Quote 330 of 497

On July 6 [1960], Gates [Tom Gates, the Secretary of Defense] met with
Eisenhower to recommend the creation of a SIOP [Single Integrated
Operational Plan]...  Present targeting plans, he told Eisenhower,
were a mess.  There was duplication, triplication of coverage on 200
or 300 targets in the Soviet Union. ... Gates argued that SAC should
serve as SIOP center.  SAC had the resources, the methodology, the
computers already at hand.

...

Gates and Eisenhower certainly had a point in endorsing integration of
nuclear war plans.  The Air Force and the Navy would soon be adding
thousands of new weapons to their arsenals; operational planning was
getting far too loose and way out of control.  But [Admiral Arleigh]
Burke [(Chief of Naval Operations)] understood--and knew that [Tommy]
White [(Air Force Chief of Staff)] and [General Tommy] Power
[(Commander of SAC)] also understood--the politics underlying war
plans in a way that Gates and Eisenhower apparently did not.  Burke
knew that whichever service controlled the target list, made the rules
and defined the criteria of what degree of damage must be inflicted on
what targets with what probability, would in effect be the service
that decided how those weapons would be used, how many weapons of what
type the nation should buy, how much money should be spend on each
service's nuclear weapons.

Burke feared that if SAC were allowed to invent the definitions and
criteria, "then our budget is going to be in a very sad way indeed.
We'll be buying B-70s."  He feared that SAC would invent
"damage-expectancy" numbers that required SAC to build a lot more
bombers.  If, for example, they said that a certain target had to be
destroyed with 90 percent probability and if the calculations showed
that one bomb could destroy in with only 65 percent probability, then
SAC would have a reason to drop more than one bomb on the target and,
therefore, would "need" to buy another bomb for each target.  He also
feared that SAC would give the Polaris missiles such tasks as
destroying Soviet air-defense sites, "paving the way for the B-52s,"
or hitting highly blast-resistant targets, which the inaccurate
Polaris missiles could not destroy...

Burke's predictions and fears came close to the truth...  Everywhere
SAC Intelligence looked, they found targets, thus justifying the need
for more weapons.  They thought the Soviets would have 700 ICBMs by
1962, the Navy thought that there would be 200; the Air Force won the
battle, to the extent there was one, with the result of 500 extra
targets, requiring more than 500 extra weapons.  Similarly, SAC listed
1,115 airfields that should be targeted; the Navy analysts found only
770.  SAC also assumed a very high attrition rate for their bombers
that would be destroyed on the ground, those that would be shot down
by Soviet missiles and interceptors, and those that would fail to
perform or miss their targets. ... Meanwhile, as Burke anticipated,
most Polaris missiles were shunted off to hit surface-to-air missile
sites or wasted on targets that they had scant chance of destroying
alone.

The NSTAP [National Strategic Target and Attack Plan] had specified
that there be at least a 75 percent chance of destroying certain
targets.  Power and his staff pounced on those magic words "at least."
They initially specified that the 202 most important targets be
destroyed with 97 percent probability, the next 400 targets
with 93 percent.  Eventually, this was modified, but in the
final result of the first SIOP, 7 targets had to be destroyed with 97
percent assurance, 213 with 95 assurance, 595 with at least 90
percent, and 715 with at elast 80 percent.  This meant, just as Burke
had predicted, that a lot of targets would be hit with a lot of
weapons.

...

Meanwhile, naval analysts on the scene calculated that even if only
one weapon were exploded over each target area in the SIOP, the
radioactive fallout produced over Helsinki, Berlin, norther Japan and
South Korea by such an attack would exceed the maximum safety limits
established by the JCS.

...

From beginning to end, the SIOP sharply exaggerated the number and
size of bombs needed to damage all types of targets.  On November 3,
George Kistiakowsky, chairman of Eisenhower's Science Advisory
Committee, traveled to SAC headquarters for three days, at the request
of the President, to be briefed on the status of the SIOP.  Arleigh
Burke had planted suspicions about SAC's manipulations through
Eisenhower's naval aide, E. P. Aurand, arousing Eisenhower to have
Kistiakowsky check out the rumors.  "Kisty" brought along one of his
aides, a weapons scientist named George Rathjens, and the Deputy
Director for Science and Technology of the CIA, Herbert "Pete"
Scoville.  In Omaha, Rathjens looked through SAC's atlas of Soviet
cities, searching for the town that most closely resembled Hiroshima
in size and industrial concentration.  When he found one that roughly
matched, he asked how many bombs the SIOP "laid down" on that city.
The reply: one 4.5 megaton bomb and three more 1.1
megaton weapons in case the big bomb was a dud.  The
explosive yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed one-third of
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was a relatively puny 12.5
kilotons.
		-- Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of
		   Armageddon, pp. 264-269

Tags: sovietunion chiefofstaff eisenhower bombers sac secretaryofdefense arsenals nuclearwar nuclearweapons operationalplanning powercommander target tommywhite airforcechiefofstaff airforcechief chiefofnavaloperations tomgates polarismissiles singleintegratedoperationalplan admiralarleighburke