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

460. Letter From Killian to Herter¹

April 18, 1959

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I have transmitted to Gordon Gray the attached recommendation of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. The view it expresses is essentially what I have discussed with you on several occasions.

The Committee did not suggest how these studies should be organized or what their terms of reference should be, but it is strong in its conviction, based upon experience we have had in providing technical studies to support the Geneva negotiations on test suspension and surprise attack, that we need to achieve better preparation and deeper understanding of some of the technical problems involved in the whole arms limitation area.

Yours sincerely,

J.R. Killian, Jr.

Attachment

Memorandum Prepared by the President’s Science Advisory Committee

March 16, 1959

ARMS LIMITATION FOLLOW-UP STUDIES

This memo has been prepared to stimulate the interest of the PSAC in taking an active role in the initiation and in support of sustained activities dealing with the military-technical aspects of international agreements aimed at reducing the threat of war. It is an aim of our national policy to preserve and enhance the security of United States through agreements whose objectives are the reduction of international tension, the reduction of the threat of war and the reduction of the burdens of the arms race.

This memo is concerned with the ways to improve the efforts for implementation of this policy through agreements for inspection and monitoring of armed forces, for arms limitations and for arms reductions. The two recent conferences in Geneva have demonstrated anew the extreme importance of preparation prior to such conferences, i.e, the need of acquisition of a clear understanding of the objectives desired and of the actual effects of various measures that might be proposed to attain the objectives. The need for a continuing development effort to provide the technical means for support of inspection and controls has also been clearly demonstrated. The most obvious demonstration of this need is, of course, the detection of underground nuclear tests.

To achieve the needed understanding it is not sufficient to consider the existing military forces and to devise means for reducing their threat to peace, while preserving the military security of United States. Rather, one has to look into the future and anticipate the effects of changing technology on military forces and operations; one must consider the effects of changing technology on the feasibility and on techniques of the monitoring of military forces, as well as on the usefulness of an early warning of an impending attack; further, one must devise detailed integrated patterns and time tables for agreements (somewhat like weapon systems are designed from component parts), whose objective should be the enhancement of the security of United States in the sense defined above by the national policy. That sense we interpret more broadly than simple enhancement of our military power because though the reduction of the threat of war may be brought about by an enhancement of our military power, it can certainly be assisted by other factors as well.

While the emphasis in the preceding paragraph was on military-technical matters, it is essential to recognize that the ultimate objectives of the agreements we seek are political and that political considerations are of the greatest importance in finding mutually acceptable patterns of agreement. Thus it is clear that the preparation for future international conferences must include the study of military, technological and political factors. It is a task which is best carried out by an inter-departmental or non-departmental body rather than a necessarily slanted single department.

Agreements which in principle might reduce the threat of war and reduce the armaments race are of several types. Starting with the least ambitious they may be classified as:

I. Agreements for partial inspection of armed forces. The partiality of inspection may arise from the geographic limitations of the zones to which inspection is limited or from deliberately incomplete but world-wide inspection. The incompleteness itself may be of two kinds. For instance inspection may apply to only one kind of military activities (e.g. nuclear weapons tests) or only one type of inspection mechanism may be agreed to (e.g. the “Open Skies” proposal of the President). The objectives of such agreements may be to provide “strategic” warring of the other side’s activities (which certainly applies to the nuclear tests) or to provide timely warning of preparations and launching of an attack (which could have been the effect of the “Open Skies” agreement if the attack were to be launched by conventional ground or sea forces). Neither objective may be attainable with rather limited agreements, but they may still be valuable for political reasons, e.g., the building of mutual confidence, the experimentation with inspection in essentially unfriendly countries, etc.

II. Agreements for comprehensive monitoring of armed forces. The word comprehensive implies here that no geographic limits are set on the inspection apparatus. As regards the thoroughness of inspection, however, some limits must be set, as their absence would imply a virtually complete surrender of sovereignty by contracting parties, not a likely event. The immediate objectives of such inspection schemes are strategic information and possibly “early” warning in a tactical sense; the ultimate objectives are reduction of tensions and of the arms race.

III. Partial arms limitation agreements. It is our national policy not to accept any such agreements unless the compliance is monitored. The nature of the monitoring, however, should vary greatly depending on what is the nature of the limitations (e.g. that of the improved nuclear weapons in the test cessation proposal). There may be other factors which should influence our choice of the severity of monitoring. For instance, agreements where the agreed-to monitoring apparatus is the sole mechanism for detecting non-compliance and where the non-compliance can lead to drastic changes in the balance of power before detection, call for especially strict monitoring, etc.

IV. Comprehensive arms reduction, i.e. disarmament, agreements. The world we live in is such that ambitious disarmament proposals seem much less realistic than even the more modest steps indicated above, but some understanding of the comprehensive plans should be acquired, in order to insure that the more modest plans could be molded so as not to conflict with the comprehensive plans.

Any one of the agreements broadly indicated above contains many inputs, of military, technical and political nature. In the following we shall indicate some of them, insofar as we have become aware of them in preparing for and then participating in the Geneva conference on the prevention of surprise attacks.

Effective inspection and monitoring of military forces inevitably provides the inspecting side with strategically important information on the disposition, state of readiness, etc. of the inspected forces. If suitably designed, it may also supply the inspecting side with early warning of the impending attack. However, as the speed of the attack increases with changing military technology (e. g. the trend from ground forces to long range fast bombers and then to ballistic missiles) the advance warning of an attack gives the defender ever less time to make the attack ineffective. Since the probability of circumstances in which the United States would carry out a surprise attack is extremely remote, we must be concerned, lest an inspection scheme provide our potential enemies with such strategic information as to make their attack more effective, without giving us sufficient additional warning to counteract the effects of previous disclosure of information regarding our forces. This point requires careful study, whether one considers the inspection schemes alone or adds to them arms limitation measures.

In the schemes involving inspection alone, it appears preferable to focus the monitoring on operational forces and weapon systems, but as the schemes are expanded to include arms limitation agreements, monitoring may also include manufacturing and/or development activities, or even may be limited to one or both of them. These are complex problems, certainly not well understood at present.

Involved in all inspection schemes are a host of military-technical problems. To mention but a few: (a) the development and evaluation of various monitoring techniques as applied to particular weapon systems (e.g. the effectiveness of aerial photography in detecting operational missile sites); (b) the “rights and privileges” and the freedom of access of the inspectors. Surely some limits must be set on them as otherwise the schemes would not be acceptable even to us, not to mention the USSR, but these limits must be so chosen as to introduce the least interference with the objectives of the plan; (c) communications from inspectors to data evaluation centers become a serious problem when hours or minutes become decisive and also the problem of authentication of these messages needs study; (d) the handling of the data at the centers and their transmission to decision centers have not been worked out; these are not trivial problems already because of the danger of false alarms and the consequent possible increase of tensions, the reverse of what the scheme is designed to achieve; (e) especially in comprehensive inspection systems the inspecting staffs, with logistic support, seem to run to tens of thousands; these are expensive schemes even if the best use is made of technical aids. This consideration alone suggests a consideration of a change from the concept of the complete inspection of all forces to that of random sampling, a principle which has been effectively used in many industrial situations; (f) distinction in the degree of monitoring is probably required between strictly offensive and largely or wholly defensive forces and weapon systems; (g) an even more difficult problem is the devising of monitoring schemes which, even in the case of a failure of the built-in early warning, tend to protect retaliatory forces of the attacked side and thus stabilize peace by mutual deterrents.

These are some of the problems in which the technical inputs are especially strong. Many other problems have stronger military and political emphasis, although still involving technical considerations. For instance, the choice of geographic zones for “trial” inspection schemes involves not only the political, and strategic considerations, but also those of ever changing military technology and of technical aspects of inspection. The USSR delegates in Geneva emphasized their unalterable opposition to even the discussion of any schemes involving monitoring alone, without arms limitation measures. It would appear desirable to determine whether, from the point of view of the USSR, with its emphasis on military secrecy, the inspection schemes alone are indeed as disadvantageous as their delegates implied. If that is the case, it needs to be determined whether it is to our political advantage to propose nonetheless such schemes in conferences or to abandon them. In the latter case the technical work indicated in the preceding may take a somewhat different slant.

The discussion of the last few pages, we hope, justifies our conviction that the study of the whole area must be done by a staff that represents not only the military but also the technical and political competence. We hope also that this discussion gave some indication of the variety and complexity of the problems involved. It is our belief that the complexity is so great that to rely on ad hoc study groups preparing each particular conference is to our national disadvantage. What is needed, we believe, is a sustained effort on a significant level, in order to have available the required information and technology when a suitable opportunity for an agreement is in prospect and also to have on hand a competent staff trained in the problems involved, so as to have the best possible on-the-spot advice when conferences do take place. This certainly would be needed in the eventuality that the USSR seriously enters the discussions of some agreements and comes forth with proposals of its own.

It is not the purpose of the present memo to present a detailed organizational plan for a continuing study of the problems outlined above. However, certain features of a desirable organization can now be indicated. We deem it desirable to have this organization set up on a non-departmental basis. The organization itself might consist of a full time director with a modest administrative and technical staff and a board of consultants, whose advice would be seriously weighed in planning activities and whose opinion would add weight to the conclusions reached. It goes without saying that a budget must be provided, to support activities outside of the director’s office, as well as this office itself. These activities, which are the essence of the concept being proposed, fall into three categories:

(a) Studies and development under contract by private institutions and corporations on specific aspects of the broad area encompassed. Examples of possible contractors might be the RAND Corp., Lincoln Lab, STL, JPL, ORO, ITEC, Russian Research Center at Harvard, etc.

(b) Studies and development on request of the suggested organization and possibly with the transfer of funds, by several departments which have active interests in the problems, e.g. studies by groups setup in the State Dept, Defense Dept or in AEC.

(c) Conferences of limited duration (but perhaps as long as the entire academic summer vacation) in which competent people from government departments concerned (e.g. Defense and State), from groups engaged in continuing studies under (a) and competent “outsiders” take part. The main purpose of such conferences would be the integration of data obtained under (a) and (b) and the planning of future work.

1. Source: Transmits President’s Science Advisory Committee’s recommendation for arms control studies. Confidential. 10 pp. Eisenhower Library, White House Office Files, Additional Records of the Office of the Special Assistant for Science and Technology, Disarmament-Surprise Attack, Miscellaneous.