.
l4 (U) It is worth noting that the SSB radio in which SAC became interested, and which was eventually purchased, was an "off the shelf" commercial system produced by the Collins Radio Company.
15(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1957-31 December 1957 (U), 1:55, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
16(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958-30 June 1958 (U), 1:68, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
l7(U) OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Corn-petition, 1:403.
l8(U) Hq SAC, SAC Communications in an Age of Transition, pp. 45-49-
19(U) Ibid., p. 57.
Chapter XIII
1. (U) Carl A. Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, 1958-196Z (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, November 1964), p. 2, SECRET.
2(U) Ibid.
3(U) Ibid., and Headquarters., Strategic Air Command, Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964 (U), Historical Study No. 98 (October 1965), P. 15, SECRET.
4 (U) Ibid., p. 16.
5(U) Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, pp. 4-5.
6(U) Ibid., p. 5.
7(U) Ibid., p. 6.
8(U) Ibid., pp. 6-7.
9(U) Ibid., p. 7.
10(U) Ibid., p. 9.
11(U) Ibid.
12(U) Hq SAC, Strategic Command Control Communications, p. 24.
13(U) Ibid., p. 25.
14(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, July-December 1960 (U), 1:11, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
15(U) Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, p. 11.
16(U) Ibid., p. 12. These systems will be treated in more detail in Part Three, which deals with the 1961-68 period.
Chapter XIV
1(U) The following material is drawn chiefly from Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff: Background and Preparation of SIOP-62 (U), undated, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
2(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, January-June 1957 (U), p. 52, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
3 The weapons in a commander's actual possession were known as "dispersed weapons," and they could be deployed to locations desired by the commanders, provided they were approved by the President. All weapons stored in such locations, or "service storage facilities," fell into the category of dispersed weapons. The President, however, retained technical AEC custody of weapons over 600-kilotons yield. Through February 1957, this custody was exercised by placing civilian AEC custodians at military installations where high-yield weapons were stored. The civilian custodian retained the keys to those storage facilities that contained the high-yield weapons. On 15 February 1957, the custodian arrangements were changed to replace the civilian AEC custodians with designated military AEC custodians—in effect, the military base commanders. Ibid.
4(U) Memorandum, Office CNO, OP-941, Ser. 002603P94, 28 September 1959, "Atomic Weapon Coordination Machinery" (U), SECRET.
5(U) Hq SAC, History of the JSTPS, p. 3.
6(U) Memorandum, Secretary of Defense Gates to Chairman, JCS, 29 December 1959, "Subject: Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Relationship with Office of Secretary of Defense" (U), UNCLASSIFIED.
7(U) Robert D. Little, Air Force Operational Problems, 1958-1959 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, June 1961), p. 6, SECRET.
8(U) Arthur K. Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, 1958-1961 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1963), p. 61, SECRET.
9(U) Enclosure to JCS 1620/209.
10 It should be noted that even though the Navy concept study on Polaris operations had been optimistic regarding the problem of communicating with the FBM submarines, the Navy was aware from the beginning of the special difficulties involved. The subject was specifically taken up, for example, during the wide-ranging Study of Naval Command and Control Systems by the Endicott House panels from 13 June to 31 July 1960. All aspects of the communication problem were considered, including the various links, current and future; the difficulties of submerged reception, including the need for floating wire antennae and further research in propagation characteristics of VLF, LF, and HF transmission; the desirability of multiple channels; the importance of "fail safe" doctrines; and the possibilities of satellite relay and VLF transmitting station mobility.
It is also interesting to note that one of the studies of this period, in addressing the question of "fail safe" procedures for the Polaris weapon system, defined the problem in a somewhat unusual manner: the study proposed FBM retaliation against the Soviet Union after the "silencing of a number of continuously (or periodically) operating fixed shore-based transmitters." Naval Warfare Analysis Group Study No. 11, "Preserving the Security of the FBM Submarine System, 1965-1970" (U), 12 June 1969, SECRET. This did not become the official concept, of course.
11(U) Enclosure to JCS 1620/209-
12(U) Ibid.
13(U) Hq SAC, History of the JSTPS, p. 6.
14(U) Ibid.
15(U) It should be noted that, as the CNO had indicated, there were "basic differences of philosophy" between the Air Force counterforce doctrine and the Navy "cities" concept for Polaris targeting. The switch, in just over a decade, from the Navy's earlier moral recriminations against the B-36 and strategic bombing has been commented upon by a number of writers. It can only be said that in 1959 the Navy had a solid prospect for an operational strategic weapon system (with limitations in accuracy), and in 1948 it did not.
16(U) Hq SAC, History of the JSTPS, p. 8.
17(U) Ibid., p. 10.
18(U) Ibid., p. 14.
19(U) Office of the OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. I, Chronology-US, 1945-1960 (U)., October 1974, p. 415, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
20(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 July 1959-21 December 1959 (U), p. 49, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
21(U) Emphasis in original.
22(U) Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), P- 155-
Chapter XV
1. In the years immediately after World War II, not only had the War Department assigned both the Army and the Air Force responsibility for the air defense function, but in hearings before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Military Establishment, in February 1947, several different military leaders had said very different things regarding the nature of air defense and how it should be accomplished. As one study put it: "If any member of the subcommittee had shown a deep interest in air defense, he would undoubtedly have been confused. What, really, did the War Department mean when it mentioned air defense? Did it mean a group of fighter planes protecting ground forces (General Hull, Army)? Did it mean offense against the source of attack (General Spaatz)? Did it mean an electronic early warning network supported primarily by Air National Guard and Air Reserve interceptors (General Eaker)? Or did it mean an in-being regular force standing ready for instant response to air attack (General Weyland, Air Force Plans)? No attempt was made to reconcile this conflicting testimony during the hearings on the budget for Fiscal 1948." Richard F. McMullen, Air Defense and National Policy, 1946-1950 (U), Historical Study No. 22 (Headquarters, Air Defense Command, undated), p. 29, SECRET. Nor was much of the confusion resolved for many years thereafter.
2(U) Richard F. McMullen, Air Defense and National Policy, 1951-1957 (U), Historical Study No. 24 (Headquarters, Air Defense Command, undated), pp. 50-53, SECRET.
3(U) Ibid., p. 59.
4 (U) Thomas A. Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air Defense, 1959-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office US Air Force, January 1965), p. 2, SECRET.
5(U) Memorandum from Chairman JCS to Chiefs of Staff, CM-47-54, 15 January 1954, Subject: "Command Arrangements for the Air Defense of the United States" (U), TOP SECRET.
6(U) JCS 2086/12, "Basic Defense Plan for Continental United States" (U), 17 November 1955- The identical statement appears in other JCS policy papers.
7(U) McMullen, Air Defense and National Policy, 1951-1957, p. 72. McMullen remarks on "Congress' dismay when it found that the fully implemented SAGE system would incur an annual communications cost (phone bill) of 200 million dollars or more." Ibid., p. 74.
8(U) Much of the data in this discussion of DEW Line developments is drawn from Thomas W. Ray, A History of the DEW Line, 1946-1964 (U), Historical Study No. 31 (Headquarters, Air Defense Command, June 1965), pp. 1-54, SECRET.
9(U) Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in US House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings on Military Posture and HE 4016, 89th cong., 1st sess., 18 February 1965, pp. 253-54.
10. Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air Defense, pp. 10-12.
11. Richard F. McMullen, The Birth of SAGE, 1951-1958 (U), Historical Study No. 33 (Headquarters, Air Defense Command, undated), pp. 24-26, SECRET.
12(U) Ibid., pp. 27-28.
13(U) Ibid., p. 31.
14(U) Ibid., p. 36.
15. "For one thing, the FST-2 was becoming increasingly complex as time went along. It was originally estimated that the simplex model of the FST-2 would contain 800 vacuum tubes. By the end of 1955 the tube count for the simplex model had grown to 3,300." Ibid., p. 41.
16(U) While this problem does not concern warning, per se, it is instructive regarding the interservice problems in planning SAGE's command and control functions.
17(U) McMullen, The Birth of SAGE, p. 44.
18(U) Ibid.
19(U) As General LeMay was to put the problem later, in connection with SAC's need for "safe passage" routes through the US air defense system, the Army concept of "shoot 'em down, sort 'em out on the ground" was totally unacceptable to the Air Force.
20(U) McMullen, The Birth of SAGE, p. 52.
21(U) Ibid., pp. 70-73.
22(U) Ibid., p. 76.
23(U) Ibid., pp. 77-78.
24(U) Richard F. McMullen, Command and Control Planning, 1958-1965 (U), Historical Study No. 35 (Headquarters, Air Defense Command, undated), p. 1, SECRET.
25(U) Ibid., pp. 2 and 4.
26(U) Ibid., p. 5-
27(U) Ibid., p. 30.
28(U) Office of the OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. I, Chronology-US, 1945-1960 (U), October 1974, p. 335, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
29(U) Ibid.
30(U) Robert D. Little, Air Force Operational Problems, 1958-1959 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, June 1961), p. 13, SECRET.
31(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964 (U), October 1965, p. 10, SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.
32 Ibid. On this occasion, duty officers did not act on the warning because they found it incredible, in the context of the worldwide political-military situation—including the incongruous fact that Chairman Khrushchev was in New York at the time—but the problem was serious. The BMEWS alarm threshold was necessarily set at a level that was a compromise between the desire to report all remotely conceivable attack events and the desire to keep the false alarm rate low. A reasonable statement of BMEWS objectives might be something like the following: provide, with high confidence, 10-30 minutes-of warning of an attack by more than 2-15 ICBMs on direct trajectories above 15 degrees from any part of the USSR. See Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems (U), Report 50 (21 September 1960), Enclosure C, "Command and Control of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems in the Period 1964-1967" (U), TOP SECRET.
33(U) Hq, SAC, Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964, p. 13.
34 OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1:402.
35(U) Ibid., p. 408.
Chapter XVI
1 (U) Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force Command and Control System, 1950-1966 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1967), p. 5, SECRET.
2(U) Ibid., p. 7.
3(U) Ibid., p. 9.
4. Until 1956, the Air Force was prevented by law from installing telephones at government expense in private residences. At that time, after several years of trying, the Air Force managed to have the law changed sufficiently to put telephones in the homes of the Joint Chiefs and top Headquarters USAF, ADC, SAC, and European Command officers. Eventually approval was granted to install telephones wherever they were needed. Ibid.
5(U) Arthur K. Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, 1958-1961 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1963), p. 34, SECRET.
6(U) Sturm, Air Force Command and Control System, pp. 9-10.
7(U) Ibid., pp. 10-11, and Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, p. 35.
8(U) Ibid., pp. 36-37.
9(U) Letter from C. E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the JCS, Subject: "Emergency Relocation Planning—Continuity of Essential Operations" (U), 3 May 1954, TOP SECRET.
10(U) Decision on JCS 1851-75, "Concept for the Use of the Alternate Joint Communication Center (AJCC)" (U), 7 June 1955, TOP SECRET.
11(U) Memorandum from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and JCS, Subject: "Concept for the Use of the Alternate Joint Communication Center (AJCC)" (U), 12 August 1955, TOP SECRET.
12(U) Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, p. 43.
13(U) Ibid., p. 44.
14(U) JCS 1851/67, 28 December 1954, TOP SECRET.
15(U) Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, p. 45.
16(U) Ibid.
17(U) Ibid.
18(U) Ibid.
19(U) Ibid., p. 49.
20(U) Ibid., pp. 46-50.
21(U) Ibid., pp. 50-53.
22(U) The succession to the presidency was as follows:
Elective Officials:
Vice President
Speaker of the House
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Appointive Officials:
Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense
Attorney General
Postmaster General
Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor
(United States Code Annotated, Title 3, "The President" [Act 25 June 1948, c. 644, para. 1, 62 Stat. 672].)
Chapter XVII
1. Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems (U), Report 50 (21 September 1960), Enclosure C, "Command and Control of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems in the Period 1964-1967" (U), TOP SECRET.
So far as can be determined, there was no JCS reaction to Enclosure C when it was first published. The study was briefed to outgoing Secretary of Defense Gates, however, who appeared greatly impressed and declared to the briefers: "This report may be Top Secret to you, but it is much more than that to me." After Secretary McNamara took office, WSEG 50 was briefed to him for an entire day. Subsequently, the conclusions of the report were briefed to the JCS, and when Enclosure C was covered, the Chairman of the JCS, General Lemnitzer, turned to his staff and remarked: "Now we know the origin of some of those questions we're getting from the Secretary." Shortly afterward, Secretary McNamara sent a memorandum to the JCS specifically raising the question of command and control vulnerability. Another study was then instituted, which appears to have come to the same conclusions as WSEG 50. The proposals for mobile command posts— the airborne and naval versions—were then quickly approved. (Above information obtained in interview with Dr. George Contos, the project leader for WSEG Report 50.)