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 THREE
1961-1967

XIX. THE NEW ADMINISTRATION

The dominant theme of the Kennedy administration that took office in January 1961 was movement, and in national security affairs the incoming leaders promised vigorous new policy departures. During the 1960 election, conducted in the wake of sputnik, Cuba, the U-2, and other disquieting events abroad, Kennedy and his supporters attacked the Eisenhower administration for policies of "weakness" and "defeat." They criticized the Republicans for letting a "missile gap" develop in the strategic arms race with the Soviet Union, for relying excessively on the threat of "massive retaliation" across the spectrum of Soviet military challenges, and for neglecting forces to deal with the limited wars and lesser contingencies that confronted the United States all over the world. They blamed such policies for a serious decline in US international prestige and power.¹

The new administration proposed to make changes, and the President's inaugural address on 20 January was a stirring summons to revive the nation as a strong and dynamic society with "arms ... sufficient beyond doubt," pledged to the defense of freedom everywhere.² In his State of the Union message to Congress ten days later Kennedy announced that he had instructed the Secretary of Defense

to reappraise our entire defense strategy—our ability to fulfill our commitments—the effectiveness, vulnerability, and dispersal of our strategic bases, forces, and warning systems— the efficiency and economy of our operation and organization—the elimination of obsolete bases and installations—and the adequacy, modernization, and mobility of our present conventional and nuclear forces and weapons systems in the light of present and future dangers.

He had asked for preliminary conclusions, the President said, by the end of February.³

The reappraisal ordered by the President was already under way at the Pentagon, under the direction of the new Secre tary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. Selected by Kennedy for his managerial skill and drive, McNamara was primed to take a fresh look at virtually everything. He was an independent Republican not previously involved in national policies or identified with established foreign or defense policy positions including Kennedy's. He apparently had no fixed commitments in military strategy or doctrine, but started with an evident willingness to function as the President's executive agent in Defense matters, a concept of the Secretary's role as active leader (rather than mere arbiter or referee) in managing the Department, and a predilection for rational, analytical, quanti tative approaches in administration. Within a few days of his selection in mid-December 1960, McNamara was in Washington, get ting acquainted with the Kennedy team, arranging to take charge of the Department of Defense, and digging into the policy and budgetary issues that were being formulated on Kennedy's agenda for early presidential decision. By the end of December, i.e., within just two weeks, McNamara was working with a formidable list of questions from the President-elect:

Should there be a supplemental Defense Budget ... additional funds now for Polaris, Minuteman and Atlas missiles ... an air alert ... continental defense ... modernization of conventional forces ... airlift capabilities...?

[We] will have to undertake a basic re-evaluation of our defense strategy, targets and capability ... the place of manned aircraft ... aircraft carriers .. . present troop strength ... bases abroad ... the overlapping of services and missions ... the coordination of intelligence functions ... command and control systems, particularly with regard to the authority to use nuclear weapons....⁴

McNamara made no attempt to respond to all of the President's questions at once, and he did not try to produce a single comprehensive evaluation of the national defense posture. His initial report was in the form of broad conclusions that generally accorded with the preliminary predispositions of the White House and paved the way for the further, in-depth studies that he believed were needed. McNamara found, he told the President:

A strategy of massive retaliation as the answer to all military and. political aggression, a strategy believed by few of our friends and none of our enemies and resulting in serious weaknesses in our conventional forces....

A strategic nuclear force vulnerable to surprise missile attack, a nonnuclear force .weak in combat-ready divisions, in airlift capacity and in tactical air support, a counterinsurgency force for all practical purposes nonexistent ....⁵

He thereupon appointed four ad hoc task forces under OSD civilians to survey the four problem areas of strategic nuclear forces, limited war, research and development, and military installations, in order to develop "quick fix" modifications of the Eisenhower FY-62 Defense budget, which was already before Congress, and also to identify specific problems requiring additional study.

After submitting his "quick fix" recommendations to the President in February, McNamara issued his famous list of 96 questions on a host of Defense topics, assigned variously to the Joint Chiefs, the services, and assorted Defense agencies and offices, under varying but relatively short deadlines.⁶ The questions launched perhaps the most hectic period of crash study efforts the Pentagon had ever experienced and covered virtually all important aspects of Defense. They essentially extended the initial concentrated reappraisal of strategy through the rest of 1961 and into 1962, merging it into the process of preparing the forthcoming FY-63 budget and the new Five-Year Defense ("Master") Plan, both of which were intended to become more definitive expressions of the new administration's policies. The sixth question asked for a complete review of the strategic command and control system.

The McNamara approach permitted the Kennedy administration to make a prompt show of action—on the strategic nuclear front, to respond to widespread "missile gap" anxieties, and on the limited war front, to begin the promised shift in the balance and structure of the Armed Forces—while deferring final decisions on many of the larger and more difficult issues. The President announced three immediate new steps as early as 30 January, in his State of the Union speech: to increase airlift capabilities, speed up the construction of Polaris submarines, and generally accelerate the rest of the strategic missile program. He outlined additional steps, based on further results of McNamara's review, in his Special Message on the Defense Budget on 28 March.⁷

The 28 March message was an explicit first attempt by the new administration to adapt US military strategy and force structure to the unfolding era of nuclear missiles, and to delineate the requirements for deterrence in a more evenly balanced two-sided situation, against an enemy who was actively developing a powerful strategic deterrent of his own, in deliverable megatons, second as well as first strike. The message presented the administration's rationale for the intended switch from an overall strategy of "massive retaliation" to one of "flexible" or "graduated" response, and it proposed a series of measures to achieve a suitably diversified and versatile defense posture. In the case of strategic nuclear forces, the President emphasized that numbers alone were not as important as realistic qualities of survivability and effective response in the face of enemy attack, especially a surprise missile attack. He accordingly proposed substantial increases in the Polaris and Minuteman programs, at the expense of the more vulnerable Atlas and Titan ICBMs, Snark cruise missiles, and B-70 bombers. He also proposed a more rapid phaseout of B-47 medium bombers; an increase in the number of B-52s on 15-minute ground alert from one-third to one-half of the force; an "on-the-shelf" (standby) capability to put one-eighth of the B-52s on continuous airborne alert; improvements in BMEWS, bomb alarm, and other warning systems; and improvement in the machinery for high-level command and control.⁸

Kennedy's message was perhaps the first authoritative pronouncement of a US president that devoted appreciable attention to the subject of command and control. In line with the approach taken under McNamara, it implicitly treated the command and control apparatus—the decision-making elements, organization, facilities, equipment, procedures, and communications for directing operations—as an integral element of the total posture, on a par with the forces and weapons themselves. Survival of the apparatus was important to assure a retaliatory response, and hence was one of the critical ingredients of retaliatory power and a prerequisite for credible deterrence. Its continuity was particularly important in assuring that any response that was carried out was appropriate, by decision of duly constituted authority, and in furtherance of approved national objectives.⁹

The existing command and control system did not fulfill the requirement. What was needed, said Kennedy, was a "new emphasis" on developing a better system, one that was

more flexible, more selective, more deliberate, better protected and under ultimate civilian authority at all times ... a truly unified, nationwide, indestructible system to insure high-level command, communication and control and a properly authorized response under any conditions.

In this, he said, he proposed to start a major—"absolutely vital"—effort.¹⁰

The President's strong statements did not lead to wholesale changes in strategic command and control arrangements overnight, but they succeeded in attracting considerable attention to command and control issues. Precipitated into the foreground of consideration at the highest national level, the subject of command and control came under intensive scrutiny in the McNamara Pentagon, and it remained high on the Secretary's checklist of action items for some time, long after the new administration's initial "shakedown" period.

Most of the basic policy directions of the new Kennedy administration that had a major bearing on the evolution of command and control were set in the first several years, although policy controversies did not necessarily stop and policy implementation problems continued to arise. Even after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 and the assumption of office by Vice President Johnson, the earlier defense policies and concepts continued with little change, carried on by Secretary McNamara and other key officials who remained in their posts. The key external events of the period from the command and control standpoint were the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and the deepening US involvement in South Vietnam in 1964 and 1965, both of which influenced a shift of interest from strategic nuclear war to more immediate contingencies.

Of the major strategic force posture issues and decisions during the Kennedy-Johnson years, the new administration's initial urgent concern about the survivability, strength, and control of strategic striking forces became more muted as the 1961 strategic-buildup decisions were translated into operational force levels. By 1963, officials were expressing great confidence in the overwhelming strength of US retaliatory power, founded in sure second-strike capabilities that could devastate the USSR even after absorbing a worst-possible surprise attack. Deterrence of deliberate, calculated attack seemed as well assured as it could be, the Secretary of Defense reported, and the likelihood of strategic nuclear war was low.¹¹ After the Cuban missile crisis, especially, the sense of any imminent national danger declined considerably. Survivable and effective strategic command and control arrangements were still important, but less urgently so, as insurance against the remote contingency that deterrence might fail.

After 1963, strategic posture decisions continued to emphasize second-strike forces of great survivability, like Polaris and Minuteman, and continued to stress the deterrence-oriented goal that McNamara termed "assured destruction" as the "vital first objective" of US defense strategy. Despite annual budgetary controversies, "war-waging" aims such as "damage limitation" receded in official stature as the Soviets were perceived to be acquiring large submarine-launched and hardened missile forces against which greater US damage-limiting efforts were expected to have declining marginal utility.¹²

By the mid-1960s, the size and composition of US strategic offensive forces had largely been stabilized. In the official McNamara posture statements of the time, the expansion of Soviet strategic forces, largely anticipated and already discounted, was not perceived as unexpectedly threatening. The prevailing image of the US-Soviet strategic balance became one of mutual deterrence—the mutual assured destruction publicized under the pejorative acronym "MAD" in the later 1960s. The principal hedge against the potential menace of offsetting Soviet ABM measures was sought in improved offensive technology (MIRVs and penaids) rather than in quantitatively greater offensive force levels. At the same time, the potential US advantages of full-scale anti-Soviet ABM deployment (first with Nike-Zeus, then Nike-X) were repeatedly deferred as premature, at best—until the 1967 decision in favor of the limited Sentinel "anti-Chinese" ABM—because similar countermeasures were also considered available to the USSR.¹³ It was not until after 1967 that the ABM issue assumed different proportions. Meanwhile, the United States had undertaken active overtures toward the USSR concerning strategic arms limitations based on some kind of equilibrium of forces.¹⁴

Throughout the 1961-67 period, these strategic force posture issues were mainly "how much is enough" questions that did not greatly affect the functional role or substance of command and control. Despite the variations in the size and structure of US and Soviet strategic forces, the command and control challenge remained essentially the same, that of devising arrangements, systems, and procedures to cope with the requirements imposed by the advanced military technology of the missile age. This was the challenge confronting the new administration in 1961.

XX. STRATEGIC COMMAND AND CONTROL PROBLEMS IN 1961

In mid-February, in preparation for the Kennedy decisions announced in the 28 March Special Message, Secretary McNamara put before the White House what may be as stark an appraisal of US strategic command and control as any president has ever received. It was this appraisal, delivered as part of McNamara's summary report on the US strategic posture, that was responsible for the President's focus on command and control in the message.¹

The chain of command from the President to the strategic forces, McNamara reported, was "highly vulnerable in almost every link." The destruction of "a dozen or fewer sites," most of them soft, none adequately hardened, could well eliminate ("deprive the forces of") all high-level command and control. Communications connecting key military headquarters with each other and with the strategic forces were soft, concentrated, and vulnerable to sudden missile attack.² Yet without the survival of some of the sites, including at least one containing the President, a legitimate successor, or a designated alternate, and without reliable communications to strategic retaliatory forces, there would be no assurance of an authorized response to attack.

McNamara's assessment was not new, but reflected perspectives that had surfaced with increasing frequency and force during the 1950s. The new military technologies—thermonuclear weapons coupled with the intercontinental bomber and then the missile—had more than ever established surprise attack as the supreme threat to the nation, and had further confirmed nuclear retaliation as the ultimate national strategy. At the same time, the new technologies threatened to undermine the strategy by increasing the risks to the survival of the retaliatory forces, and beyond the forces, the means for their actual employment, including the means for their direction. It was clear that if retaliation was to be more than an automatic reflex— and even Herman Kahn's "doomsday machine" needed an actuating mechanism, at least a sensor and a programmed computer—a secure and effectively operating command and control system was absolutely essential. Yet, in the missile age, an adequate system had become more problematical than ever.

A. THE HIGH COMMAND

Eisenhower officials had grappled with this problem, but had found it intractable. Under US law and custom, elaborated in settled political and military procedures, a nuclear response required the express decision of the President or one of a limited number of presidential successors, all normally in Washington, highly exposed as a group to nuclear attack and destruction.³ The rest of the central high command, including the Secretary of Defense, the JCS, and their principal staff entities, were similarly concentrated in Washington and equally subject to simultaneous destruction. Plans for the survival of these command authorities were predicated on advance warning and timely relocation to a few alternate sites, dispersed to be sure but also vulnerable.

All collateral and subsidiary strategic command and control arrangements were geared to the continuity of presidential decision-making authority and centralized direction of the forces by the national high command. Warning of an attack, prior to its launch if possible but immediately after launch if need be, was required to determine that an attack was imminent or in progress, to inform appropriate authorities, and to transfer them to safe locations; or in any case, with or without physical relocation, to inform authorities of the attack, obtain a retaliatory decision, and issue it to executing forces—all of which had to be accomplished before both the authorities and the forces were destroyed. Fast, reliable, and secure means of communication were also required to Insure the flow of vital information, from the initial warning indications to the decisive "go-code" orders, but communications were also subject to destruction in a nuclear attack, and their survival long enough for the high-command process to function was by no means certain.

B. STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL WARNING

In the missile era after sputnik, the extreme compression of attack time and urgent pressure for utmost speed during the attack-response cycle dominated all aspects of the strategic command and control problem.⁴ Specialized reporting and estimative activities of the national intelligence community, in such agencies as the National Indications Center and the Watch Committee of the US Intelligence Board, and high-speed communications systems and procedures for handling critical intelligence information, as in the CRITICOMNET, were mobilized to provide advance indications of possible attack. It was unlikely that such indications would produce certain warning, of course, but even tentative warning could buy time for precautionary measures like alerting planners and decisionmakers or increasing the readiness status of forces. The declaration of JCS defense conditions of "DEFCONS," for example, ranging from normal or routine readiness at DEFCON 5 to maximum readiness for war at DEFCON 1, could invoke a series of actions to foreshorten the decision process and initiate preparations for executing war plans, up to and including launching SAC bombers on scheduled attack routes under "positive control" rules that kept them prepared to strike but held in check until they received an authenticated directive to proceed.⁵

Advance ("strategic") warning from intelligence or other Information was inherently unpredictable, however, and it was generally recognized that the first useful warning information might not be available until an attack was already under way (so-called "tactical" warning). Several attack detection systems were in operation in 196l, the most Important of which were the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line of antiaircraft radar stations across northern Canada and the seaward approaches to North America, all but a few segments of which were completed, which could provide several hours warning of attack by aircraft; the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), with two of its three large radars just coming into service, which was expected to provide some 15-25 minutes warning of ICBM attack; and the Bomb Alarm System (BAS), being installed with prototype equipment at many target locations (including SAC bases) but not yet completed as a national network, designed for "instant warning" of nuclear detonations.⁶

Other systems with a warning mission or application were under development and test, including the MIDAS infrared satellite system for detecting missiles during their boost phase, Over-the-Horizon (forward-scatter) radar for remote detection of missile launches, and the SAMOS system for satellite and missile observation. The space detection and tracking system (SPADATS) for monitoring objects in orbit was already operational, but was not oriented toward attack warning.⁷

Sensor data from the attack warning systems were rapidly and automatically processed and delivered for immediate display at major command centers, such as the headquarters center of the North American (US Continental) Air Defense Command, the Strategic Air Command, or the facilities of the JCS. The warning coverage of the systems was incomplete, however, and their output was not altogether reliable, so that they could not be counted upon for unequivocal warning. BMEWS could be avoided by submarine-launched missiles, or by ICBMs on depressed or indirect "end-run" trajectories; and its equipment was liable to outages and malfunctions. On at least one occasion, as noted earlier, a definite BMEWS warning at the highest alarm level was triggered by spurious signals ("moon echoes")—without serious consequences but hardly strengthening confidence in the system.⁸

Some SAC commanders, like Gen. Thomas S. Power, openly doubted that the United States would ever launch missiles until there was "definite proof" of an attack, perhaps not until hostile bombs or missiles had already fallen.⁹ And even the latter, it might be added, might require more than the evidence of detonations registered by the Bomb Alarm System, which was itself fallible and subject to errors and breakdowns.

C. COMMAND FACILITIES

(W) Whether conclusive or not, it might take only a few minutes for warning indications to reach emergency command facilities at the national level. In 196l, these were rudimentary, the products of an earlier period when it was reasonable to assume warning times of three or more hours and, in comparison with the new assumptions of the 1960s, weak and fairly inaccurate Soviet strike capabilities. The installations planned for the emergency use of the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the JCS included the basement bomb shelter at the White House (rated at 70 psi blast resistance); the Joint War Room operated by the JCS in the Pentagon (above ground and soft); and, outside the Washington area, the presidential retreat at Camp David (100 psi), the OCDM¹⁰ Federal Government relocation center at "High Point" (50 psi), and the Alternate Joint Communication Center of the JCS at Fort Ritchie (30 psi, programmed for 80-100 psi), all some 30 minutes away from Washington by helicopter. These installations may have offered reasonable protection against weapons with large CEPs and yields in the kiloton ranges, but they were not designed to withstand the more accurate and powerful attack systems already in view by the late 1950s. ¹¹

Normally, none of the above sites was continuously manned or adequately equipped for the immediate takeover of wartime functions in support of any surviving national authorities who might be able to use them. There was as yet no coherent National Military Command System (NMCS) with its National Military Command Center (NMCC), alternate standby centers, and specialized communications, data processing, and other facilities.¹² The Joint War Room in the Pentagon was activated as a possible joint military command post only in 1960, superseding temporary improvised arrangements for the JCS use of Air Force facilities there. The development of the AJCC as an alternate command center for continuity of operations was still in planning stages, and the establishment of more survivable centers, with essential communications and information-handling capabilities, was still under study by the JCS. The JCS had formed a Joint Command and Control Study Group to explore alternative programs, and the discussion had narrowed down to several specific proposals, but by 1961 no final determination had yet been made.¹³

D. COMMUNICATIONS

Prior to 1961, communications from emergency command facilities to the strategic nuclear delivery forces consisted of an amalgamation of separately planned, equipped, and operated networks designed by the individual military services primarily to support individual service roles and missions. Plans to combine major segments of existing networks into a single, interconnected Defense Communications System were just getting started in 1960, and the new Defense Communications Agency was only in the early stages of trying to coordinate all-service communications support for the joint operational use of the JCS. Technical as well as procedural problems of compatibility and interoperability still interfered with timely and reliable operational communications, particularly outside of USAF and SAC channels—but by this time strategic nuclear operations involved the forces of at least one other service, three other commands, and, since the 1958 Reorganization Act, a joint operational control system.¹⁴

Moreover, all communications modes were susceptible to disruption from attack—at fixed terminals and switches and on landlines and landline links, which were generally designed for commercial use, often collocated with critical targets or funneling through probable target areas, and seldom hardened or otherwise protected against blast, collateral nuclear effects, or jamming interference. Efforts during the 1950s to harden facilities and re-route lines, to furnish alternate or backup facilities and multiple circuits, or to institute other corrective measures for communications survivability, were generally offset by advances in the threat (especially increases in weapon yields), or defeated by prohibitive costs.¹⁵

E. SIOP EXECUTION

Emergency command functions and procedures were developed ahead of time and streamlined insofar as possible to permit effective operations even in the degraded communications environment of a nuclear attack. This was especially the case with respect to absolutely critical actions, like directing the execution of the strategic war plan. Assuming the continuity of political authority and a prompt retaliatory decision, the procedures in effect called for transmitting a simple, short, pre-positioned "go code" to the strike forces, giving them the signal to carry out previously designated assignments to deliver prescribed weapons in a specified manner against preselected targets, all in quasi-automatic fashion that reduced communications and other command requirements to the barest human and technical minimums. This called for a thoroughly developed, clearly understood, and well-rehearsed operational plan that could be implemented with a simple unambiguous decision, almost without further command intervention—in the previously quoted words of General Twining, "pre-planned for automatic execution to the maximum extent possible and with minimum reliance on post-H-hour communications."¹⁶

The strategic war plan of 1961, basically the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) developed by the Joint Strategic Planning at SAC Headquarters, was as all-inclusive as it was possible to make it.¹⁷ In what must have been a unique advance in modern war planning, It incorporated a comprehensive set of Individual strategic strikes, prescribing tasks, targets, tactics, timing, and other operational particulars in minute detail, and demanding utmost precision in execution by earmarked forces. Once the plan was put in motion, it was expected to run its course. (There was, in fact, no way to stop it after an authentic execute order was issued.) After the initial strike list was exhausted and the initial strike weapons were expended, any continuation of strategic operations depended on whatever surviving authorities might be able to improvise with whatever forces remained at their disposal. It was a plan, it was said, oriented toward a "one-shot war"—not entirely unsuitable, it may be added, for what may well have been at the time a one-shot command, control, and communication system.¹⁸

A strategic command and control system that could only manage a semiautomatic all-out response, If even that, and that required risky split-second reactions on penalty of catastrophic failure, was hardly acceptable to the leaders of the incoming administration. They sought alternatives to a strategic predicament in which at the first signs of attack decisionmakers were under great compulsion to fire everything at once against the entire enemy target system because it was the only really feasible retaliatory option—"spasm war," they called it. They sought greater latitude and flexibility, a variety of options for use in a range of contingencies in a controlled and deliberate manner, not merely in the initial strike decision but continuing afterward until hostilities were terminated.¹⁹

Highly concerned about the hair-trigger tensions in the system, the Kennedy officials also sought stronger safeguards against war precipitated by accidental or unauthorized actions, such as human or mechanical error, miscalculation, aberration, or other faults. They wished to be sure not only that the forces would react as desired when duly authorized and directed, but also that they would not initiate action when not so authorized and directed.²⁰

These new strategic policies imposed severe demands on the command and control system. They required a system with more built-in endurance and toughness under stress, capable of sustained operation during and even after an attack, adaptable to a wide range of circumstances and responsive to discriminating policy direction, able to function in an orderly, sure, yet timely manner. The system in being fell far short of such standards, and the Kennedy administration set out to improve it.

The improvements desired did not come quickly, easily, or without significant costs. Insuring positive control of nuclear weapons and precautions against unauthorized or accidental use could easily involve real risks of operational degradation, or a loss in operational flexibility or readiness, trade-offs that frequently pitted the White House and OSD against the JCS and operational commanders. Controversies continued for years over the application of procedural safeguards like the "two-man rule," which required several persons at every level of operation of handling of nuclear weapons, or the strict safety regulations in storing, transporting, or otherwise managing them. Instituting physical safeguards, such as tamper-proof arming switches, electro-mechanical locks, or similar devices that did not unduly interfere with weapon reliability or responsiveness, called for difficult decisions that were often carried up to the highest national levels for resolution. A whole family of ingenious Permissive Action Link-Permissive Arming and Protection (PAL-PAP) Systems were developed in order to strengthen the physical and administrative controls over nuclear weapons use, whether strategic or tactical, at home or abroad. In the case of strategic missiles, like Minuteman, in which the weapon was physically mated to the delivery vehicle, such controls took the form of Launch Enable Systems that required encoded signals from higher headquarters, . sometimes the highest echelons, to prepare and fire individual missiles.²¹ For administrative officials, these controls were required by basic national command and control policies with respect to nuclear decisions; any further exposure of the weapons to communications or other command and control weaknesses was only another additive factor in an already difficult and complicated nuclear world in which command and control over military actions assumed entirely novel dimensions.

XXI. DOCTRINAL/FUNCTIONAL ISSUES: FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

Major issues regarding functional roles and requirements for the strategic command and control system recurred repeatedly throughout the 1960s, and at the end of the Kennedy-Johnson period in 1968 were far from completely resolved. The most important were traceable to difficulties in developing a command and control system to fit the strategic policies and corollary doctrines that were adopted in 1961 and maintained thereafter, even in the face of serious reservations as to their actual feasibility in a thermonuclear missile environment.

The broad rationale for decisions on the US strategic nuclear posture during the 1960s was predicated on what was variously labeled "flexible" or "graduated" or "variable" or even simply "controlled" response. To the extent that it amounted to a doctrine, it was open to different interpretations, and it is not easy (if at all possible) to find a single coherent, clear statement of it, even among authoritative pronouncements of the President and the Secretary of Defense.¹ Officials of the Kennedy administration worked for several years attempting to hammer out an agreed formulation so that it could be enshrined in a Basic National Security Policy (BNSP) document, but after wrestling with many drafts they eventually gave up.² Their successors under Johnson may not have even tried—McNamara pretty clearly did not believe it was necessary. "Do the Chiefs suffer without it?" he asked. ³

The major implications of the "flexible response" strategy for purposes of the present discussion relate to two separable but frequently associated aspects: multiple options for initial strategic retaliation, most relevant for considering command and control requirements in the pre-attack or early trans-attack period; and continuing options for sustained military operations after an initial retaliatory response, most relevant for considering requirements in the subsequent post-attack period.⁴ The two aspects were often combined, as in W. W. Kaufmann's thumbnail characterization of flexible response:

a posture ... so designed and controlled that it could attack enemy bomber and missile sites, retaliate with reserve forces against enemy cities, If that should prove necessary, and also exert pressure on the enemy to end the war on terms acceptable to the United States.⁵

In other formulations, the two aspects can be distinguished, as in one of the BNSP formulations: "an increasingly wider range of options, at alternative levels of violence and against alternative target systems, which the President ... could review In advance and choose among in the event" (aspect one), as distinct from "ensure ... that the conduct and termination of operations are also continuously and sensitively responsive to political decisions by the President or authorities predesignated by him" (aspect two).⁶ Both aspects of "flexible response" placed heavy functional demands on the command and control system, but the second posed greater and somewhat different demands than the first. They both required survivability, but to different degrees and for markedly different purposes.

When the JCS were asked by McNamara in 1961 to prepare a "doctrine" to permit "controlled response"—and negotiation pauses—in the event of thermonuclear attack ("controlled" was not precisely defined but clearly included less than all-out responses by all available forces), their reply was that the United States lacked the essential prerequisites to implement such a concept. It lacked survivable and effective early warning and active defense systems, survivable and effective nuclear retaliatory forces, and a survivable and effective national command and control system. Without these preconditions, the United States could not risk withholding portions of its strategic forces in order to provide for variations in the timing, scope, or intensity of retaliatory action—a "full response" was the only feasible option. The Chiefs did not unanimously agree that implementation of controlled response was necessarily desirable, but they agreed that it could not be considered realistically until the mid-1960s, if then, when presumably the prerequisite conditions could be met.⁷

Of the prerequisites named by the JCS, the survivable and effective command and control system proved the most difficult to achieve and remained the greatest impediment to a credible and practicable flexible response posture. The administration moved rapidly to provide secure retaliatory forces, so that within the next several years the Secretary of Defense was confidently claiming "secure, protected retaliatory forces able to survive any attack within enemy capabilities and capable of striking back and destroying Soviet urban society, if necessary, in a controlled and deliberate way."⁸ Active defense lost its critical importance in the US strategic posture as the predominant threat shifted from manned aircraft to missiles, with anti-missile defenses pursued as R&D rather than operational programs; and early warning capabilities became important for providing retaliatory decision-time, as well as retaliatory force survival.⁹ But uncertainty about the command and control systems continued to cloud the prospects for flexible response. As the Secretary of Defense warned the President in late 196l, the validity of the concept (using strategic forces "in a controlled and deliberate way under a wide range of contingencies") depended on having "a survivable high-level command and control system,"¹⁰ a point that echoed one of the key JCS reservations.

A. SIOP OPTIONS

The JCS skepticism about flexible response did not dissuade policymakers, and in early 1962 new policy guidance was issued requiring greater flexibility and latitude of choice in the SIOP.¹¹ Whereas the existing strategic plan (SIOP-62, which was prepared in 1960 and became effective April 1961) envisaged simultaneous strikes by the entire strategic retaliatory force, the new version (SIOP-63) was intended to be more selective and provide more choice, especially to permit the withholding of a retaliatory "reserve" from the initial response, if so desired, to permit the avoidance of urban-industrial targets, and to permit the exclusion of one or more Soviet bloc nations. The SAC position on the new guidance was not unlike that previously expressed by the JCS: doubt that there were sufficient forces available to withhold a reserve for later use, doubt that forces held In reserve would survive, and doubt above all that the command and control system would operate long enough or effectively enough to launch and direct them.¹² Nevertheless, the new SIOP was written to include multiple strike options, varying with the nature of the attack, ranging from "limited" reactions in the event of an equivocal attack that unfolded gradually, at one extreme, to full or massive retaliation against all military and urban-industrial targets of value in the event of an indiscriminate attack, at the other; provision was also made for selected forces of high survivability (the "protected reserve" or the "secure retaliatory force"), to be employed as the last-resort threat in any retaliation situation.¹³

The chief SIOP options that were stressed by McNamara and other leaders were mainly choices between military ("counterforce") targets, especially opposing nuclear strike forces, and "cities"—urban-industrial targets. In his budgetary DPMs, posture statements, and public speeches, McNamara referred to distinctions between the two types of target, more specifically between striking back at "the entire Soviet target system simultaneously" and, for example, "Soviet bomber bases, missile sites, and other military installations associated with their long-range nuclear forces to reduce the power of any follow-on attack—and then, if necessary, striking back at the Soviet urban and industrial complex in a controlled and deliberate way." Or he spoke at times of a strategic force "that would permit you to launch in waves, a second strike and a second strike prime, one against their military targets and the other against their urban centers." Or he spoke of counterforce ("city-avoidance") wars in which strikes against cities might be avoided, or at least delayed or withheld rather than struck immediately, perhaps in a "coercive" strategy that would keep "cities" as "hostages" under threat for negotiation purposes. In 1962, when even the sophisticated public was accustomed to visual images of "all-out" nuclear war in which cities would be prime targets, especially in a retaliatory context, McNamara created no small public stir when he suggested that the United States had adopted a new strategy in which the principal military objectives would be "the destruction of the enemy's military forces, not of his civilian population."¹⁴

Other references to "options" were made in terms of possible responses to small-scale events, which might be accidents, miscalculations, or other species of unauthorized strikes (about which the Kennedy officials seemed acutely conscious); third-party attacks, already seen as a complication to the simple bipolar competition; sanctuary treatment of political-military command and control centers, in order to preserve a negotiating partner of some kind; or, perhaps with less conviction in McNamara's case, "limited strategic nuclear options," essentially forceful demonstrations of will in a crisis.

B. COMMAND AND CONTROL PROBLEMS

There was no doubt in any of McNamara's formulations that a second strike, "multiple options" strategy would require a command and control system ("communications links and command headquarters") with greater survivability than would be required for a single, fixed, predetermined response that would simply "let everything off at once."¹⁵ The latter, for example, required a capability to detect the fact of an attack, defined at whatever threshold of action was deemed sufficient to trigger a "salvo" response. It could be managed with a crude go/no-go decision and a minimum of command control thereafter.

A flexible response strategy, in contrast, required prolonged survivability in command and control, primarily because it could well involve a more complicated and less predictable decision, more versatile potential responses, and the exercise of a greater degree of precision in both option selection and implementation. It required a capability to go on and classify the attack, as small or large, for example, accidental or deliberate, selective or Indiscriminate, against cities or not, against high command or not, and the like, in order to support a decision as to an "appropriate" retaliatory response. It would require a capability to determine not only that an attack was under way but also the apparent size, pattern, and timing of the attack, its source, its objectives, even the intentions of the attacker. It would require a considerable capability to assemble, evaluate, and utilize information, almost certainly in an extremely fast-moving situation, probably with normal information systems, communications, and command operating under great stress, overload or other abnormal conditions, and perhaps even with impaired or degraded capabilities.

The attack-assessment function In a flexible response strategy could be a severe challenge to any command and control system.¹⁶ So could the selection of an appropriate response, whether a choice of already preplanned options or an ad hoc improvisation. Information requirements might also be considerable, including up-to-the-minute estimates of capabilities to carry out various options with varying degrees of success, possibly for determination (along with attack assessment and other aspects of option selection) within the 15-25 minute warning period before strike capabilities became subject to enemy action.

The functional requirements of flexible response could also continue beyond an initial selection of preplanned options, of course. Flexible response could involve the incremental employment of forces, continuing throughout some period of hostilities, even, as Kennedy-Johnson officials liked to believe until the termination of the conflict. It could logically require a "war management" capability, including continuing assessment of damage to the country, its forces, and its resources; continuing assessment of strikes and their results; continuing appraisals of residual capabilities for further action and residual threats in prospect, and so on, all on a virtually real-time basis and in a situation of potentially severe degradation of all capabilities to organize and carry out any kind of action whatever.¹⁷

The NMCS system established during the 1960s was a major advance over the strategic command and control arrangements of the 1950s (perhaps an even greater advance outside the strategic nuclear context), but it was hardly designed to satisfy the above functional requirements of flexible response, at least in "worst case" attack situations and for the degrees of flexibility desired by some proponents. There were some who believed that no command and control system within reason could attain the standards of survivability and functional performance that flexible response appeared to require. They argued, for example, that it was futile and perhaps even unnecessary to gear all command and control planning to no-warning no-crisis contingencies;¹⁸ or to realistically expect attack assessment, option selection, and controlled war management to operate in the trans-attack timespans of the missile age; or to count upon fast recovery and continuation of control in periods measured by hours and days. They proposed waiting periods and delays, instead, and, except for the extremely limited, small, and conceivably containable nuclear event, giving serious reconsideration to the practicability of flexible response.

XXII. THE ISSUE OF CONTINUITY OF THE HIGH COMMAND

Perhaps the greatest uncertainty and the most difficult challenge in the strategic command and control system inherited from the 1950s was the question of continuity of national authority at the very top. The unique role of the President as the Commander in Chief, as well as Chief Executive, and his particular statutory powers with regard to nuclear weapons, made the survival of the presidency-—the office if not the man-indispensable for legitimate nuclear action. Neither the President nor his legal successors were safe from attack, yet the US system provided no standby alternates or substitutes. The successors, like the President, were ordinarily in Washington, no less vulnerable than the President, and could easily be put out of action in the same strike.¹ Even if they were not all simultaneously disabled, there was little assurance that the senior official on the succession list could reestablish effective control without a period of confusion and delay; or even that he could be readily identified, located, and provided with essential presidential services, including communications, for uninterrupted strategic nuclear decision-making functions.

It was entirely possible, therefore, that an attack directed against the President and other national leaders might disrupt the retaliatory command and control machinery, immobilizing strategic forces, subjecting them to piecemeal destruction, and preventing a coordinated response. "Should even a few weapons fall on the central high command," concluded the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in 1960, "the results to our retaliatory capabilities could be catastrophic... No other target system can at present offer equal potential returns from so few weapons."² Under these conditions, the national high command made a tempting target, more vulnerable than the forces themselves, offering the enemy an opportunity for a "decapitating" strike that appeared easier and more profitable than "disarming" strikes alone.

A. JCS PROPOSALS

In 1960, the JCS had proposed a solution based on the civil-military chain of command rather than the line of presidential succession.³ It essentially involved a contingent delegation of nuclear decision authority that the JCS considered manageable within the existing constitutional-legal structure, or with only minor modifications thereto. It called for a three-echelon arrangement for duly declared emergencies in which national survival was clearly at stake: the President or Vice President at the top, the Secretary of Defense or Deputy Secretary of Defense next, and the Chairman JCS or senior service chief third. If the primary official at a given echelon was not immediately available, the second would be empowered to act temporarily in his place; and if neither one was available the acting official at the next subordinate level would act for both of them. The intent was to maintain a clear order of emergency authority for critical military decisions, amounting to a conditional delegation rather than a transfer of power, one that did not involve officials usually remote from authoritative national security decisions, as the presidential line of succession did, and that did not entail time-consuming delays to find and install a successor while the nation was under attack.

Similar proposals were offered in 196l, after McNamara, in one of his battery of 96 questions, asked the JCS to review the entire command and control system, "particularly as it relates to strategic forces," and to recommend changes to insure that the system would be continuously responsive to "duly constituted authority."⁴ The query enabled the JCS to reiterate the importance they attached to having presidential authority "immediately available" for emergency decision, a condition that could only be met by some kind of predelegation of presidential authority to predesignated subordinates, at least for last-resort situations entailing "grave peril" to the nation. The JCS urged the adoption of an "explicit retaliatory doctrine," a previously approved retaliatory plan to be executed in a previously understood set of circumstances, such as an all-out or indiscriminate attack.⁵ Approval of such a doctrine would permit the President's subordinates in the civil-military chain of command—that is, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,⁶ unified and specified commanders, and so on—to act with a prior grant of presidential authority to execute a presidentially authorized military course of action, such as a retaliatory response.

The concept of an explicit retaliatory doctrine, the JCS noted, would require further study at the national level, with other government agencies participating, in order to establish political-military agreement on specific triggering thresholds and appropriate responses. It would also presumably require a resolution of a number of other questions, such as the echelons, if not the commanders, that would be empowered to invoke the doctrine.

B. THE PARTRIDGE REPORT

Another set of such recommendations was submitted later in 196l by an ad hoc National Command and Control Task Force appointed by the Secretary of Defense to re-study strategic command and control problems.⁷ The task force was headed by Gen. Earle E. Partridge, USAF retired, former CINCNORAD, who had been on record for several years with proposals to strengthen the national command system and reorient it toward the prospective ICBM threat.⁸ The final report of the task force, the "Partridge Report," confirmed most of the current criticisms of the existing systems, including the inadequate provisions for continuity of the high command. The report proposed a single supreme military commander (CINCUSCOM) as the channel for operational direction of the unified and specified commands, instead of the corporate body of the JCS, and an Emergency Representative of the President (EMREP) to assume war powers in the event of a hiatus in the availability of the President or an eligible successor.

The Partridge recommendations encountered opposition in both the Pentagon and the White House and were never adopted. The functions and duties of CINCUSCOM, for example, duplicated or conflicted with those of the JCS, and almost surely ran counter to statutory injunctions against a single chief of staff, so that controversial changes in legislation would probably be required. Moreover, the delegation of presidential authority to the EMREP seemed rather sweeping, both in function and duration, much more than required for the immediate task of ordering the execution of the SIOP; and any delegation of broader powers to prosecute general war, involving much more than purely military matters, raised sensitive Issues of civilian control and civil-military jurisdiction in emergencies.⁹

Even if proposals for prior delegation of presidential authority did not require changes in legal arrangements, they were not necessarily compelling or practicable. Specifying what functions were to be delegated, under what circumstances, for what period of time, and to whom, required more than a simple choice among obvious options. In perhaps the clearest contingency, that of an all-out nuclear attack in which a President might well authorize a full-scale response, it was not self-evident that any of the senior officials or commanders to whom the President might delegate authority stood a better chance of surviving than he did—-or if so whether the survivor would have a sufficiently viable command and control system at his disposal to make much difference.¹⁰ The question of relative survivability was crucial. Conversely, in less than all-out situations, the potential range of feasible responses might be considerably greater, and a President might not wish to restrict his own or a successor's courses of action by issuing fixed instructions beforehand. To policymakers opposed to a single-minded massive retaliation and strongly inclined toward flexibility of decision, this was a particularly Important consideration.

In the absence of explicit doctrine and de facto pre-delegation, many responsible officers apparently believed that if the national leadership were suddenly wiped out military commanders who survived could be counted upon to "do the right thing."¹¹ The difficulty with this proposition, however, was that those military commanders did not necessarily have the means to determine that the nation was actually under full attack, that all high command was lost, not merely out of contact, or that independently initiated retaliatory strikes would be "the right thing." As the JCS recognized, such military commanders would require sophisticated, reliable, and comprehensive sensing and communications systems, which they did not have.¹² Consequently, if they undertook military action at all, on their own, it might be disjointed and either erroneously conceived or ineffectual. Such a state of affairs would put national objectives at serious risk, to say the least, and would be the antithesis of controlled response.

C. THE OEP STUDY

There seemed to be no satisfactory way around the pre-delegation dilemma. After the Partridge Report was reviewed at the White House, the President directed an interagency committee under the head of the Office of Emergency Planning to reexamine again Federal policies on continuity of government in the event of nuclear attack, "with particular emphasis on plans to insure the survival of the Presidency."¹³ The committee, which included representatives of OSD and the JCS, reported in mid-1962. It conceded the almost insuperable difficulties in relocating the President to a safe haven outside Washington during a crisis—"the more closely we were approaching an emergency," in the words of one White House aide, "the more necessary is it for the President to be in Washington"¹⁴ — and went on to propose alternative ground rules for handling officials on the succession list. In order of preference, so as to furnish a reasonable degree of survivability without excessive upset to regular activities, the choices presented were:

(a) ensure that at least one presidential successor was located in a dispersed, hardened, or mobile site at all times;

(b) ensure that several successors were randomly dispersed away from likely target areas at all times;

(c) ensure that several successors were dispersed away from target areas at times of high international tension.

The report suggested that such measures also be augmented by doctrinal response authority "for recognized catastrophic situations," such as attacks on national command, that might interrupt essential communications or other elements of the system even If presidential authority survived.¹⁵

D. THE PRESERVATION OF OPTIONS

The various proposals for the survivability of the presidency were apparently held in abeyance: this study uncovered no documentary evidence that they were either approved or disapproved. The JCS at the Pentagon went on to Incorporate them into their planning assumptions, and JCS documents on command and control continued to postulate some sort of delegation of power by the President.¹⁶ No effort was made to alter or extend the presidential succession list, or to change the statutory requirement for presidential release of nuclear weapons, both of which remained as they were in the 1950s.

No explicit retaliatory doctrine was promulgated during the 1960s—although JCS documents continued to assume that one might be, especially for the "catastrophic situation" that they believed was a serious possibility.¹⁷ Even without official promulgation, of course, it was always possible for a President to quietly instruct the Secretary of Defense, the JCS, and operational commanders as to the actions he would wish them to take if they were unable to obtain command direction from him in certain nuclear attack situations, but if that was done it was one of the best-kept secrets in government. At one point at least the JCS felt that if their proposed "explicit retaliatory doctrine" were adopted it should be made clear to the Soviets, as a contribution to deterrence, in order to discourage any temptation to strike at the national chain of command or try to "decapitate" the strategic forces;¹⁸ on the other hand, whether or not such an advance delegation existed could be considered an extremely sensitive question, and the uncertainty itself a sufficient contribution to deterrence. As WSEG Report 50 noted about the possibility in 1960, "it is not intended to suggest whether such measures are or would be taken and, if they were, it would not be expected that their having been taken would necessarily be evidenced."¹⁹ A prudent enemy would have to surmise as much.

There is little point here in speculating further about whatever may have been the actual decisions on presidential continuity and devolution questions as they were presented in the 1960s. In terms of the objective strategic command and control situation, however, it should be noted that even if the President had issued advance declarations of his intentions, as many military planners obviously desired, there was nothing to prevent him from overruling or changing them at any time, perhaps even suddenly in the midst of critical events. By the same token, a situation that was apparently left indeterminate, without such advance declarations, hardly ruled out presidental intercession at will, whenever he thought desirable or necessary—-including whenever the nature of any real emergency became clear—-to set in motion whatever emergency action he chose. A President could start sending successors out of town at any time, and he could plant contingent orders with his commanders whenever he liked, very quickly, without telling them beforehand whether, how, when, and under what hypothetical circumstances he was going to do it. Apart from the prospect of being caught absolutely unprepared by a completely unsuspected bolt-from-the-blue attack, which was a risk even with specific presidential guidelines, the military command and control situation might not have been appreciably affected one way or the other.

XXIII. COMMAND CENTER ISSUES

Even if the continuity problem could be resolved and a national decision authority could survive "somewhere," there was an obvious need for surviving command instrumentalities as well— staffs, plans, information, procedures, equipment, means of communication, and the rest—to enable command functions to be exercised. These matters were interrelated, since both the decision-making authority and the command instrumentalities could be housed together in a survivable facility, and even if housed separately had to be at least connected if not physically integrated within a single system. But separate or not, the survival of either without the other was meaningless in terms of carrying out strategic military action. "Without communications," said General Power in a statement that was applicable to supporting command and control facilities generally, "all I command is my desk, and that is not a very lethal weapon."¹

Survivability was a pressing issue, but not the only one. In 1961, there were unresolved questions concerning what command functions were to be exercised, by whom, and over what forces. Specifics of the new national strategy of "deliberate, selective, controlled response" remained to be defined. Requirements for improved support of national authorities in peacetime and crisis situations as well as all kinds of war— not only strategic nuclear war—were under study. The organization of the military chain of command after the 1958 Reorganization Act, the degree of centralization within it, and the actual operational role of the JCS-Joint Staff were still being worked out.

A. THE USAF, SAC, AND NORAD

The means for command and control had changed considerably during the 1950s and they were still changing. For more than a decade, the evolution of facilities like the command centers and communications facilities of the services and the major combatant commands was driven by a steady trend toward centralized control of increasingly large and complex operations, together with radical improvements in mechanized data acquisition, processing, and transmission. Such facilities were most advanced in the high technology strategic weapons areas, particularly within the Air Force, the Strategic Air Command, and the North American/Continental Air Defense Command, where major challenges were confronted in directing and coordinating forces of unprecedented range, speed, diversity, and destructive power.

The USAF had planned a headquarters command and control system, still under development in 1961, that provided for the centralized receipt, processing, storage, and display of Information on Air Force resources, plans, and operations worldwide, as needed to evaluate capabilities, make rapid decisions, and direct appropriate actions, all with the aid of batteries of computers and far-flung communications.² In strategic air defense, the SAGE system of internetted, semiautomatic centers for warning, communications, and antiaircraft action was coming into full operation, and a new, modernized NORAD combat operations center was under construction.³ The Strategic Air Command was developing a sophisticated SAC Automated Command and Control System (SACCS) that largely dispensed with manual devices and techniques in favor of high-speed electronic data transmission, processing, and display, so that planning, directing, and controlling worldwide strategic operations could be accomplished centrally, under the direct cognizance of CINCSAC.⁴

Even with the use of advanced (and increasingly expensive) technology, however, command and control capabilities lagged considerably behind the fast-paced developments in weaponry, especially the introduction of strategic missiles. In 1961, McNamara and his staff found the SAGE system already obsolete, designed to meet mass raids of hundreds of bombers (a threat, he wrote in a memorandum to the President, that "failed to materialize"), and not only Incapable of coping with the primary missile threat but incapable of sufficient survivability or recuperability under initial missile strikes to handle relatively modest attacks by follow-on bombers.⁵ As a result of early 1961 staff studies he commissioned on continental air defense, McNamara directed that SAGE be continued as a peacetime "pre-battle" system, without further effort to expand its air battle functions, and that strategic defense funds be reallocated for backup interceptor control (BUIC) stations located outside likely target areas, protective measures for interceptors, and improved early warning.⁶

The SACCS (465L) program, several years from operational status and beset with technical difficulties, cost escalations, and delays, came under similar critical review. An April 1961 DDR&E report concluded that SACCS was satisfactory only as a peacetime "pre-strike" system. It would probably function as intended "in the absence of a nuclear attack on the US"; but in case of an attack, its continuing value "would probably be nil." It was a large and inflexible system, designed to operate between the time an attack was detected and the time of missile impacts; and the requirement to "race enemy missiles," limiting national authorities to a snap decision on an all-out response or none, was unacceptable from the standpoint of national policy. Yet simply redesigning SACCS to be survivable might cost billions of dollars.⁷

The Secretary of Defense's decision was to reorient and cut back the SACCS program to the peacetime command and control mission, and to direct the development of a separate "post-attack" command and control system "designed for high survival potential and long endurance potential in the wartime environment." In July 1961, USAF and SAC began the development of a separate, austere Post-Attack Command and Control System (PACCS), built around more survivable airborne and underground elements,-employing communications expected to outlast an attack, and capable of transmitting the most elemental commands, including the order to retaliate.⁸

The USAF Headquarters Command Post and its associated communications-electronics systems included a capability to perform strategic command functions at the request of national as well as service authorities, and the USAF in fact had plans to tie Headquarters USAF, SAC, and NORAD/CONAD command and control systems into a single operational network for national-level use. These plans were overtaken by the 1958 reorganization of the unified command structure, including the switch from the service "executive agent" system of command to the direct channel from the President and the Secretary of Defense through the JCS for operational direction of the forces. Yet for several years any JCS-operated command facilities were meager at best, requirements for JCS command support, beyond ordinary message center, switchboard, and similar services, were undefined, and the JCS continued to rely heavily on the USAF for emergency action command functions. The question of a special joint or national facility for sole support of national decisionmakers had been periodically raised prior to 196l, but had not yet been acted upon.⁹

B. NATIONAL COMMAND FACILITIES

Meanwhile, urgent concerns about the continuity of national command and suitable supporting facilities had led to several studies and actions in 1960 that were generating considerable momentum by 1961, when the new administration took over.

In late 1960, after lengthy interservice debate, the JCS had directed the establishment of a Joint Alternate Command Element (JACE) at the AJCC (which had by this time become the de facto emergency command facility of all the Armed Forces if the Pentagon were destroyed). The JACE was intended as a pre-located JCS alternate battle staff to provide continuity of command and control if so directed, or if the JCS at the Pentagon were unable to act. Plans were held up while legal technicalities in the succession to the JCS were ironed out, but by mid-July 1961 the JACE was activated, with battle staffs from the Joint Staff stationed in Washington rotating to the AJCC for temporary duty ¹⁰

In addition, proposals had been submitted in late 1960 for networks of multiple command centers, both fixed and mobile, for greater assurance of survival and continuity. In its report on strategic command and control, for example, WSEG proposed a "coupled command system" with one or more primary fixed centers backed up by one or more mobile centers and interconnected by reliable communications and bomb burst detectors so that the mobile centers could take over when the fixed centers were no longer operating.¹¹

Mobile command facilities were a relatively new idea In the late 1950s and early 1960s, prompted by the ever-increasing difficulty and cost of protecting fixed sites against thermonuclear weapons. Fixed centers were advantageous because they could be made relatively spacious and comfortable for people and equipment and hence could be designed for greater built-in capabilities, but for survival they required expensive hardening, duplication at several locations, and internetting. On the other hand, foreseeable advances in weapon yields, accuracies, and numbers tended to offset hardening and dispersal, so that soft, mobile centers, even with their space and weight limitations, had advantages of their own—particularly if the command functions envisaged were limited solely to the simple selection of preplanned options and the transmission of short precut execution messages. Among the mobile center concepts, . the Navy recommended a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA) in a cruiser operating randomly in the Chesapeake Bay and adjacent coastal waters, ready to function as a safe haven and command center for the President and his key advisers. The Air Force proposed a National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) in an aircraft on ground alert at nearby Andrews AFB, similar to the airborne command post tested and put into operation at SAC headquarters, capable of receiving a presidential party, becoming, airborne, and orbiting outside the Washington target area in 15 minutes. The Army also outfitted a train to test as a land-mobile national command post. The new administration was sympathetic to all these ideas. In February 1961, a JCS study group decided that all three types were sufficiently practicable to warrant consideration as alternate national command centers, and in March 196l the JCS approved trial operations of the NECPA on the cruiser Northampton and the NEACP in KC-135 tanker aircraft.¹²

Unresolved issues about fixed versus mobile command facilities persisted for years. Hardening remained a preferred alternative for large-capacity centers, especially if dispersed, but was widely criticized as a low-confidence measure against Soviet weapons expected in the middle or late 1960s.¹³ Technical uncertainties about hardening (not easily resolvable in the absence of nuclear tests) and doubts as to the functional capabilities of mobile centers (in the midst of real doubts about what capabilities were required) kept considerable controversy alive. The basic judgment that a system of multiple centers was needed, however, and that it should include both fixed and mobile centers, seemed readily accepted by 1961. In their early appraisal of command survival for the Secretary of Defense in the spring of 196l, the JCS referred to the "current and planned" system of hardened and fixed facilities backed up by mobile command posts (together with the "explicit retaliatory doctrine" in case political authorities were not available), much like the WSEG 50 solution.¹⁴ The Secretary of Defense, in his April posture statement, reiterated the need for additional, more survivable sites, specifically the airborne and seaborne command posts, and during the year he approved requested funds for further hardening the AJCC, modifying the USS Northampton (CC-1), and converting KC-135 tankers for command post use.¹⁵

Nonetheless, progress toward the presidential objective of an "indestructible system to insure high-level command, communication, and control ... under any conditions" seemed slow.¹⁶ The development of a more survivable national-level integrated system proceeded by incremental steps in 196l, did not get far off the ground until 1962, and was not fully committed to paper until 1963.

It may be conjectured that some relaxation in urgency was caused by the quiet death of the "missile gap," which appeared to become caught in a double squeeze between downward reassessments of the Soviet threat and the US strategic-buildup decisions of 1961.¹⁷ After all, the gloomiest appraisal of strategic command and control, as in WSEG 50, projected a mid-1960s situation in which the prospective missile threat would be substantially greater and US deterrence would probably be entering a seriously weakened phase—a situation that was still a few years off. In addition, however, it proved no easy matter to iron out the organizational and procedural details of a national command system, including relationships involving the JCS, the services, the CINCs, and the Defense agencies with an important participatory role, such as DDR&E, DCA, and DIA.

The outlines of a national command center complex, based essentially on integrating and expanding existing facilities (much as the Partridge Report and WSEG had recommended), began sharpening in early 1962. In February, the Secretary of Defense approved a National Military Command System (NMCS) composed of four major elements: the National Military Command Center (NMCC), an evolution of the JCS Joint War Room; the Alternate National Military Command Center (ANMCC), a redesignation of the JCS installation at the AJCC; and two mobile alternates, the NECPA and the NEACP.¹⁸ The following October he issued a DoD directive on the World-Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) that outlined the NMCS in detail, to include the NMCC, ANMCC, NECPA, NEACP, and such other alternates as might be established, together with their interconnecting communications; and defined their relationship to the command and control "subsystems" of the service headquarters, the CINCs, and other DoD agencies.¹⁹

C. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Probably no single event had a greater influence on the subsequent evolution of the NMCS during the 1960s than the Cuban missile crisis of October-November 1962. The crisis did not lead to specific changes in the principal concepts, arrangements, or procedures for command and control of strategic nuclear forces, as such. The latter played a major supporting role in the crisis and underwent a major real-life test of their command and control, as well as other, capabilities.²⁰ But the more important command and control lessons of the crisis related to the overall philosophy and style of national-level "crisis management" in a situation with escalatory nuclear potential. The net impact was to upgrade national-level interest in the new NMCS and to accelerate its development as a general purpose, national military command and control system.

In broad historical perspective, the missile crisis may stand as a major watershed of the cold war. Walt W. Rostow, for example, has characterized it as the terminal gambit of a multi-faceted Communist offensive that began with sputnik in 1957.²¹ Others have considered whether it may have been the catalyst for the ouster of Khrushchev and the subsequent acceleration of Soviet strategic programs.²² However that may be, the crisis was followed by the test-ban treaty, the "hot line," and several other preliminary signals of easier US-Soviet relations, up to and including the subsequent SALT discussions. Nonetheless, in the evolution of the NMCS, the crisis is significant as the crucible and still classic model of "crisis management" in direct political-military confrontation with the USSR as the nation's paramount nuclear adversary. Secretary McNamara has been quoted as saying afterwards, "there is no longer any such thing as strategy, only crisis management,"²³ and the term gained, widespread currency.

At the decision-making level, the crisis appeared as a highly successful attempt to orchestrate military action and political-diplomatic negotiation. The naval "quarantine" of Soviet military shipments to Cuba, the preparations for alternative air or ground attacks on the island, together with a highly conspicuous worldwide alert by SAC forces, were combined with carefully controlled political and diplomatic actions, including inducements, to compel Soviet withdrawal of the missiles.²⁴

From the military command and control point of view, the crisis illustrated the now familiar phenomena of highly centralized, detailed control of military actions from the very top, with direct communications from the highest level national authorities to commanders at the scene of action, bypassing intermediate echelons in the chain of command in order to exercise close, real-time operational control. It raised to unprecedented levels the requirements for military responsiveness to civilian command, requirements that may have been considered highly unorthodox at first and violations of traditional principles of military command, but which became gradually accepted as characteristic features of command and control in the contemporary world. The experience brought home, as little else could, the manifest need for a highly flexible and responsive central command and control system at the direct disposal and in immediate support of decisionmakers, and from that time forward the evolution of the NMCS as the unquestioned core of such a system was assured.

Apart from any tangible results, the Cuban missile crisis may well have had its chief impact on the subsequent outlooks, attitudes, and expectations among military officers generally. The experience of observing national leaders in front of their maps tracking hourly movements of individual ships, and at their telephones with their closest advisers directing the step-by-step moves during destroyer-level military encounters, unprecedented In detail, no doubt reverberated throughout the military establishment.²⁵ The highly centralized direction of operational details and frequent bypassing of intermediate echelons and channels that took place during the crisis, while probably dismissed by some as the idiosyncratic behavior of particular decisionmakers and an atypical departure from traditional principles of command, began to be viewed as fundamental alterations in the style of political-military crisis management in the nuclear age, particularly as they came to be repeated in other Incidents. Stories of Kennedy in his Situation Room and McNamara in Navy Flag Plot did more than enrich the folklore of the Pentagon; they gave special emphasis and meaning to bland statements like those in NMCS directives: "Cold and limited war place their own peculiar demands on the National Command Authorities.... The use of military force in conditions short of general war, because of the threat of escalation, requires a greater degree of centralization ... when a timely and sensitive exchange of information In critical situations is required by the National Command Authorities, they may require direct communications to lower echelons."²⁶ In these respects, it is perhaps not too much to say that the Cuban missile crisis stands as a watershed in the evolution of US command and control practices, with ultimate implications affecting the responsiveness of all forces.

XXIV. NMCS DEVELOPMENTS AFTER CUBA

From 1963 on, the NMCS received considerable visibility and support, although perhaps mainly as a set of arrangements for general purpose command and control, including crisis management, rather than for strategic nuclear purposes. In the latter context, however, the four command centers—the NMCC, the ANMCC, the NECPA, and the NEACP—did approximate a composite or "coupled" set of command facilities along the lines proposed several years before by WSEG 50 and the Partridge Report and subsequently favored by the JCS. Although no one of the four facilities was invulnerable, each had particular survivability characteristics (hardening, mobility, dispersal, redundancy) that contributed to the survivability of the complex as a whole. While they may not have presented an attacker with targeting problems "complicated to the extent that the [US] national command ceases to be a profitable target" and may not have constituted a literally "non-interruptable" command system (as expressed in JCS objectives¹), they no doubt added to the weapons costs of putting the US high command entirely out of action and reduced an attacker's confidence in his ability to interrupt it at will. The four centers offered a reasonable chance that one or more could survive even a deliberate effort to disrupt the command process.

A. THE NMCS CENTERS

All four NMCS centers, fixed and mobile, were intended to constitute a close-knit team, linked with reliable, secure, survivable communications so that each could have continuous access to each other and to national decisionmakers, Service headquarters, unified and specified commands, and other designated agencies. These centers did not constitute a separate system of command communications, but were part of the consolidated Defense Communications System, which employed a variety of media and modes, dispersed facilities, multiple routing, and combinations of hardening, mobility, and redundancy in order to. achieve survivability commensurate with the command terminals being served.²

1. The NMCC

The NMCC was developed in the mid-1960s as a continuously manned, unhardened facility, operated by the Joint Staff, to serve the JCS, the Secretary of Defense, and the President in their operational command functions.³ It was manned around the clock by a team of field-grade officers under an operations officer of flag rank, with provision for staff augmentation as necessary. It included room for accommodating the JCS and other decisionmakers during emergencies, but it did not normally function as a center for decisionmaking or "command" for national authorities, who for the most part operated from their regular offices and conference rooms. Nor was it intended as a source of substantive staff support, unless time constraints or urgency precluded the use of normal staff channels or procedures. It was basically an information and communication center, providing rapid and secure access for the exchange of information, advice, and instructions among decisionmakers, their principal staffs, other government agencies, and US force commanders worldwide. It maintained contingency data files, operational and situational assessments, and status-of-actions score sheets for day-to-day command activities, including crisis and limited war management, up to the transfer of functions to one of the alternate centers in strategic nuclear war. As long as it survived and functioned as the primary center, it provided the capability to initiate emergency actions, including preparation and transmission of SIOP orders, meanwhile keeping the other centers abreast of events and decisions so that any of them could take over as primary command center at any time

The NMCC was expanded in size from about 7,000 square feet in 1962 to about 21,000 square feet by 1965, still in temporary quarters in the JCS area of the Pentagon. (The JCS considered this an "interim" location, pending decision on a "first-generation" NMCC of 10 times the size, located underground between the Mall and River entrances of the Pentagon.) It gained considerable stature as a current military information center and communications hub, particularly as a result of crisis experience, such as during the Panama and Tonkin Gulf incidents of 1964, the Dominican Republic and Vietnam interventions of 1965, the Middle East crisis of 1967, and other high-pressure events of the period. Meanwhile, under the Operations Directorate (J-3) of the JCS, the NMCC continued to be the focal point for developing and exercising national-level command and control procedures for general nuclear war.⁴

2. The ANMCC

The ANMCC was located underground at the AJCC near Ft. Ritchie, hardened further to about 140 psi blast resistance by 1963, and designed to operate for about 30 days in a "buttoned-up" condition.⁵ It was continuously manned on a skeleton "battle staff" basis and prepared to accommodate national military authorities and supporting staffs if selected for relocation. The ANMCC was especially organized and equipped to carry out essential command center functional tasks in the trans-strike and post-strike phases of general nuclear war, including providing SIOP data bases, emergency action communications, and computational and other equipment for monitoring the readiness-status of nuclear forces, assessing attack damage, and evaluating strike progress and results. It was intended to provide sufficient information for ordering the execution, redirection, or termination of strategic nuclear operations, and the means for disseminating the relevant information and orders to other alternate centers and to commanders in the field.

3. The NECPA and NEACP

The two mobile alternates, also oriented toward the general-nuclear-war mission, but with bare minimum capabilities, were intended to be capable of operating independently for short period, outside the Washington area, with or without national authorities on board, until adequate command facilities could be reconstituted.⁶ The NECPA consisted of two ships (the converted cruiser USS Northampton in 1962, plus the USS Wright, a refitted auxiliary aircraft transport, in 1963), with one continuously under way at sea and capable of operating for up to two weeks if necessary without extensive logistic support. The NEACP was operated with KC-135 (later redesignated EC-135) aircraft maintained on 24-hour ground alert, able to operate airborne for at least 15 hours without refueling and for about 10 days in an alternating air and ground mode with a national command contingent on board.

Both the NECPA and the NEACP had smaller watch teams and less equipment than the NMCC and the ANMCC, but were more survivable. The NEACP, the most space-restricted of all, was potentially the most survivable, once airborne and away from target areas. Both mobile centers relied heavily on the more extensive data bases and data processing capabilities of the fixed centers as long as the latter remained operational, but were then supposed to be able to operate on their own. They maintained summary types of information in standard or compatible formats, constantly updated, so that they could function as mutually substitutable alternates insofar as their physical limitations permitted.

B. THE DUCC PROPOSAL

The NMCS still lacked one of the fundamental prerequisites for a unified, survivable, and effective national command system: a firm umbilical to the national command authority itself—-as the JCS liked to call it, "legally constituted surviving civilian authority." National authorities (or their alternates or successors) might "pre-locate" or "relocate" to any of the centers in order to exercise command from them in an emergency, but they had never done so in previous crisis situations, including Cuba, and no one could guarantee that they would do so in the future. The concept of relocation from the White House and the Pentagon to the more survivable ANMCC, NECPA, or NEACP seemed particularly unreal, since the time required for access to the sites (in the event of a surprise missile attack) could easily exceed the expected tactical warning time.⁷ In the absence of relocation, of course, command procedures did provide for communications access to and from national authorities, including the President and his successors, wherever located, so that it might still be possible to obtain authority for critical command functions. But, as noted above, if the President were caught by a strike on Washington, identifying and locating a senior surviving authority would be no easy matter; and even if it were possible, necessary command communications would be precarious.

Skepticism about relocation concepts and uncertainty about the capability of the NMCS to function effectively without a resident political authority (plus, it may be surmised, reluctance to leave supreme command in any other hands) led to a search for alternative approaches. One approach led to a major proposal for a Deep Underground Command Center (DUCC), a "super-hard" command post easily accessible to national authorities and designed especially for their use with minimum dislocation or interruption of their normal routines.

The DUCC proposal apparently reached the Secretary of Defense level in a memorandum from the ASD (Comptroller), Charles J. Hitch, in January 1962.⁸ The memo referred to the planned 1963 configuration of the NMCS as "the best that can be done to establish a survivable command facility in the near future," but pointed out several shortcomings, above all the problem that the most survivable elements, the NECPA and the NEACP, were not sufficiently accessible or convenient to support any great confidence that national authorities would actually be on board in the event of surprise attack. As a solution, the memo proposed a very deep underground center close to the Pentagon, perhaps 3,000-4,000 feet down, protected to withstand direct hits by high-yield weapons and endure about 30 days in a post-attack period. In the event of warning, the proximity of the center would facilitate the protection of key personnel; in a no-warning contingency, it was conceivable that decisionmakers would already be in it. As the Hitch memo to McNamara observed:

For example, the center could include an office where people, such as yourself, could conveniently spend a day every week or two to conduct business almost as usual and be in a position to assume National Command in the event of a no-warning attack on Washington.⁹

The DUCC proposal was controversial and raised many questions, including the technical-engineering feasibility and costs, the elements of the NMCS that it might displace, and the command authorities who might be included in it (the JCS were among those scheduled to be included if it ever came to pass).¹⁰ Order-of-magnitude estimates of 5,000-10,000 psi hardening against 100-megaton weapons, for example, were based on theoretical calculations and were received in some quarters as speculations.¹¹ Even if the basic DUCC capsule could be built to survive direct hits, questions of communications coupling and lifeline logistics remained formidable. The DUCC proposal was sufficiently attractive at OSD level, however, that exploratory studies were initiated, and in late 1963, in connection with FY65 budgetary decisions, the Secretary of Defense put before the President a recommendation to begin actual construction.¹² Specifically, the Secretary proposed the options of an austere 50-man DUCC or an expanded 300-man version (with the former built to permit expansion into the latter, if desired). The fixed underground ANMCC would be phased out as superfluous, whichever version was chosen, and the other NMCS facilities would be cut back to some degree according to one or the other.

The JCS reacted to the DUCC proposal without marked enthusiasm.¹³ They took the position that the planned NMCS complex represented an optimum command and control posture for the time being and should not be reoriented toward primary reliance on a single, fixed underground facility of unproven reliability and operational effectiveness. Neither version of the DUCC was large enough to hold the staff personnel and facilities required for essential general war functions, and it was not likely that either could have the self-sufficient, survivable, and reliable communications that would be required. Until these capabilities were ascertained, it would be premature to eliminate or reduce the ANMCC or the other NMCS centers.

The DUCC proposal did not survive White House consideration and was apparently set aside indefinitely.¹⁴ It would have been relatively expensive, of course—at the time, some $310 million for the austere version, for construction costs alone, out of a total proposed five-year NMCS budget of $850 million— and the strong JCS misgivings, especially about communications capabilities, may have been persuasive. Whatever the reason, the basic NMCS configuration was retained substantially as planned, without the addition or substitution of anything like the DUCC.

C. FURTHER EVOLUTION

During the next several years, NMCS capabilities were considerably improved, through added operational experience, procedural refinement, and equipment upgrading. The NMCC itself was expanded further, to some 30,000 square feet, was provided with expanded automatic data processing support, and became a prime beneficiary of a greatly enlarged Joint Operational Reporting (JOPREP) system. The ANMCC was hardened to 400 psi. The endurance of the NECPA was Increased from several weeks to two months, and that of the NEACP, even within the EC-135 airframe, to 20 hours of unrefueled flying time. Communications support was augmented and improved with the introduction of more sophisticated, flexible, and effective satellite, airborne, and. mobile-transportable systems; and communications capacity, especially after the first satellite communications systems became operational in 1965, was multiplied several fold. But no major structural changes were made.¹⁵

In the absence of a DUCC, or some functional equivalent that was not contingent on the relocation of national command authorities from Washington, and assuming that predelegating nuclear retaliatory authority was out of the question (or simply too hot to handle for planning purposes), the NMCS remained something of an incomplete solution to the problem of national strategic command as perceived in the 1960s. The NMCS encompassed a set of potentially survivable command sites, with communications and other supporting facilities and competent military staffs, available to support national authorities on demand—if the latter should survive without loss of contact. Even without the assurance, the NMCS could perhaps be justified on the grounds that its very existence at least provided options for on-the-spot, ad hoc relocation, delegation, or other conceivable measures for continuity of command that that might otherwise be foreclosed. But some dissatisfaction persisted over whether this permitted the desirable level of confidence in the reliability of the national strategic command process, and this basic policy issue remained sufficiently alive to reappear in later years.

Throughout the years prior to 1968, the option of seeking to protect national authorities and the NMCS by means of an active ABM defense system remained a hypothetical possibility. Both the Nike-Zeus system of the late 1950s and the Nike-X system of the 1960s had been perennial JCS recommendations for deployment as active defense systems, justified primarily in terms of what McNamara called "damage limitation," i.e., protection of US population and industry. Protection of government and military command and control centers, when it was mentioned at all, was put forward as a distinctly secondary and presumably not decisive mission. This remained the case even with respect to the ambiguous 1967 Sentinel "anti-China" ABM decision. It was not until the Safeguard program was advanced by the Nixon administration, based on active ABM defense of strategic offensive forces, that protection of command and control was made a high priority mission for ABM defense.¹⁶ As an early solution for the problem of command and control survivability, therefore, it remained in abeyance.

XXV. THE SAC COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEM

Many of the troublesome issues with respect to flexible response, particularly those concerning trans-attack and post-attack command and control functions, were reflected in the evolution of the SAC Post-Attack Command Control System (PACCS).¹ As mentioned earlier, in 1961 SAC's primary command and control apparatus, the SAC Automated Command and Control System (SACCS), was ruled excessively vulnerable to missile attack and redirected toward pre-strike day-to-day management and planning, and PACCS was established as a separate structure of more survivable systems to maintain continuous command and control of SAC forces in wartime.² The latter was intended to cover such functions as response to attack, strike evaluation, follow-on threat assessment, recovery and reconstitution of forces, replanning, and retargeting—functions that were far from a practical reality at the turn of the 1960s but were logically implied in the concept of flexible response.

In the early 1960s, SAC was primarily a bomber force augmented by ICBMs. The last B-58 and the last B-52 were delivered to SAC in 1962. The B-47s were phased out rapidly after 1961, and the SAC B-47 inventory fell from some 1,100 in that year to none in 1966. No new-type manned bomber was introduced Into SAC until the first of the FB-111As was delivered in 1969 as a replacement for some of the older B-52 models.³ After early RDT&E successes, the Minuteman ICBM was introduced at an accelerated rate and soon constituted the mainstay of the ICBM force. In 1964, the number of operational ICBMs on alert surpassed the number of alert bombers for the first time, and by 1967 there were more than 1,000 ICBMs assigned to SAC missile units as compared with 670 bombers. All but 63 of the missiles were Minutemen; the rest were Titans.⁴

In the early 1960s, there were serious doubts about the continuing role of manned bombers in the SAC force. The B-70 and RS-70 programs proposed as follow-on strategic aircraft were cancelled, as was Skybolt, the ballistic air-to-surface missile that was expected to maximize the utility and lengthen the service life of the B-52.⁵ The Secretary of Defense openly questioned further requirements for strategic aircraft and accorded manned bombers a secondary operational role ("most of the aiming points in the Soviet target system can best be attacked by missiles"⁶), so that it appeared to be only a matter of time before missiles would entirely supplant aircraft. By the mid-1960s, however, it was clear that SAC would remain a mixed force of missiles and manned bombers at least through the remainder of the 1960s, and that the B-52/B-58 force would be stabilized at a level of 500-700 aircraft. McNamara proposed to keep open the option for a B-52 replacement in the 1970s ("if," he said, "a requirement exists at that time."⁷), but for the remainder of the decade SAC command and control remained oriented toward a mix of bomber and missile weapons systems.

A. THE EARLY PACCS

The originally approved PACCS plan included redundant ground and airborne system packages. The first phase, scheduled for completion by 1963, included a network of Airborne Command Post (ABNCP) and communications relay aircraft, furnished with manual equipment and capable of continuous airborne operations. In the second phase, planned for 1964, the ABNCP and communications aircraft were to be fitted with automatic data processing and communications equipment. And in the third phase, scheduled for 1965, a Deep Underground Support Center (DUSC) was to be added, very deep and super-hard, primarily to provide the airborne elements with "in-depth" computational and data processing support.⁸

The PACCS system was modeled after LOOKING GLASS, the SAC ABNCP put on 15-minute ground alert at Offutt AFB in July 1960 and on continuous airborne alert beginning in February 1961. It consisted of EC-135 (modified KC-135 Stratotanker) aircraft with a SAC general officer on board, designated as a CINCSAC alternate, and a small battle staff of nine members, including communicators and operations controllers. Additional EC-135s, similarly modified, were added as auxiliary ABNCPs at SAC numbered air force headquarters, on 15-minute ground alert, ready to take up airborne orbits and to disperse to alternate locations during emergencies. The communications relay aircraft were converted B-47s (EB-47L), on either ground or airborne alert at strategic locations, ready to provide air-to-air communications links between national authorities, the NMCC, CINCSAC, SAC numbered air forces, and the strike forces.⁹ The entire PACCS fleet was operational by June 1963, with a total of 17 EC-135s and 36 EB-47s. In March 1965, the EB-47s were replaced by EC-135s as well, which provided more space and greater endurance for communications relay functions. At the same time, the total fleet was cut to 14 command post and 18 communications air-crafty all EC-135s.¹⁰

In the 1961 PACCS concept, the ABNCP and communications relay aircraft were intended to provide a survivable airborne network for minimal command and control functions, such as the transmission of execution messages to weapons control points, and the associated DUSC was intended to furnish post-attack assistance from the ground as a "wartime control replanning center."¹¹ The DUSC plan called for a hardened facility, 3,500 feet deep for protection against direct hits by 100-megaton weapons, able to accommodate some 200 people for some 30 days in complete isolation and to handle the large volume of data processing and analysis required for strike assessment, as well as follow-on strike and other decisions.

The DUSC proposal ran into serious cost and other difficulties and was never implemented. The Air Force Council doubted its survivability against potential penetration-type nuclear weapons of the future and expressed misgivings about making SAC s post-attack command functions largely dependent on a single facility, however fortified. Cost estimates escalated from under $100 million to over $200 million, and the projected operational date slipped from 1965 to 1969-Economic considerations favored a construction site in a deep mine near Cripple Creek, Colo., but SAC found the location too remote from its main headquarters and operationally disadvantageous for continuity with the pre-attack SACCS facilities. In 1963, SAC reluctantly opted for a long-endurance, all-airborne concept instead, and the DUSC project was killed, with JCS and OSD concurrence.¹²

Eliminating the DUSC left the PACCS complex with extremely limited capabilities for independent assessment of strike effectiveness in execution of the SIOP, for consolidating information on residual friendly and enemy forces, and for conducting other critical war management activities. The available EC-135 ABNCP was little more than a platform for receiving, reformatting, and retransmitting emergency-message traffic. It lacked the space for a sufficiently large battle staff to manually process necessary war management data, and initial hopes that suitable ADP equipment could be miniaturized and packaged for airborne use had not materialized. The Air Force FY63 budget request for R&D in airborne automation, for example, including Improvements in computer-assisted techniques for decisionmaking and rapid planning, was almost eliminated in a cut from $20 million to $1 million.¹³

The SAC solution was an Advanced ABNCP (AABNCP) in a larger airframe, with a larger battle staff (on the order of 30-40 people), more sophisticated communications and other equipment, and greater endurance—all in all a more flexible, survivable, self-sustaining, and operationally effective ABNCP than the EC-135. In 1964, SAC formally proposed such a project, and from that time the further evolution of PACCS largely consisted of studies and plans for the future AABNCP.¹⁴

While plans for the follow-on to the EC-135 ABNCP were being formulated, SAC greatly upgraded the ABNCP's wartime role and the authority of the SAC general who commanded it, the Airborne Emergency Actions Officer (AEAO). The AEAO had been able to order SAC forces to assume "minimum reaction" status and to direct positive control launch of aircraft on his own authority, but only after verifying that his superiors in the SAC hierarchy—-CINCSAC, the Vice CINC, and the commanders of the SAC numbered air forces—were unable to do so. In December 1964, SAC revised its procedures for continuity and command succession. The AEAO automatically became acting CINCSAC if LOOKING GLASS lost contact with the SACCS system and observed a nuclear detonation over SAC headquarters. As such, the AEAO was authorized to take emergency actions for the survival and readiness of SAC forces, including putting them on minimum reaction alert. Pending a more complete determination regarding command survival and succession, the AEAO was also authorized to execute SAC forces on receipt of a valid execution message from the JCS. Thus, next to surviving National Command Authorities, a surviving one-star SAC general In LOOKING GLASS was made a critical link in the chain for executing the SIOP, in some circumstances the most survivable link.¹⁵

B. SAC IN THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Although PACCS was not yet a going concern, the Cuban missile crisis of October-November 1962 was the occasion of a real-life test of the SAC command and control system during an unprecedented strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union.¹⁶ As noted earlier, SAC had a supporting military role in the crisis, which featured a naval "quarantine" of offensive military shipments to Cuba, preparations for air and ground assaults' on the island, and, if necessary, a strategic nuclear offensive against the Soviet Union. The latter contingency was in connection with President Kennedy's declaration that:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack of the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.¹⁷

SAC's prime operational role during the crisis was to back up those words of the President and to demonstrate forcefully the US will and ability to bring its full strategic power to bear.

In the highly orchestrated management of the crisis, SAC was only one of a number of instruments, and its contribution to resolving the crisis was arguable. General LeMay was convinced that "superior US strategic power, coupled with the obvious will and ability to apply this power, was the major factor that forced the Soviets to back down." Secretary McNamara said that the "cutting edge" of the action was conventional strength: "nuclear force was not irrelevant but it was in the background."¹⁰ Neither view was necessarily Incorrect. The military moves and countermoves actively contemplated on the US side were several steps away from escalation to major nuclear war and the execution of SAC, but perceptions of the escalatory risks influenced all major US decisions during the crisis, and doubtless did so on the Soviet side as well.¹⁹

The Strategic Air Command's participation in the crisis began on 12 October, when SAC took over the U-2 high-altitude air reconnaissance mission over Cuba from the CIA, and it was a SAC U-2 flight on 14 October that obtained the first conclusive photographic proof of the installation of Soviet MRBMs on the island.²⁰ Thereafter, SAC greatly intensified air surveillance over Cuba while decisionmakers deliberated alternative options and determined a course of action. On 22 October, when the President made his public announcement of the Soviet buildup and demanded the removal of the missiles, SAC was put on increased readiness at DEFCON 3 (ROUND HOUSE) worldwide. The SAC battle staffs were placed on 24-hour alert, leaves were canceled, and personnel were recalled to duty. At the same time, SAC B-52s were directed to initiate a one-eighth airborne alert, B-47s were dispersed to selected civilian and military airfields, and additional bombers were placed on 15-minute ground alert. The next day, on 23 October, the JCS in a formal Emergency Conference ordered SAC to step up readiness to DEFCON 2 (FAST PACE) and declared an "A-hour" for the "generation" (i.e., preparation) of maximum forces for SIOP execution, with bombers and missiles armed with nuclear weapons and ready for launch on receipt of execution orders.²¹

Within 24 hours, SAC "generated" a total of 1,436 bombers and 145 missiles (of a total operational inventory of 1,636 bombers and 201 missiles) and began to maintain a continuous stream of B-52s aloft in airborne orbits, 65 on the average, in position to proceed to their targets at any time if so directed. This was the first time that SAC had generated forces since the Lebanon crisis of 1958, when over 1,000 SAC aircraft were put on alert for a full show of force that lasted several days.²² It was the first time that SAC had launched an actual one-eighth airborne alert or dispersed medium bombers, fully loaded, to civilian airports and non-SAC bases. And it was the first time that SAC ICBMs were put on comparable alert for immediate launch, including the first model-"A" Minuteman I missiles at Malmstrom AFB, Mont.²³

During the next tense week, while the SAC strike forces maintained this increased readiness posture, SAC reconnaissance aircraft joined in the search for Soviet ships bound for Cuba. On 28 October, when the Soviets finally agreed to remove their missiles, SAC also participated in aerial surveillance while the missiles and related equipment were dismantled, loaded on ships, and returned to the Soviet Union. On 21 November, after the Soviets consented to remove their IL-28 bombers as well and the US "quarantine" was officially ended, SAC shifted back to DEFCON 3, the one-eighth airborne alert dropped to a routine indoctrination-training level, B-52s returned to their normal 50 percent ground alert, and medium bombers went back to their home bases.

The month-long crisis tested SAC airborne alert concepts, emergency communications, aircraft dispersal operations and procedures, and other aspects of SAC's general war planning. The combination of continuous one-eighth airborne and full ground alert for the B-52s required the rotation of aircraft from ground to airborne alert and back again, as well as the constant loading and unloading of weapons in the effort to keep weapons of the proper type matched to their assigned targets, so that some degradation of the SIOP posture resulted. On the other hand, the one-eighth airborne alert, which increased the airborne alert B-52s from a training rate of some 12 sorties a day to 65, with more than 200 weapons, was achieved in just 24 hours. The number of ICBMs ready to fire was increased from 132 to 145 in the first 24 hours (65 percent to 72 percent of those available) and reached a maximum of 186 (92 percent) on 3 November, 10 days later, which appeared to be reasonably effective considering the recency of crew experience and the relatively complicated characteristics of the first-generation weapons involved.²⁴

The bomber dispersal brought up both communications and operational problems. The dispersal had an important strategic mission in the crisis, since the chief effect of the MRBM-IRBM sites being built in Cuba on the overall US-Soviet strategic balance at the time would have been to endanger further the relatively soft and crowded SAC bases in the East and Southeast. The United States had no detection or warning system against a missile threat from Cuba, so that even ground alert aircraft within striking range were extremely vulnerable, more so than to ICBMs from the Soviet Union. Although only 42 MRBMs were observed being introduced into Cuba during the entire period (no IRBMs were seen, though sites were), when the Soviets called a halt construction was under way at launching facilities for at least 48 MRBMs and 24 IRBMs—a potential attack force approximately equal to the 75 or so ICBMs the Soviets were reported to have available at the time. In the circumstances, therefore, the dispersal requirement had a special urgency, for military as well as political reasons.

Despite a concerted effort to implement the programmed bomber dispersal, SAC uncovered serious shortcomings in plans for deploying the communications equipment to dispersal airfields, and it encountered serious delays in establishing mobile communications links to the ABNCP, LOOKING GLASS. The general congestion of military communications circuits throughout the crisis area, primarily as a result of the massive buildup of tactical forces in the Southeast, made bomber dispersal an even greater problem, and consequently strengthened SAC's interest in the availability of separate, dedicated SAC communications facilities for command and control.²⁵

Other, more general command and control lessons of the crisis were presumably not lost on SAC, including a reappraisal— or perhaps merely confirmation-—of the risk-taking proclivities of Soviet leaders with nuclear missiles at their disposal; the dependence of SAC forces on warning and on uninterrupted command and control; the critical importance of clear, unambiguous intelligence information (such as hard-copy photographs) for decisions near the nuclear threshold; the enormous value to decisionmakers of exploring alternatives and choices, and preserving time for deliberation, before taking irrevocable action; and the strong incentives at the top for direct personal control of forces and events at the scene of action, especially action with a serious escalatory potential.²⁶

C. THE AABNCP, LAUNCH CONTROL, AND ERCS

The Cuban confrontation only accentuated existing desires in Washington for tight high-level command and control of military actions of all kinds, and reinforced established convictions regarding multiple options and controlled selective response in strategic war. At SAC, the focus of command and control efforts accordingly shifted from assuring minimum survivable capabilities to launch the force, as provided in the new all-airborne PACCS, to the yet unresolved trans-attack and post-attack problems of continuity of control over and above the initial dispatch of execution orders.

As already discussed, it was clear at SAC that there was little scope for enhancing PACCS capabilities within the physical constraints of the available EC-135 aircraft, especially after the DUSC portion of the program was canceled. The EC-135 was severely limited as an ABNCP, not only in elementary survival and endurance but also in functional performance, which was directly related to the space afforded for supporting staff and equipment. A larger aircraft seemed to be a large part of the answer, and a larger military aircraft was in the works, the C-5A, under development as a giant troop and cargo transport.

SAC's proposal for an Advanced ABNCP coincided with parallel requirements for new ABNCPs in the National Military Command System (the NEACP) and in the headquarters of the other SIOP CINCs, especially CINCEUR (SILK PURSE) and CINCPAC (BLUE EAGLE), to serve as mobile alternates. Just as SAC had previously led in the development and operational testing of the initial ABNCP, it now led the way in the follow-on AABNCP and worked with Air Force agencies in developing a common configuration for all potential AABNCP users.²⁷

The AABNCP program underwent a series of troubles in the late 1960s and did not come into being until the 1970s. The early selection of the C-5A proved unfortunate, for one thing. It became a costly and politically controversial aircraft, which flew for the first time only in 1968 and did not enter service until several years later. Meanwhile, practical AABNCP interest shifted to another aircraft, a modified version of the civilian Boeing 747, the first of a new generation of large, wide-bodied jets. In 1971, long after SAC had declared the existing KC-135 completely inadequate, OSD at last decided to procure 747s rather than C-5As for the NEACP and CINCSACs airborne command post.²⁸

Although the AABNCP did not materialize during the 1960s, the issues it raised were significant ones in the ongoing development of strategic command and control functions during the period. Planning for the AABNCP also coincided with the development of an airborne launch control capability to back up ground-based missile launch control centers; with the introduction of considerably improved airborne, rocket, and satellite communications systems; and with the continued evolution of post-attack functional requirements, all of which were important aspects of the SAC command and control picture.

As expressed by SAC, an ABNCP that was required to carry out trans-attack and post-attack strategic command and control functions during hostilities needed at least a commander and a supporting staff, a continually updated data base, and two-way communications with a national authority, assigned forces, and essential information sources.²⁹ At SAC it was assumed that national authorities would look to SAC for continuous and timely wartime information on the status of strategic offensive operations and for information on which to base decisions as to further actions. Such information logically included realtime assessments of SAC capabilities, evaluation of strike results, appraisal of residual enemy capabilities, proposals and plans for subsequent strikes, and so on.

No claims were expressed by SAC, even in the mid-1960s, and even with the full PACCS airborne communications relay system intact—not degraded by nuclear attack—that the existing EC-135 ABNCP was capable of performing such functions. As SAC informed the JCS when pointing out current ABNCP deficiencies, the EC-135 version had only a very limited capability to assess the enemy target system. It could reconnoiter for damage to the national base but not for damage to allied or enemy nations. It lacked long-haul communications for controlling forces in forward operating areas, or for receiving operational reports from strike forces, and it lacked the long-haul (broad-band) communications capability to retrieve strike information from other sources. Its staff and equipment were too limited to process Information on residual US and enemy capabilities. It could not, In short, begin to perform the desired command and control functions.³⁰

The Strategic Air Command was optimistic, however, about its capability to carry out such tasks in a considerably larger AABNCP—but, as indicated above, a suitable aircraft could not be expected until the 1970s. At that time, the much larger airframe—the C-5A contained some 3,500 square feet of floor space, for example, as compared with 900 for the EC-135—might permit the exploitation of substantially greater capabilities, such as a battle staff three or four times larger, a communications satellite terminal, and on-board computers. Direct access to the communications satellite system would obviate the necessity for ground or airborne relay and would permit more reliable communications access to the NMCS and the NEACP, as well as to similarly equipped ABNCPs of overseas CINCs. The LF/VLP transmit/receive communications that would be programmed for the AABNCP would also permit more reliable communications in nuclear environments than existing long-range HF/SSB communications permitted. Airborne ADP equipment (in prototype development) might make it possible to store and retrieve information for extensive high-speed damage assessment and replanning, incorporating timely reconnaissance and intelligence inputs, matching strike effectiveness and residual capabilities, computing target coverage capabilities and new trajectories, and so on. Needless to say, the promise of such capabilities opened up a whole new world of trans-and post-attack battle management possibilities.³¹

SAC also anticipated that the AABNCP would solve some of the operational problems associated with Minuteman launch control. The Minuteman ICBM, by the late 1960s the backbone of the SAC force, was organized in squadrons of 50 missiles, with five silos per squadron serving as Launch Control Centers (LCCs), any two of which could launch all 50 missiles. In order to provide a survivable backup to the underground LCCs in the event they were destroyed, SAC planned to develop an Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) capability, utilizing PACCS aircraft, both ABNCPs and communications relay. (This became even more important in the mid-1960s, when it was determined that Minuteman LCCs were unexpectedly vulnerable to the ground-shock effects of nuclear bursts.) However, ALCS aircraft could address only one Minuteman squadron at a time and had to be within line-of-sight communications range, and they also required the cooperation of at least one surviving underground LCC in order to effect a launch. It would therefore require a number of ALCS aircraft to cover the entire Minuteman force. Even the ABNCP itself, with the CINC's full authority, would have to fly to each Minuteman wing location in turn in order to direct launches, a process that was likely to require several hours, perhaps in a risky nuclear environment, jeopardizing both the ABNCP and the coordinated effects of the SIOP. The first successful ALCS launch of a Minuteman test missile was effected in 1967, but SAC looked to the capabilities of the future AABNCP to make it more effective.³²

The AABNCP, with a Minuteman airborne launch capability, was also scheduled to exploit the Emergency Rocket Communications System (ERCS) that SAC had developed during the 1960s. The first ERCS utilized BLUE SCOUT rockets carrying small transmitters as a backup system for broadcasting the "go code" over long distances, primarily to airborne aircraft, but these rockets utilized soft above-ground sites and their coverage was limited. In 1963, a plan was approved to utilize regular Minute-man rocket boosters with a UHF communications payload, dispersed among regular Minuteman complexes, with launch trajectories covering most SAC bases. The system (designated 494L) went into operation in 1967, with six missiles, each with recorders and playback transmitter payloads, able to be launched in the same manner as regular missiles. If the underground Minuteman LCCs were destroyed, SAC counted upon the ABNCP to be able to insert execution orders into the ERCS missiles and launch them.³³

The central thrust of SAC, USAF, and JCS planning for the AABNCP during the late 1960s, including the SAC emphasis on ALCS and ERCS capabilities, underlined doubts that existing command and control systems from the national level down had both the survivability and the capability to assure that controlled flexible response could actually be implemented, in the words of the JCS, "beyond the initial laydown of early weapons." No doubt the criticisms of existing arrangements that were made in the context of arguing a case for the greater capabilities that might be achieved with an AABNCP stressed weaknesses rather than strengths. And no doubt the lists of general war functional tasks to be performed by the AABNCP grew longer and more demanding as new technologies brought new possibilities within reach. All the same, the basic conclusions of the AABNCP studies, concurred in by the JCS, does not seem exaggerated: "As a result of the Inadequacy of present capabilities," the JCS said, "National Command Authorities will not have the capability for continuous, knowledgeable, and effective command and control immediately following execution."³⁴ This being the case, the feasibility of a strategy of controlled flexible response seemed highly problematical.

XXVI. WARNING AND ATTACK ASSESSMENT

The contribution of attack warning systems to the overall US strategic posture underwent important changes in nature and significance during the 1960s, primarily in response to the changing warning environment. The traditional priority function of attack warning—-to alert, launch, and control active defense forces-—went into decline as the primary threat shifted from manned aircraft to missiles and as anti-missile defenses remained at best a conjectural proposition. The forward bomber warning lines, primarily the elaborate DEW Line constructed at great expense during the 1950s, lost much of their original value when measured against the mixed threats of the 1960s and the likelihood of a shift in enemy bombers to a secondary follow-on attack role. In the absence of strategic defensive systems, the rationale for ballistic missile warning was recast mainly in terms of its contribution to the strategic offensive posture—-the posture of deterrence through assured retaliation by strategic offensive forces. Even in this strategic offensive context, the role of warning was further modified by changes that reduced the dependence of retaliatory forces on warning for their survival and enabled them to make more effective use of shorter warning times. In the world of missile threats and missile responses, warning became far more critical for the decision time and flexibility that it might afford to the national command and control structure.¹

A. THE DEW LINE

The bulk of the DEW Line, developed primarily to detect aircraft in surprise attacks, was beginning to close down by 1963; many of its radars were counted as superfluous and the remainder were maintained as a "tactical holdback line" to deter enemy bomber penetrations until after missiles were detectable, i.e., to delay enemy bombers in a mixed missile-bomber attack for three or four hours. The early warning function itself was assumed by BMEWS, and the remnants of the DEW Line became more tactically oriented toward the antiaircraft surveillance and defense functions of the SAGE system, the Backup Interceptor Control (BUIC) stations, and the projected Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS).²

B. BMEWS

The basic ICBM warning system throughout the 1960s was BMEWS (474L), the system of long-range, ground-based radars covering the northern approaches to the continental United States. Sensors were located in Greenland (Thüle), Alaska (Clear), and the United Kingdom (Fylingdales Moor), with Thüle first operational in September 1960, Clear in June 196l, and Fylingdales in January 1964. Capable of detecting ICBMs out to a range of some 3,000 miles, BMEWS could provide close to 15 minutes minimum warning, together with a rough count of the number of warheads and their approximate impact time and area, directly to NORAD headquarters and immediately thence to warning displays at the NMCC, ANMCC, and SAC as prime users.

Warning from BMEWS was critical to the survival of the bomber force, which depended on airborne escape (rather than concealment, mobility, hardening, or other forms of protection), and the 15-minute BMEWS warning time became the standard for ground alert aircraft at SAC. In the early 1960s, when SAC kept half the B-52 force on so-called 15-minute ground alert, it could launch as many as 14 percent of the alert aircraft within 8 minutes, from a "normal" (for SAC) DEFCON 4 posture, and as many as 43 percent from a higher DEFCON 2 posture. It could also launch the entire alert force in as little as 11 minutes, with a single minute in the peak phase allowing as many as 200 aircraft to become airborne.³ During the years when manned aircraft were by far the predominant element in the retaliatory force, this potential warning contribution was invaluable: it could promise a second-strike capability even by this otherwise relatively soft and vulnerable weapons system.

Warning from BMEWS also enabled SAC to exploit the unique capability of bombers to launch under positive control, even in ambiguous or equivocal circumstances, without pre-commitment to strike-—a "launch-on-warning" and recall option that was not available in the case of missiles. Warning could provide useful time in which to count down missiles to minimum holds and shorten their reaction times, but it did not add the option of a contingent launch. Warning enhanced the capabilities of manned bombers, therefore, and the continued utility of bombers in the strategic force was directly linked to the continued effectiveness of warning support.⁴

For a short period in the early 1960s, there was some inclination to judge the criticality of BMEWS and the worth of other early warning systems primarily in terms of bomber survival. The 15-minute ground alert posture for bombers was apparently considered at first as a stopgap measure until the retaliatory forces could be restructured around missiles (like Polaris and Minuteman) that did not depend so heavily on warning and quick reaction and could therefore "ride out" an attack.⁵ In the same way and for the same reason, as the relative proportion of bombers in the strike force declined, it was expected that the relative value of warning systems might also decline.⁶ Bombers remained a very substantial portion of the strike forces throughout the 1960s, however, as the JCS counseled from the beginning. (Although the JCS did not use the word "triad" at the time, they consistently defended the continued need for manned bombers in the strategic mix.⁷) In 1968, manned bombers, mostly B-52s except for a small number of B-58s, still constituted some 945 of the 2,650 major strategic offensive delivery systems in the operational forces, more than one-third of the strategic triad, for which even short warning times were of vital importance.⁸

Moreover, as the JCS also argued on many occasions, warning was a requirement not only for the protection of strike forces but also to provide maximum opportunity to formulate an appropriate "national reaction," that is, for decisions.⁹ The utility of warning to support the command and control process was increasingly emphasized during the 1960s, even after its contributions to the protection of population and industry were virtually dismissed and those to retaliatory force survival were considerably downgraded.

As a comprehensive warning system against missile attack, BMEWS had serious shortcomings, primarily in geographic coverage and in the amount, quality, and timeliness of the information that it provided. It could be deliberately spoofed, blacked out, or attacked, of course, but such events could be treated as potential indicators of attack and could easily Interfere with surprise. It could be bypassed, at less potential cost and risk, by extended-range or low-angle ICBMs, for example, by SLBMs, or even (as the Soviets showed when they began testing the capability in the late 1960s) by orbital systems.¹⁰ Minor improvements in BMEWS coverage and effectiveness were made during the 1960s, naturally, but more was required. It proved necessary to augment BMEWS with additional warning systems and to adopt a multiple approach to the missile warning problem. None of the other systems became a full-fledged alternate or successor to BMEWS, and in fact none of them even came into operation until the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they were largely developed during the 1960s, together with BMEWS, into the interlinked warning network of the subsequent 1970s.

C. SLBM WARNING

Clearly, BMEWS required augmentation against SLBMs, which could be launched from positions off US coasts and on trajectories that BMEWS was not designed to detect. Soviet SLBMs in the early 1960s were relatively short-range (350-mile) systems, three per submarine, that had to be fired from the surface, but the Soviets were actively developing newer classes of longer range submerged-launch systems, like Polaris, that could pose an even greater threat by the late 1960s and 1970s.¹¹ In a surprise attack context, the Navy's underwater sound surveillance (SOSUS) and other ASW systems could presumably deter a sudden large buildup of SLBM submarines in potential launch areas prior to attack, because of the risk of premature detection, but it would not be difficult for limited numbers of prudently operated enemy submarines to penetrate such defenses and to launch missiles without warning.¹² The SLBMs therefore constituted a dangerous threat of no-warning attack against such critical, early targets as fixed command and control centers, communications facilities, and SAC bases—much like the Cuba-based MRBM-IRBM weapons that also would have avoided the BMEWS system.

The specialized system developed to counter the missile threat during the 1960s was the SLBM Detection and Warning System (474N), a complex of eight modified long-range SAGE radars deployed along the east and west coasts. Built as an interim system, it was capable of monitoring coastal approaches out to about 750 n.m. and providing three-to-seven minutes warning of SLBM strikes, depending on the location of launching submarines, together with limited trajectory measurements. As with other warning systems, data were analyzed by computer and forwarded to the NMCC, ANMCC, SAC, NORAD, and other direct users. The system was partially operational in the last half of the 1960s, but it did not achieve full operational status until 1971, at which time newer systems were under development to provide even more reliable warning against even longer range Soviet submarines.¹³

D. OVER-THE-HORIZON RADAR

Another ground-based missile detection system that remained under development during the 1960s, but emerged as a successful backup and extension of BMEWS in the late 1960s (until retired in 1974), was the Over-the-Horizon (Forward-Scatter) Radar (440-L). Not really a radar, the 440-L system consisted of a series of high frequency radio transmitters and receivers at various locations in the Far East and Europe, on either side of the Soviet-Chinese landmass. Continuous signals from the transmitters were bounced off the ionosphere and then repeatedly back and forth between the ionosphere and the surface of the earth until they reached the receiving stations. There the receivers detected perturbations or disturbances of the transmissions caused by missiles penetrating the ionosphere under active-boost propulsion. The system provided nearly realtime (five-to-seven minutes from launch) detection of missiles launched from the USSR and China (also satellite launches and nuclear detonations), with time-of-launch and rough estimates of the launch location and type and number of missiles. Data from the receivers were correlated in Europe, transmitted to NORAD for processing, and sent to the NMCC, ANMCC, and SAC.¹⁴

The 440-L system had the advantage over BMEWS of being an omnidirectional system that was able to detect missiles (such as FOBS) intended to end-run BMEWS. In 1966 and 1967, it demonstrated a high-order capability by successfully detecting and reporting 94 percent of all Soviet ICBM test launches (198 of 210), including all 10 FOBS tested in 1967, and plans were accelerated to introduce it as a working system. It became operational in 1968.¹⁵

E. DEFENSE SUPPORT PROGRAM

The newest and most sophisticated addition to the missile warning network was the satellite-based, infrared-detecting surveillance and warning system presently known as the Defense Support Program (DSP). It was an outgrowth of over a decade of experimental R&D, first with the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS) of the late 1950s and early 1960s and then with the highly sensitive (and controversial) follow-on Programs 461, 949, and more recently 647—a series of technologically difficult, expensive, and for many years operationally uncertain efforts to develop an orbital infrared detection system that could detect missiles in the powered-launch phase. It remained a developmental and demonstration effort until 1971, when the first operational satellite was orbited.¹⁶ Although it was many years in reaching fruition, satellite-based infrared detection promised the earliest possible warning of missile attacks, within minutes of launch, extending potential warning time for north polar ICBMs from the 15 minutes of BMEWS to perhaps 27 minutes; providing improved and more flexible coverage than BMEWS, including coverage of SLBMs, FOBS, or other circumventing systems; increasing the credibility of other warning sensors by adding correlative evidence, confirmatory or not, from an alternative system; and adding to the accuracy and reliability of information as to the source, magnitude, and, with tracking, the nature of an attack. Although the program was beset with serious reliability and cost problems and pushed hard at the limits of infrared-descrimination and other technologies, it continued to attract strong support throughout the 1960s.¹⁷

One of the strong underlying themes in the arguments supporting the various precursors of the DSP, and one that illuminates an important strategic command and control issue of the 1960s, concerned its utility not merely for attack warning but also for attack assessment. The system was important, perhaps even more than other systems, for providing time for decisionmakers to take measures for survival, including possibly relocation to the NEACP or elsewhere; it could provide extra time for them to perform essential retaliatory command functions, including more opportunity to ascertain the situation and consider desirable alternatives. By providing usable warning time, the system was also Important for enabling the strike forces to undertake precautionary or other actions that might be vital to the effectiveness of any response.

Time alone, even minutes, was considered of crucial significance for such purposes.¹⁸ But the DSP-type systems held out hopes for even more. They promised more information, better information, more accurate and reliable information, and timelier information as to the source, magnitude, and objectives of an attack; as to whether one or a few weapons impacts were accidental, or the first of a salvo; whether it was a controlled or indiscriminate attack; whether it was an attack directed against military targets, population centers, or both; whether it was an attack that included or excluded governmental control centers; and so on. The systems promised, in short, to improve the capability to assess an attack and even evaluate the likely intentions of an attacker, and to do so by a wide margin over other warning and surveillance systems.¹⁹

Even with BMEWS and 440-L, exercises showed, national authorities were required to make retaliatory decisions in the absence of any real knowledge of the nature of an attack—-at best in the knowledge only that some more or less large number of warheads was en route to the United States, a rough approximation of their impact times and areas, and perhaps a crude estimate of the country of origin.²⁰ This was hardly the quantity and quality of information required for a choice among the flexible response options desired by decisionmakers. It was hardly sufficient for the decisions called for in the SIOP Decision Handbook prepared by the JCS for the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the CINCs (and themselves): Whether to execute and if so-—to execute strikes against nuclear threat targets only, against nuclear threat plus other military targets, or against nuclear threat plus other military plus urban-industrial targets of a country? To execute or withhold strikes against the Soviet Union, China, or other individual Communist countries? To execute or withhold strikes against military and government controls in the Moscow area? To execute or withhold strikes against nuclear delivery and storage sites in China? To execute or withhold strikes against military-government control targets in the Peking area? ²¹

The DSP-type systems promised, for the first time— nearly a decade after programs were initiated to develop sufficiently flexible strategic forces and sufficiently flexible command and control systems, and a sufficiently flexible SIOP war plan—to make flexible response options more than a remote possibility. This was their chief attraction during the 1960s, far more than the extra minutes of warning time alone, and it continued to be their chief attraction as they came into operation during the 1970s. Not warning alone, but warning time and attack assessment, became the keys to strategic flexibility.

XXVII. OVERVIEW, 1961-67

The early Kennedy-Johnson years were a period of concentrated attention and innovation in strategic command and control. The new leaders made a self-conscious break with the strategic concepts of the previous decade and attempted to make a better adjustment to the missile age and the new framework of mutual deterrence. At the strategic nuclear level, they acted with confidence to develop a credible structure of secure retaliatory forces that could survive an enemy missile attack and strike back, and they were equally determined to develop a survivable command and control system that could assure an adequate response. They accorded command and control a high priority, therefore, perhaps higher than it had ever received before.

The familiar problems of survivability and continuity received a thorough going-over. It is not clear that any headway was made on the intractable problem of preserving the continuity of high command authority, but progress was readily made in establishing a National Military Command System of coupled command centers, continuously manned, with specialized communications and other facilities available to support command authorities on demand. If the NMCS was an incomplete solution to the strategic command and control problem, it was largely because its connection to surviving decision-making authority was itself weak.

The principal command and control challenge of the period was the shift from a single-option strategy of all-out retaliation to a strategy of multiple options and selective, controlled responses. The latter required standards of survivability and functional performance that were much greater than the relatively simple transmission of a preplanned "go code." It called for a command and control system with more endurance and toughness in a nuclear environment, capable of sustained operation during and after an attack, adaptable to a wide range of circumstances, and responsive to discriminating policy direction at all times. It called for quick, accurate capabilities to ascertain the source, size, and pattern of attacks to aid in option decisions, and it called for extensive real-time monitoring capabilities to manage optional responses. Even with the sophisticated command and control technologies that were coming into being during the 1960s, it is not clear that such expectations were even remotely feasible—except possibly for very limited attacks in which command and communications targets were deliberately avoided. The prospects for the latter, however, did not become a major issue for strategic command and control until the 1970s.

In spite of the continuing problem of devising suitable arrangements and systems for "flexible" or selective response in strategic nuclear warfare contexts, which remained largely unresolved throughout the period, the early high-level preoccupation with strategic command and control issues declined markedly in the later 1960s. The drop-off appeared to parallel the increased confidence in the strength of the US strategic nuclear posture and the balance of US-Soviet forces after Cuba and after the strategic buildup planned In the early 1960s was implemented. It had more to do with a reduced sense of urgency about the likelihood of strategic nuclear war than with the solution of command and control problems as such, which were left as unfinished business for the next administration. It was also undoubtedly affected by the growing preoccupation with the war in Southeast Asia.

Throughout the 1961-67 period (as well as before, and even since), US strategic command and control capabilities in the face of a determined nuclear attack were frequently seen as more apparent than real. Whether this mattered in the overall national defense posture, and how much, appeared to revolve around estimates of the likelihood of nuclear attack in the first place, and judgments as to whether discernible weaknesses in command and control might or might not influence that likelihood. Some no doubt believed that command and control capabilities had to be real in order to be confident of strategic deterrence; others no doubt argued that even the uncertain possibility of a capable system was a sufficient contribution to deterrence. In the end, the crux of the issue may have been philosophical, and not susceptible of objective resolution, but in any event the historical evidence of the period is that it was not resolved.

FOOTNOTES

Chapter XIX

¹(U) Paul T. David, et al., eds., The Presidential Election and Transition of 1960-1961 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1961), especially Chapters 8 and 9.

²(U) Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1965), pp. 240-48.

³(U) John F. Kennedy, "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," 30 January 1961, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 19-28.

4. (U) Sorenson, Kennedy, pp. 602-3. For an account of the selection of McNamara and his takeover of the Pentagon under Kennedy, see ibid., pp. 229-40, 269-71 and 602 ff; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 131-32 and 312-19; and David T. Stanley, Changing Administrations: The 1961 and 1964 Transitions in Six Departments (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1965), Chapter

⁵(U) Sorenson, Kennedy, p. 603.

⁶(U) The questions were nicknamed McNamara's "Ninety-six Trombones" after the "Seventy-six Trombones" number in the Broadway musical comedy The Music Man. McNamara kept adding questions, however, and the notion of a single one-time list eventually disappeared (people stopped counting after about 150). See Stanley, Changing Administrations, pp. 39-40; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pp. 316 ff; and Sorenson, Kennedy, pp. 602 ff.

⁷(U) John F. Kennedy, "Special Message to the Congress on the Defense Budget," 28 March 1961, in Public Papers of the Presidents, pp. 229-240.

⁸(U) Ibid., pp. 233-36.

⁹(U) See Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough: Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1971), Chapter 5, especially pp. 165-72.

¹⁰(U) Kennedy, "Special Message to the Congress," pp. 230-32 and 235-36.

11(U) See William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1964), pp. 304-6.

¹²(U) See Enthoven, How Much is Enough, pp. 172 ff.

¹³(U) See "Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara Before the House Subcommittee on DoD Appropriations, FY 1969-1973 Defense Program and FY 1968 Defense Budget (U) (22 January 1968 draft), pp. 45-52, SECRET.

^l4(U) See John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rineheart and Winston, 1973), Chapter II.

Chapter XX

1(U) Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Strategic Weapons and Continental Air Defense Proposals" (U), 18 February 1961, TOP SECRET.

²(U) McNamara made the same points in almost the same language in his first Posture Statement on 4 April 1961. See Office of OSD Historian, History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. II, Chronology-US, 1961-72 (U) (November 1974), p. 9, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.

³(U) For a detailed analysis of the strategic command and control system at the time, 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; and RAND Corporation, The Effectiveness of Command and Control in Strategic Operations for the Mid-Sixties (U), RM-3152-PR (October 1962), TOP SECRET.

4. Time factors were analyzed in detail in WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C; and Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Present and Planned Command and Control Systems for Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems and Estimated Response Times for the Period 1964-1967 (U), Staff Study No. 78 (19 August 1960), TOP SECRET.

⁵(U) See Arthur K. Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, 1958-1961 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1963), SECRET.

⁶(U) See ibid., and Thomas A. Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air Defense, 1959-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1965), SECRET.

⁷(U) Ibid., and Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems. See also RAND, The Effectiveness of Command and Control, Appendix A, "Directory of the Big L. Systems" (U).

⁸(U) Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of SAC, January-June 1961 (U), SAC Historical Study No. 86, undated, pp. 49-50, SECRET. See also discussion of BMEWS development in Part Two, Chapter XV.

⁹(U) Carl Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, 1958-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, .November 1964), pp. 10-12, SECRET.

¹⁰(U) Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization was redesignated the Office of Emergency Planning in September 1961, when most of its civil defense functions were transferred to the Department of Defense. OEP retained overall continuity-of-government responsibilities until it was dissolved in 1973-

^11. Estimated hardening factors from WSEG, Present and Planned Command and Control Systems (Staff Study No. 78). The study estimated that all five facilities mentioned could be destroyed in a single salvo of about 15 Soviet weapons of the mid-1960s, with 1-mile CEPs and 8-megaton warheads.

¹²(U) See Chapter XXIII, below, pp. 311-12.

¹³(U) See specifically Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, pp. 19-22 and 32-37; and Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961-1965 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1966), pp. 1-10, SECRET.

^l4(U) See Part Two, Chapter XIV. The Defense Communications System and its relationship to service and unified and specified command communications systems were subsequently formalized in DoD Directive 5105.19, 14 November 1961.

In 1960, there were actually five unified-specified commands besides SAC involved in the coordination of strategic strikes, at least in the target planning stage: CINCEUR, CINC-LANT, CINCPAC, CINCAL, and CINCNELM. See Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff: Background and Preparation of SIOP-62 (U), 10 April 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁵(U) WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C; also Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, SAC Communications in an Age of Transition (U), SAC Historical Study No. 78 (30 December 1959), SECRET; and Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964 (U), SAC Historical Study No. 98 (October 1965), SECRET.

¹⁶(U) Quoted in Hq SAC, History of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, p. 8.

¹⁷(U) Ibid., pp. 24-29. For background and evolution of the SIOP, see Part Two, Chapter XIV of this study.

¹⁸(U) WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C.

¹⁹(U) See William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1964), Chapter 2, "The Search for Options"; also Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Strategic Weapons and Continental Air Defense.Proposals" (U), 18 February 1961, TOP SECRET; and Secretary of Defense, "Recommended DoD FY 1963 Budget and 1963-1967 Program" (U), 6 October 196l, TOP SECRET.

²⁰(U) Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs (John T. McNaughton), 19 December 1962, cited In Kaufmann, McNamara Strategy, pp. 142-43.

²¹(U) For a detailed account, see Defense Nuclear Agency, "History of Custody and Development of Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1969" (draft), 1970; and Bernard C. Nalty, "USAF Ballistic Missile Programs, 1962-1964" (U), April 1966, TOP SECRET; and Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, "USAF Ballistic Missile Programs, 1964-1967" (U), March 1967, TOP SECRET.

Chapter XXI

¹(U) See William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1964); also 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), 11:595-676, UNCLASSIFIED.

²(U) Deputy Secretary of Defense, Memorandum for CJCS, "Draft BNSP" (U), 16 April 1962, SECRET; Chairman JCS, CM-165-62, Memorandum for SecDef, "Review of BNSP" (U), 7 December 1962, SECRET; Assistant Secretary of Defense (ISA), 1-35,098, Memorandum for SecDef, "BNSP" (U), 14 June 1963, TOP SECRET.

³(U) ASD (ISA), 1-35,098, Memorandum for SecDef.

4. "Flexible response" could also be, and was, applied outside of the strategic nuclear war context, e.g., to limited war, nuclear or nonnuclear. In the late 1950s, in fact, during the widespread debates over "massive retaliation," it was familiar shorthand for the employment of general purpose rather than strategic forces. Here, however, following the McNamara usage in connection with strategic nuclear forces, it refers to multiple options within the SIOP framework.

⁵(U) Kaufmann, McNamara Strategy, p. 51.

⁶(U) Chairman JCS, CM-165-62.

⁷(U) JCSM 252-61, Memorandum for SecDef, "Doctrine on Thermonuclear Attack" (U), 18 April 196l, TOP SECRET; Chairman JCS, CM-190-61, Memorandum for SecDef, "Doctrine on Thermonuclear Attack" (U), TOP SECRET.

⁸(U) SecDef, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Recommended FY 1964-FY 1968 Strategic Retaliatory Forces" (U), 21 November 1962, TOP SECRET. This later came to be called the "assured destruction" capability; see SecDef, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Recommended FY 1965-FY 1969 Strategic Retaliatory Forces" (U), 13 November 1963, TOP SECRET.

⁹(U) SecDef, Draft Memorandum for the President, "A Program for Strategic Defense" (U), 9 October 1963, TOP SECRET. See also Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Command and Control of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems in the Period 1970-1975 (U), Report 129 (July 1968), TOP SECRET.

¹⁰(U) SecDef, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Recommended DoD FY 1963 Budget and FY 1963-1967 Program" (U), 6 October 1961, TOP SECRET.

¹¹(U) History and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff The Preparation of SIOP-63 (U), TOP SECRET; and History of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff: The Preparation of SIOP-64 (U), August 1964, TOP SECRET.

¹²(U) Ibid., especially Preparation of SIOP-63, pp. 4-15 and 21-29.

¹³(U) For an outline of specific options as they evolved during the next several years, see Hq SAC, History of the JSTPS: The Preparation of SIOP-64 and Preparation of SIOP-64 Revision A (U), September 1967, and Preparation of SIOP-64 Revisions B and C (U), March 1969, both TOP SECRET. In later years, the SIOP options that were actually outlived in the 1960s were criticized as "five options for massive retaliation" that, in fact, offered decisionmakers insufficient choice.

^l4(U) This was the famous "Ann Arbor" speech of 16 June 1962. For this and other examples quoted, see Kaufmann, McNamara Strategy, pp. 92-95. Also SecDef, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Recommended FY 1965-FY 1969 Strategic Retaliatory Forces" (U), 13 November 1963, TOP SECRET.

¹⁵(U) Kaufmann, McNamara Strategy, p. 93-

¹⁶(U) For examples of some of the functional tasks that might be required, see JCSM 868-63, Memorandum to SecDef, "Analysis and Evaluation of the Military Worth of Satellite-Based Infrared Surveillance and the Warning Systems" (U), 8 November 1963, TOP SECRET; and JCSM 700-66, Memorandum for SecDef, "Follow-on ABNCP Requirements" (U), 3 November 1966, TOP SECRET.

¹⁷(U) See, for example, SAC letter to JCS, "Advanced Aircraft for PACCS" (U), 29 April 1966, SECRET.

¹⁸(U) See, for example, Bureau of the Budget, letter to SecDef, 26 August 1965, quoted In Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961-1965 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1966), p. 71, SECRET.

Chapter XXII

¹(U) For a discussion of presidential succession arrangements, see Laurence J. Legere and Judith C. Corson, Presidential Succession and the Authority to Release Nuclear Weapons (U), P-537 (Institute for Defense Analyses, Arlington, Va., August 1969), UNCLASSIFIED; and for the relationship to strategic command and control, 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.

The line of succession (in 1969) after the Vice President was: the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President pro tempore of the Senate; the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense; the Attorney General; the Postmaster General; the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor; the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare; the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and the Secretary of Transportation.

Of the 14 presidential successors, only the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense were recipients of the SIOP Decision Handbook, prepared by the JCS as a guide to the major high-level decisions that might be called for in a strategic nuclear war.

²(U) WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C. This was one of the first comprehensive studies of the US strategic offensive weapons posture that highlighted command and control issues, and it was one of the studies brought to McNamara's attention during the 1961 transition and takeover. McNamara was briefed personally and reportedly spent nearly a whole day going over it with members of the study team from WSEG/IDA.

³(U) See Part II, Chapter XVI, and also Arthur K. Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, 1958-1961 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1963), pp. 51-53, SECRET.

4(U) Secretary of Defense, Memorandum to JCS, et al., 8 March 1961. This was Project No. 6 of the 96, assigned to both the JCS and DDR&E.

⁵(U) JCSM 250-61, "A Study of the Command and Control System" (U), 18 April 1961, TOP SECRET.

⁶(U) Strictly speaking, the JCS were only "in" the chain of command because by DoD Directive the Secretary of Defense chose to exercise operational direction of the unified and specified CINCs "through" them. DoD Directive 5100.1, "Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components" (U), 31 December 1958.

⁷(U) Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961-1965 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1966), SECRET; National Command and Control Task Force, Final Report (U), 14 November 1961, TOP SECRET, in JCS 2308/64, 14 November 1961.

⁸(U) Sturm, The Air Force and the WWMCCS.

⁹(U) For internal government comments on the Partridge Report, see JCSM 88l-6l, Memorandum for the SecDef, "Report of the National Command and Control Task Force" (U), 22 December 1961, SECRET; and Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (Carl Kaysen), Memorandum for the DepSecDef, "Command and Control Task Force Report" (U), 22 January 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁰ WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C, argued that in a "holocaust" situation, the central command structure was so vulnerable that predelega-tion "might have little effect."

¹¹(U) Ibid.

¹²(U) JCSM 250-61.

¹³(U) National Security Action Memorandum 127, "Emergency Planning for the Continuity of Government" (U), 14 February 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁴(U) Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Memorandum to DepSecDef, 22 January 1962, SECRET.

¹⁵(U) Director, Office of Emergency Planning, "On a Reexamination of Federal Policy with Respect to Emergency Plans and Continuity of Government in the Event of Nuclear Attack on the United States" (U), 11 June 1962, SECRET.

¹⁶(U) For example, JCSM 337-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Planning Guidance of Implementation of the National Military Command System" (U), 25 April 1963, SECRET.

¹⁷(U) JCSM 133-67, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, 14 March 1967, enclosing JCS Study, "Planning for Continuity of Operations and Alternate Command Facilities" (U), 10 March 1967, TOP SECRET.

¹⁸(U) JCSM 250-61.

^l9(U) WSEG, Evolution of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems, Enclosure C, p. 21, footnote.

Chapter XXIII

1(U) Quoted in Carl Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, 1958-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, November 1964), p. 37, SECRET.

²(U) The system, USAF Program 473L, was designated the USAF headquarters component of the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) after the latter was established in October 1962. See Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force Command and Control System, 1950-1966 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1967), pp. 12-35, SECRET.

³(U) The SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) system was Program 4l6L, and the NORAD combat operations center was 425L. See Thomas A. Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air defense, 1959-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1965, pp. 10-23, SECRET.

4(U) See History and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of SAC, January-June 1961 (U), SAC Historical Study No. 86, undated, SECRET, and Strategic Command Control Communications, 1959-1964 (U), SAC Historical Study No. 98 (October 1965), SECRET; and Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems.

⁵(U) Secretary of Defense, Memorandum for the President, "Recommended DoD FY 1963 Budget and 1963-1967 Program" (U), 6 October 1961, TOP SECRET.

⁶(U) Secretary of Defense, Memorandum to Secretaries of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Chairman, JCS, 5 June 1961, CONFIDENTIAL; also Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air Defense, pp. 25-29.

⁷(U) Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, p. 14 ff.

⁸(U) Hq SAC, History of SAC, January-June 1961, pp. 34-64; also Hq SAC, Strategic Command Control Communications.

⁹(U) See Arthur K. Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, 1958-1961 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1963), pp. 34-37, SECRET; and Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961-1965 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1966), pp. 4-9, SECRET.

¹⁰(U) Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, pp. 45-46.

¹¹(U) 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; see Part Two, Chapter XVII.

¹²(U) Marmor, USAF Command and Control Problems, pp. 47-50. The similarity of these acronyms may have been slightly bothersome at first. In colloquial pronunciation, the NECPA was straightforwardly referred to as the "neck-pah," but the NEACP came to be called the "knee cap."

¹³(U) This was the key argument of WSEG 50, Enclosure C, and also of prestigious advisory groups like the Doolittle Committee. See Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Report of a Scientific Advisory Board Strategic Concepts Ad Hoc Committee" (U), 2 April 1962, TOP SECRET.

14. JCSM 250-61, "A Study of the Command and Control System" (U), 18 April 1961, TOP SECRET.

¹⁵(U) Draft Memorandum for the President, "Strategic Weapons and Continental Air Defense Proposals," 18 February 196l; and J3M 470-62, Memorandum for Deputy Secretary of Defense, "Review of DoD Actions for Improving the NMCS" (U), 25 April 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁶(U) "Special Message to the Congress on the Defense Budget," 28 March 1961, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 229-40.

17. The story of the missile gap controversy belongs elsewhere in the history of the strategic arms decisions of the period. McNamara, with some embarrassment to the administration, was quoted by newsmen shortly after taking office as denying the existence of a gap (William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy [New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1964], pp. 49-50); Theodore C. Sorenson {Kennedy [New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1965], p. 613) refers back to it as an honest "error"; and Arthur M. Schlesinger {A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House [Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1965], pp. 317 and 499) suggests that it "withered away" under the weight of new intelligence. Be that as it may, by September 1961 the intelligence community had revised its estimates of Soviet ICBM strength downward, so that it represented "only a limited threat" to US nuclear strike forces at the time and a considerably smaller than anticipated threat for several years to come. See J2DM-320-61, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Estimates of Soviet ICBM Capabilities" (U), 11 September 1961, TOP SECRET; and J2DM-344-61, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Estimate of Soviet ICBM, IRBM, and MRBM Capabilities" (U), 11 September 1961, TOP SECRET.

¹⁸(U) Secretary of Defense to JCS, et al., "Decisions on Elements of the National Military Command System" (U), 19 February 1962, SECRET.

¹⁹(U) DoD Directive S-5100.30, "Concept of Operations of the World-Wide Military Command and Control System" (U), 16 October 1962, SECRET. (Superseded 2 December 1971.)

²⁰(U) See Chapter XXV, Section B, for a discussion of SAC experience during the crisis.

^2l(U) Walt W. Rostov*, "The Third Round," in Foreign Affairs, 42:1 (October 1963).

²²(U) See the discussion in Thomas W. Wolfe and Fritz Ermarth, The Interaction Process and Its Influence on Major Soviet Arms Decisions (U), R-1180-PR (The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., August 1973), SECRET.

²³(U) James A. Nathan, "The Missile Crisis: His Finest Hour Now," in World Politics, January 1975- Nathan takes the quote from Coral Bell, The Conventions of Crisis: A Study in Diplomatic Management (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) p. 2.

²⁴(U) See the account and discussion of alternative hypotheses in Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision : Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1971).

²⁵(U) This point is admittedly impressionistic and is not well documented, but it is nonetheless Important.

²⁶(U) JCSM 337-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Planning Guidance of Implementation of the National Military Command System" (U), 25 April 1963, SECRET.

Chapter XXIV

1(U) JCSM 337-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Planning Guidance of Implementation of the National Military Command System" (U) (including Master Plan for the NMCS), 25 April 1963, SECRET.

²(U) Ibid.; JCSM 641-63, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Functional Requirements for the NMCS" (U), 17 August 1963, SECRET; and JCSM 483-68, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Functional Requirements for the NMCS" (U), 5 August 1968, SECRET.

³(U) JCSM 337-63; and DoD Directive S-5100.44, "Master Plan for the National Military Command System" (U), 9 June 1964, SECRET.

4(U) Thomas A. Sturm, The Air Force and the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, 1961-1965 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, August 1966), pp. 32-48, SECRET.

⁵(U) JCSM 337-63; also JCSM 130-63, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Functional Requirements for the NMCS" (U), 14 February 1963, TOP SECRET; and Secretary of Defense Memorandum for Chairman JCS, et al., "Functional Requirements for the NMCS" (U), 26 April 1963, TOP SECRET.

⁶(U) Ibid.; also Sturm, The Air Force and the WWMCCS, pp. 52-58.

7. A 1963 time-and-motion calculation by the JCS, based on exercise experience and "operations analysis," was as follows: beginning with receipt of warning, the attack environment could be reviewed, the President contacted, and an emergency telephone conference convened in 2.5 minutes; the President could be briefed, hear the indications, consider initial response actions, and issue directives, including evacuation of key officials, in another 3.5 minutes; he could then proceed to Andrews AFB by helicopter for evacuation by the NEACP in another 7 minutes—all for a total of 13 of the 15 minutes warning hoped for from BMEWS. This, said the JCS, would leave insufficient time for the NEACP to become airborne and get beyond the effective range of a weapon detonated over Andrews. JCSM 865-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Analysis and Evaluation of the Military Worth of a Satellite-Based Infrared Surveillance and Warning System" (U), 8 November 1963, TOP SECRET. See also DDR&E, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Brief Review of the National Command System Program" (U), 15 October 1963, SECRET.

⁸(U) Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Deep Underground National Command Center" (U), 31 January 1962, SECRET. No attempt has been made to track the origins and development of the idea, but a cover sheet on the copy of the memorandum in OSD files indicates that it was prepared by R. Shorey and A. Enthoven, then of the OASD(C) Programming Office. Internal evidence suggests that it was closely patterned on the SAC proposal for a Deep Underground Support Center (DUSC). See Chapter 25-

⁹(U) Ibid.

¹⁰(U) JCSM 914-63, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Alternate Facilities and Supporting Communications Required for the NMCS" (U), 2 December 1963, TOP SECRET.

¹¹(U) Compare this, for example, with the approximately 100 psi hardening for the presidential retreat at Camp David and the 80-100 psi hardening programmed for the AJCC at Fort Ritchie. The planned underground COC complex for NORAD was scheduled for 600 psi. (Rand Corporation, The Effectiveness of Command and Control in Strategic Operations for the Mid-Sixties [U], RM-3152-PR [October 1962], TOP SECRET). In 1962, SAC proposed a hardened command post 3,500 feet underground to withstand a 100-megaton weapon with a 0.5 n.m. CEP (a proposal later withdrawn). (Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, 1962 (U), TOP SECRET.)

¹²(U) Deputy Secretary of Defense, Memorandum for DDR&E, "Deep Underground National Command Center" (U), 5 February 1962, TOP SECRET; Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "National Deep Underground Command Post" (U), 7 November 1963, TOP SECRET.

¹³(U) JCSM 914-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Alternate Facilities and Supporting Communications Required for the NMCS" (U), 2 December 1963, TOP SECRET; and JCSM 957-63, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "Réclama to Subject/Issue Consideration No. 496, NMCS" (U), 7 December 1963, TOP SECRET.

¹⁴(U) There is undoubtedly more to the DUCC story, and it may be worth further research into the issues and decisions involved. As late as mid-1965, the Bureau of the Budget was still interested in the DUCC "as a protected vital communications center for national command and control, not merely as a measure for the personal safety of the president." See Sturm, The Air Force and the WWMCCS, pp. 70-71.

¹⁵(U) JCMS 483-68. The first change in the overall NMCS structure was to be the elimination of the NECPA in 1970, for budgetary reasons.

¹⁶(U) See "Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara Before the House Subcommittee on DoD Appropriations, FY I969-1973 Defense Program and FY 1968 Defense Budget (U) (22 January 1968 draft), pp. 47 ff. Also Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough: Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1961), pp. 184-96.

Chapter XXV

1 (U) SAC uses the term "command control" rather than "command and control." See Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, "CINCPAC Master Plan for Command Control" (U), January 1968, SECRET.

²(U) See Chapters XIII.A and XXIII.A. The revised SACCS (465L) achieved initial operational capability in December 1963.

³(U) Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, The Development of the Strategic Air Command, 1946-1971 (U), 25 July 1972, pp. 146-47, UNCLASSIFIED.

4(U) Ibid., pp. 98-99, 114, and 133-

⁵(U) See the accounts of the controversial B-70 and Skybolt decisions In Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough: Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1961), pp. 243-62.

⁶(U) Secretary of Defense Posture Statement, February 1964, cited in Office of the OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Corn-petition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols., Vol. II, Chronology-US, 1961-7 3 (U), November 1974, p. 63, TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.

⁷(U) Ibid.

⁸(U) Secretary of Defense Posture Statement, 14 February 1962, in ibid., p. 23-

⁹(U) Carl Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, 1958-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, November 1964), pp. 44 ff, SECRET.

¹⁰(U) Ibid. See also OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 11:85; and JCSM 319-66, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Operational Requirement for Additional PACCS Aircraft" (U), 10 May 1966, UNCLASSIFIED.

¹¹(U) Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, July-December 1961 (U), Historical Study No. 88, TOP SECRET; and Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, July 1962-July 1963 (U), Historical Study No. 82, TOP SECRET.

^l2(U) Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems; and OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 11:65.

¹³(U) Secretary of the Air Force, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Reclama on PACCS" (U), 17 November 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁴(U) SAC letter to JCS, "Advanced Aircraft for PACCS" (U) (Qualitative Operational Requirement), 13 March 1964, SECRET; OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 11:71.

¹⁵(U) Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command, July-December 1964 (U), Historical Study No. 96, TOP SECRET.

¹⁶(U) The embryonic NMCS had a much more central role, of course, in overall national management of the crisis. See Chapter XXIII, Section C.

¹⁷(U) Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., -1965), p. 700.

¹⁸(U) Both cited in William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 273. For recent postmortems concerning the escalation potential of the crisis, see James A. Nathan, "The Missile Crisis: His Finest Hour Now," in World Politics, January 1975; Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision : Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1971); and Alexander L. George, "The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962" in A. L. George, D. K. Hall, and W. E. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown & Co., 1971).

¹⁹(U) See, for example, Allison, Essence of Decision, pp. 217-18, and Arnold L. Horelick and Myron Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1965), Chapter 12.

²⁰(U) Historical and Research Division, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, SAC Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962 (U), Historical Study No. 90, TOP SECRET; also Hq SAC, Development of SAC, - 194 6-1971 ; and OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 11:37-38.

²¹(U) Formal JCS emergency procedures related to the SIOP were outlined in SM-1200-62, "JCS Emergency Action Procedures" (U), 29 October 1962, TOP SECRET.

²²(U) Hq SAC, Development of SAC, 1946-1973, p. 64.

²³(U) All operational Polaris SSBNs at CINCLANT also put to sea to their preassigned patrol stations.

²⁴(U) Hq SAC, SAC Operations in the Cuban Crisis.

²⁵(U) Hq SAC, Development of SAC, 1946-1971.

²⁶(U) See Chapter XXIII, Section C, and the discussion of Cuba and other crises in Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Decisions at the Tactical Nuclear Threshold (U), Report 108 (February 1967), TOP SECRET.

²⁷(U) JCSM 700-66, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Follow-on ABNCP Requirements" (U), 3 November 1966, TOP SECRET; Secretary of Defense Memorandum for Chairman JCS, et al., "Follow-on ABNCP Requirements" (U), 8 December 1966, TOP SECRET.

²⁸(U) See OJCS, WWMCCS Council Support Office, "WWMCCS and the JCS FY 1963-1974" (U) (draft, 30 August 1974), SECRET.

²⁹(U) SAC letter to JCS, "Advanced Aircraft for PACCS" (U), 29 April 1966, TOP SECRET.

³⁰(U) Ibid.

³¹(U) Ibid.

³²(U) OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 11:149; SAC letter to JCS, "Operational Requirement for Five Additional PACCS Aircraft" (U), 9 March 1965, SECRET.

³³(U) Berger, USAF Strategic Command and Control Systems, pp. 37-39; SAC letter to JCS, "Advanced Aircraft for PACCS" (U), 29 April 1966. The ERCS was subsequently incorporated as one of the systems in the national Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network (MEECN).

³⁴(U) JCSM 700-66.

Chapter XXVI

¹ (U) For an authoritative expression of these perspectives in the early 1960s, see Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Continental Air Defense" (U), 12 November 1962, TOP SECRET; and Draft Memorandum for the President, "A Program for Strategic Defense" (U), 9 October 1963,' TOP SECRET.

²(U) Thomas A. Sturm, Command and Control for North American Air Defense, 1959-1963 (U) (Historical Division Liaison Office, US Air Force, January 1965), SECRET. The latter functions are addressed in a separate study of air and ballistic missile defense in Office of OSD Historian, History of Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972 (U), 3 vols. (1974), TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA.

³(U) JCSM 232-62, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Early Warning Requirements" (U), 29 March 1962, TOP SECRET; JCSM 755-62, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Warning Against Ballistic Missiles" (U), 29 September 1962, TOP SECRET; and Transcript, Presentation Made Before the Secretary of Defense at Headquarters, NORAD, 14 August 1962, TOP SECRET. This kind of performance was not necessarily representative of realistic "no-notice" conditions.

4(U) This was one of the major points made by OSD analysts in connection with the B-70 issue. See Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough: Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1961), p. 244; and Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "B-70 Program" (U), 20 November 1962, TOP SECRET.

⁵(U) Enthoven and Smith (p. 168) are explicit on this point.

⁶(U) See, for example, DDR&E Ad Hoc Group on MIDAS, "Evaluation of MIDAS R&D Program" (U), 30 November 1961, TOP SECRET.

⁷(U) See especially JCSM 755-62, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Warning Against Ballistic Missiles" (U), 29 September 1962, TOP SECRET.

Insofar as can be readily ascertained from a review of McNamara's annual posture statements, pertinent portions of the JSOP, and other basic documents, the term "triad," referring to the planned structure of three different complementary strategic systems, basically the Minuteman, Polaris submarine, and B-52, was not in general use during the period. In fact, as indicated above, the long-term future of the manned bomber as a permanent member of the triad was far from universally accepted at the time. There may be considerable truth in Newhouse's comment that, although Washington has come to admire the triad, it "came about more by accident than design." See John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), p. 19.

⁸(U) Statement of Secretary of Defense R. S. McNamara Before the House Subcommittee on DoD Appropriations of FY 1969-1973 Defense Program and 1968 Defense Budget (U), 22 January 1968, pp. 45-47, SECRET.

⁹(U) JCSM 865-62, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Warning Against Ballistic Missiles" (U), 29 September 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹⁰(U) JCSM 342-67, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense,

"Fractional Orbital Bombardment System" (U), 16 June 1967, TOP SECRET; and Secretary of Defense Memorandum for Chairman, JCS, et al., "FOBS Threat" (U), 29 August 1967, TOP SECRET.

11. Secretary of Defense, Draft Memorandum for the President, "Recommended FY 1965-1969 Strategic Retaliatory Forces" (U), 13 November 1963, TOP SECRET; JCSM 550-62, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Proposed Program Changes for the Department of the Navy" (U), 24 July 1962, TOP SECRET.

¹²(U) Ibid., citing Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Defense Against Sea-Launched Missile Attack (U), Report 35, Third Annual Review (15 February 1962), TOP SECRET.

¹³(U) See R. A. Finkler, et al., Technical Characteristics of Selected Components of the WWMCCS in 1982 (U), S-420 (Institute for Defense Analyses, Arlington, Va., July 1973), Vol. VIII, Appendix H: Capabilities and Vulnerabilities of Tactical Warning/Attack Assessment Systems of the WWMCCS, 1973-1982 (U), TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/NOFORN.

¹⁴(U) Ibid.

¹⁵(U) Secretary of Defense, "FOBS Threat"; Statement of Secretary of Defense R. S. McNamara Before the House Subcommittee on DoD Appropriations of FY 1969-1973 Defense Program, pp. 88-89.

¹⁶(U) Finkler, Technical Characteristics of Selected Components of the WWMCCS; and Statement of Secretary of Defense R. S. McNamara Before the House Subcommittee on DoD Appropriations of FY 1969-1973 Defense Program.

¹⁷(U) See, for example, JSCM 865-63, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Analysis and Evaluation of Military Worth of a Satellite-Based Infrared Surveillance and Warning System" (U), 8 November 1963, TOP SECRET; and DDR&E, Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, "Program 46l" (U), 14 November 1963, TOP SECRET.

¹⁸(U) Ibid.

¹⁹(U) Ibid.

20. Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, An Analysis of Operational Procedures During Exercise HIGH HEELS 67 (U), Report 123 (December 1967), TOP SECRET.

21. SIOP Decision Handbook, excerpted in Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Command, Control, and Communications Problems (U), Report 159 (February 1971), Annex 3 of Appendix K of Part II of Vol. IX, TOP SECRET.