Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume IV, National Security Policy

107. Memorandum From Fritz Ermarth of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) and the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Aaron)¹

Washington, December 4, 1978

SUBJECT

• Net Assessment of C3

This memorandum responds to tasking I received from Bob Gates (Tab A).² See the last page for a point summary. (U)

Concern about the comparative status of US and Soviet C3 has been growing for some years. In 1976 Congressional committees sought a comprehensive net assessment on the subject from DOD, with annual updates. The Director of Net Assessment in OSD produced the first report in July 1977, a substantial study with voluminous appendices.³ A follow-on report, updated with new intelligence and revised on the basis of additional analysis, was produced in January 1978. A draft report to be issued early next year has been completed.⁴ This activity has proceeded in a context in which many other organizations have been developing or contributing to net assessments of US and Soviet C3. The level of effort, priority, and organizational prominence of the subject has been rising in the Intelligence Community for some years. It has been the subject of several, some continuing, projects by the Defense Science Board. Senior levels in the DOD are unusually concerned about and focused on C3I issues currently. (U)

To date, net assessments of US and Soviet C3 have achieved:

— Improved and more orderly data bases on the subject;

— Descriptive characterizations of the two sides’ programs;

— Better understanding of the contrasting priority and place in overall military strategy assigned by the US and the USSR to C3 and C3I.

— Better understanding of the contrasting technology, management, and organizational approaches applied by the two sides. (C)

The analyses of OSD/NA have by and large agreed with the now widely held judgment that the Soviets have sought and achieved a more robust and enduring C3 infrastructure at all levels of military operations than we. But these analyses have usefully stood apart from the crowd in emphasizing possible sources of vulnerability in both the physical structure of Soviet C3 and the Soviet organizational style, i.e., high degrees of centralization.⁵ By the same token, OSD/NA has stressed potential US strengths that could be exploited, e.g., superior communications technology, a rich civilian communications system, decentralized styles of management and command. The work of this office has also stressed the importance of basic doctrine, training, and organizational patterns. It has stimulated the study of counter-C3 tactics by several operational commands. (S).

Thus, a good deal has been and continues to be done on C3I net assessments. OSD/NA is charged by Congress to produce an annual report. Further tasking by the NSC is not indicated. Further, the amorphous and large community that struggles with C3I as a problem of policy, resources, and programs is well charged up. It is most in need of a conceptual framework and policy guidance to shape its work. To some extent this can come from the Secretary of Defense. But, because much of the problem runs to the heart of defense policy and strategy, basic guidance must come from the President and the NSC. (C)

Strategy and C3I (U)

Clearly, military C3I capabilities we seek are a function of our strategy. Even minimalist “fixes” to assure that SIOP execution messages get out represent strategic judgment as to the kind of war we expect to face and how we expect to fight. Beyond this, enhanced capabilities to manage crises, battles, and large conflicts at all relevant levels of violence; improving the survivability, endurance, and reconstitutability of such capabilities; relating such military capabilities to civil defense and continuity-of-government programs—all this requires explicit and farreaching, although not necessarily radical, strategic choices to be made. (S)

The Administration has from the beginning been in a process of making those choices: PD–18, PD–37, PD–42, budget decisions, and your sustained interest in C3I issues have been part of this process.⁶ The next major step is SCC/NSC consideration of the DOD reports on nuclear targeting and the Secure Reserve Force, a step we are currently organizing. (S)

After several months of wrestling with the challenge of strategic planning from the NSC staff, I’ve come to the view that a) the politics, bureaucratics, and substance of strategic policy reform insist on an evolutionary approach, and b) the process currently in train appears very promising. Our challenge is to keep it on track and moving. (C)

Much hinges on implementation of policy guidance emanating from the NSC. The DOD studies reveal the extent to which current strategic failings result from inadequate follow-through on NSDM 242 and PD–18.⁷ To assure that follow-through we shall have to enhance the visibility of the policy, program, and budget process within DOD, exerting corrective influence where necessary. (S)

To help shape this evolutionary process, I propose to organize a small, relatively informal Strategic Planning Group, on the model of the East-West Planning Group. Some 6–8 people from NSC, State, and Defense would constitute the group.⁸ (U)

C3I Organization (U)

Making things come out right is more than a matter of the right guidance. Especially for large and continuing activities, they must be structured so that the actors have the right incentives. Bill Odom has pointed out in numerous memos how the Service-JCS-Command-OSD structure short changes C3, perhaps not in terms of money—much is spent, but in terms of purposefulness and cohesion (the Russian term tselestremlyonst’ is very apt; it comes up often in their discussions of the C3). The “I” of C3I, meanwhile is not structured outside of DOD to look earnestly at military support roles where they compete for budget with peacetime requirements. (C)

The marriage of C3 and Intelligence in C3I is useful in bringing related things together. But it is still a shotgun marriage, dominated in practice by the communications technicians (as in WMCCS) and the sensor technicians (as in DSP and the Special Air Force). They should be but servitors of the “command” function (with “control” as its nether side). Command—how the forces are directed to fight—is a matter of strategy, doctrine, training, battle assessment and planning. It is a very cerebral and people-oriented function. (C)

Hans Mark relates the story that, at Trafalgar, Nelson sent up two signals: “Engage the enemy,” and “England expects every man to do his duty.” A very simple C3 scheme sufficed because he had strategized, planned, trained, and fought with his captains to the point where they knew how to conduct operations with little guidance, even in the face of the unexpected. We are vulnerable to getting lost in a technological swamp at the other extreme: sensors that can see everything, communications from the President to the foxhole. Strategy itself determines what we wish to see and what we wish to communicate to forces. If it fails to do that, the technicians will have no limiting criteria against which to build their systems or we will be left with pre-canned fire plans for World War III (SIOP and its lessor bretheran). (S)

As we move down the evolutionary path of doctrinal reform, we shall discover that defining requirements for communications, ADP, and sensor technology is as vital as defining force requirements. This task will have to be taken out of the hands of the C3I technicians and placed in the hands of these strategic planners now almost entirely preoccupied with force structure. This may require organizational change in OSD, the JCS, and the Service staffs. More than any other single phenomenon, grappling with the strategic C3I problem will force us in the direction of a general staff.⁹ (C)

Furthermore, if we properly subordinate sensor, data processing, and communications technology to strategy, we shall find that the “people problem” of command (the commander and his battle staff) has reappeared on center stage, where it has always been in Soviet doctrine. Are the people, from the NCA down, who must make the command decisions that implement strategy and who must advise on those decisions trained, exercised, survivable? [8 lines not declassified] (S)

In considering the DOD targeting and SRF studies, we shall first of all, be concerned with redefining basic strategy for various levels of conflict, and, second, with the likely implications for force posture and programs. We must also, however, raise organizational questions. What does a more open-ended approach to operational planning require in the way of command structure and staff support in war? How should those organs be made survivable? Trained and exercised? Does evolution in strategy require change in the peacetime structure of defense and national security decisionmaking? (S)

As a first step into this thicket I plan to examine the Steadman and Ignatius reports¹⁰ to determine how their findings jibe with the implications of the two studies on strategy, if at all. From this, issues ripe for near term decision could emerge; issues for further study certainly will. It will be appropriate to task DOD with specific study of organizational implications of doctrinal change and increased reliance on C3I after the targeting and SRF studies have been reviewed by the NSC. (C)

C3I and Military Assessment (U)

So far, there has been no comprehensive attempt to examine in any operational detail how US and Soviet strategic C3I resources would perform in a major nuclear conflict involving attacks on those resources. Most strategic exchange analyses over the years have deliberately ignored the implications of C3 targeting.¹¹ JCS’s RISOP–SIOP exchanges have typically included such targeting, but have not in the judgment of many critics, translated that phenomenon into a realistic degradation of the respective sides’ force performance. In short, the go-code still gets out and the forces still perform in this highly preplanned, massive exchange. (S)

Important new insights into the vulnerability of Soviet strategic C3I will result from further study of discrete targeting packages, as recommended by Harold Brown in his transmittal of the targeting study.¹² C3 targets will represent one or more of the packages. Ultimately operational net assessment of C3I in war cannot be separated from the totality of military and even political interactions in a given scenario. Our strategic interaction analysis is deficient across the board because it lacks attention to operational detail, uncertainty, scenario variations, the role of non-strategic and civil capabilities, and C3I. (S)

A number of people in OSD, the Services, and the JCS are concerned about this and are seeking ways to improve official analysis of strategic exchanges and balances. They are moved in part by the need to counter highly simplified quantitative analyses which, depending on the prejudices of the analyst, either minimize our deficiencies (as did a recent ACDA report) or exaggerate them (as is probably the case in the work of T.K. Jones). (C)

One approach to stimulating progress on this front might be to task Harold Brown with an assessment of strategic analysis in DOD and elsewhere in the light of the above critique. He is getting strong messages of this sort from within DOD, however, especially from Andy Marshall. I am personally known to be a critic of most official analysis.¹³ A formal initiative from the NSC would risk provoking an unconstructive, defensive reaction from much of the analytical community in Defense.¹⁴ For now I believe the best course is to maintain low-keyed¹⁵ pressure on the system. We should examine the next version of the DOD Consolidated Guidance and the results of some new efforts in the JCS for signs of progress. If they are dissatisfying, we can take more formal steps early next year. (U)

In Summary (U)

— Periodic net assessments of US and Soviet C3 are in progress.

— Policy guidance on strategic C3 should result from review of the targeting and SRF studies.

— As we move toward shifts in doctrine and upgrading of the role of C3I, organizing the C3I business better in peace and war will become an issue we may be obliged to task DOD to study.

— The quality of military exchange analysis needs improvement; but a low-keyed campaign of steady pressure is the best approach for now.

— I am going to organize a strategy planning group, on the model of the East-West Planning Group, to gain better visibility into the relevant DOD processes that must be shaped and to provide a standing but informal mechanism for airing problems.¹⁶ (C)

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Defense/Security, Ermarth, Box 2, Command, Control, and Communications. Secret. Sent for information. Copies were sent to Utgoff, Rosenberg, Odom, Thomson, and Molander.
2. Not found.
3. See Documents 24–27.
4. See Document 95.
5. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the left margin next to this and the previous sentence.
6. PD–37 on National Space Policy, May 11, 1978, and PD–42 on Civil and Further National Space Policy, October 10, 1978, are scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XXV, Global Issues; United Nations Issues.
7. For NSDM–242, see footnote 2, Document 29. PD–18 is printed as Document 31.
8. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the margin to the left of this paragraph and wrote: “good.”
9. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the margin to the left of the last three sentences of this paragraph.
10. Reference is to Richard C. Steadman, The National Military Command Structure: Report of a Study Requested by the President and Conducted in the Department of Defense (Washington, Government Printing Office, July 1978) and Paul R. Ignatius, Department Headquarters Study: A Report to the Secretary of Defense. (Washington, Government Printing Office, June 1978)
11. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the left margin next to this portion of the paragraph and wrote: “we need this.”
12. See Document 105.
13. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the left margin next to this portion of the paragraph and wrote: “OK.”
14. Brzezinski underlined the word “unconstructive” and wrote “I wonder?” above it.
15. Brzezinski underlined the phrase “low-keyed.”
16. Brzezinski drew a vertical line in the left margin next to this point and wrote a checkmark.