Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume III, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, Microfiche Supplement

244. Memorandum for the Record of Meeting Between Gates and JCS¹

Washington, March 14, 1960

SUBJECT

• Meeting with Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff, 14 March 1960

ADM BURKE: The Secretary of Defense is very much concerned about the various presentations that have been given to him on what Russia could do to the United States with missiles on launcher under the most adverse conditions. All of these presentations that I have seen, and I’ve seen several of them, pertain only to what would happen against targets in Continental United States. Most of them assume a specific targeting which would be SAC first, then soft missile sites and then hard missile sites. It doesn’t take very many missiles under ideal conditions to knock out all of SAC. What these presentations prove is SAC is a useless thing in the missile age, because you can knock out the bases. At the same time, they also prove that until we get POLARIS and hardened sites, within ’60 and ’61 if Russia did have a significant number of missiles—70, 100, 120, some place along there, if for some reason they did have these missiles on launcher, and if they had a high degree of reliability and other systems, they could knock out most of our retaliatory system in the United States. The cure for that, as I said before, is POLARIS and hardened sites. We don’t get any hardened sites until ’61. This is all without warning, so the obvious thing to do is push up—accelerate POLARIS, accelerate BMEWS, and SECDEF is considering whether or not to put on an air alert. I think he read that letter on carriers that we wrote on Saturday, and maybe he is considering increasing the number of carriers we have as well as dispersing SAC.

Now, he wants a study made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on all of this intelligence—a military appraisal of our situation. This means a very important piece of paper because we’re going to have to move fast on this thing. Op–06 and Op–92 must get in on this for sure. This problem is going to be turned over to the JSSC. The JSSC will call upon the Service planners.

Here’s what I think, and this is from the top of my head. I don’t care what you do so long as you follow this. I think you’ll agree it’s sound. Let’s shoot for these things which increase this nation’s capital gains, these things which will give us a greater capability and will last for a long time. For example, if you expedite BMEWS, you get BMEWS sooner but you’ve got a BMEWS for ever and ever. So, let’s expedite BMEWS, let’s expedite POLARIS. Let us do these things which will increase our military capability over a long period of time. Let us take those things which do not increase our military capability but are only temporary expedients, such things as an air alert where no matter how many air alerts you run today, you’re not any better off tomorrow—you’ve get to run them tomorrow too. Let’s examine the cost of these very carefully. Now, carriers come in there. If you keep carriers in existence, it’s the operating costs of the carriers, but the airplanes you buy for that carrier are capital gains because you’re going to buy those airplanes someday anyway. So that’s an actual gain. That increases your military capability, but the operation of your carrier doesn’t increase your military capability—you’ve got to operate it tomorrow. I think that’s a pretty sound way to approach this. There is such a thing as buying the wrong thing, and you’ve got to watch out for this. For example, if you increase the numbers of ATLASes in hard targets, you may not want ATLASes by the time you get them. So, when do you have to make the decision to get more ATLASes? I mean if you made the decision right now, you don’t get ATLASes until ’62 anyway—therefore, do you need to make the decision right now to get ATLASes in ’62 or can you make the decision six months or a year from now and just keep these production lines running longer?

One of the things you’ve got to consider is when do you make a decision on each of these points? They will vary. The ATLAS decision probably doesn’t have to be made now—however, the carrier decision has to be made about a month before the first carrier goes out, and perhaps the decision to get some more carrier airplanes needs to be made pretty quick. Anyway, let’s get going.

Arleigh Burke
L.R. GEIS
By direction

1. Source: Soviet missile capabilities and request for JCS study on U.S. strategic vulnerabilities. Top Secret; Hold Closely. 2 pp. Naval Historical Center, Burke Papers, Originator File.