# Letters to LR (Sept. 1981) **URL:** **By** Various Authors **Published:** September 1, 1981 --- “I would like to draw attention to the following errors of fact.” ## Arms race: pro and con I would like to draw attention to the following errors of fact appearing in Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s article in the May issue of _Libertarian Review_: 1. The United States monopolized the atomic bomb with deliberate militaristic intent during the 1945-1949 period. ... in fact, the United States proposed the Baruch Plan in 1947, whereby all nuclear weapons and related research would have been subordinated to international control. The Soviet Union’s rejection of this plan was the definitive first step on the road to the “arms race.” 1. The Soviet Union had no means of delivering atomic weapons in the 1945-1955 period. ... in fact, the Soviet Union had the Tu-4 long-range bomber (a replica of the U.S. B-29) available since 1947, and produced to the number of 1500. A new design, the Tu-85, was first flown in 1951 and was comparable to the U.S. B-36. This did not go into production due to the imminent availability of the Tu-16, Tu-20, and M-4 strategic bombers in 1954-1955. Therefore, the most that can be asserted is that the Soviet Union lacked a delivery capability comparable to the B-36 between 1948 and 1954. This is substantially different from saying that they had no delivery capability whatsoever. 1. The United States was “well along the road to deploying” the Navaho missile, before the program was cancelled in 1957. ... this is a distortion of the truth, inasmuch as the completed missile had not even been flight-tested prior to its cancellation. As Hummel elsewhere observes, “testing... is different from...deploying.” The more so, when testing has not even taken place. 1. United States B-52s could have attacked Soviet ICBMs in the half-hour required for their pre-launch preparation. ... this is utterly preposterous, as B-52s could travel only about 250 miles in a half-hour interval — totally insufficient to preemptively attack Soviet ICBMs already in preparation for launch. One could make a more forceful argument to the effect that the Soviets would have had enough time to launch even _in the face_ of such a bomber attack, given the large distances between the ICBM fields and the points at which bombers would have been detected by Soviet air defense radars. 1. The table on page 15 presents the U.S. as being first with SLBMs (1954), thus beating the Soviets, who deployed their SLBMs in reaction to the U.S. ... in fact, the Soviet SS-N-4 “Sark” SLBM was the first operational SLBM in the world (1955-1956), to the ultimate number of 125 missiles in 44 submarines (7 Zulu-, 22 Golf-, ... and 15 Hotel-class boats). Each missile carried a one-megaton warhead and clearly could threaten the approximately 60 percent of U.S. population living within 300 miles of international waters. By contrast, the Polaris program was not even _begun_ until a year after the SS-N-4 was first deployed, and only four Polaris subs were available by 1961. The disparity in range between the Polaris and the Sark is conditioned by the fact that the Polaris subs could not come as close to Soviet targets as the Sark subs could come to U.S. targets. (The Polaris subs had to patrol the eastern Mediterranean, a small body of water that could be saturated by Soviet anti-submarine patrols: Sarks, on the other hand, could be launched several hundred miles off the American coastline from locations deep in international waters.) 1. The Minuteman system is characterized in the 1967 period as being “more reliable than previous liquid-fueled missiles.” ... in fact, Ernest Fitzgerald states in _The High Priests of Waste_ that the Minuteman system was subject to a 40 percent defunct rate in 1967. 1. MRV capability was first deployed by the United States in 1964, thus beating the Soviets by 8 years. ...in fact, the Polaris A-3 was retrofitted with MRVs during the period 1971–1972, contemporaneous with Soviet introduction of MRVs on the SS-18 Mod 4. Soviet testing of MRVs was noted as early as 1969, thus making it untrue that their interest in MRVs and MIRVs was only mere reaction to U.S. developments. 1. The U.S. is stated to have 1.85 million troops available to combat a potential 1.7 million Soviet troops. ... even if these accounting ground rules are correct (which is arguable), this statement neglects two important qualifications: (1) the U.S. reserves number about 2 million, whereas the Soviet reserves number about 7 million; and (2) only about 50 percent of U.S. troops are front-line combat troops (the rest being devoted to logistic support), whereas the Soviet combat troops are a higher percentage of their whole than for the U.S. (i.e., about 70 percent). 1. The SS-18 Mod 2 is presented as having a low kill potential against Minuteman silos (CEP of 1400 feet gives Pk = 40 percent). ... in fact, the CEP figure is taken from 1977 references. More recent data suggest a CEP closer to 600 feet, which results in a Pk over 90 percent. A force of 300 SS-18s equipped with 8 RVs apiece would have the ability to attack the Minuteman system twice over. If, as has been suggested, the SS-18 is capable of mounting 10–14 RVs per missile, this margin becomes overwhelming. 1. The Minuteman III is presented as having a significant counterforce capability against Soviet ICBMs. ... in fact, Hummel assumes that Soviet silos are hardened only to 2500 psi, whereas the SS-17, SS-18, and SS-19 are estimated to be in silos hardened tò about 4500 psi. With a yield of 335 kT and a CEP of 730 feet, the Minuteman Pk is only 40 percent. A CEP improvement to 430 feet gives a Pk of 70 percent. Even with this improved result, a two-on-one attack is required, which limits Minuteman III to an attack against 825 Soviet ICBMs. This is only half the total Soviet ICBM force. The import of the above is that Mr. Hummel’s argument against a possible Soviet strategic threat is based on willful distortion and/or negligent recitation of historical and technical data. The clear evidence of prejudiced analysis casts doubt over many of his other statements. A serious possibility exists that this article has been conceived as propaganda to minimize libertarian concerns over the subject of national defense. In the interest of brevity, I will close with this question: Do you have the editorial integrity to present these faults before your readership, that they may benefit from a full disclosure of information on this subject? MICHAEL J. DUNN Federal Way, WA ## Hummel replies: In four cases (1, 6, 7, and 9 as they appear in Dunn’s letter), Dunn himself is guilty of error, while in another four cases (2, 3, 8, and 10), Dunn has either misinterpreted or misrepresented what I said. In the remaining two cases (4 and 5) Dunn’s criticisms have some validity. I will consider first the four cases where Dunn himself has committed errors of fact. Charge 1: Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan puts the onus for instigating the arms race upon the Soviets. The Baruch Plan (which was submitted to the UN in June of 1946, not 1947) set up a series of stages through which control over atomic plants and raw materials throughout the world would be transferred to an International Atomic Energy Authority. Throughout the plan’s transition period, while the rest of the nations involved were subject to inspection, the U.S. would retain its stockpile of atomic weapons. In negotiating with the U.S. over atomic energy, the only source of leverage possessed by the Soviets was U.S. ignorance concerning the progress of Soviet atomic research and the extent of Soviet uranium and thorium resources. The first stage of the Baruch Plan required a complete survey of atomic raw materials and an inspection of atomic facilities, but then all parties had to agree that one stage was completed before moving to the next. Thus, the plan required that the Soviets surrender all their meager bargaining advantages, after which the U.S. could indefinitely postpone further implementation of it. The plan did not envisage atomic disarmament, but rather an atomic league with the United States as the senior member, transferring the U.S. atomic monopoly to an international body which could maintain its monopoly through the use of atomic weapons without being subject to a veto. Being unable even to veto the use of the atomic bomb against themselves, the Soviets at first rejected the Baruch Plan outright. When, toward the end of the year, the Soviets began to move closer to the U.S. position, Bernard Baruch, who headed the U.S. negotiating team at the United Nations, refused to budge an inch, held that all features of his plan were non-negotiable, and forced a vote in the Security Council on the last day of the year in which his plan went down to Soviet rejection. Rather than being a sincere gesture, the Baruch Plan was a cynical propaganda ploy that enabled the U.S. government to pursue its militaristic policy of atomic diplomacy while posing as an altruistic advocate of peace and disarmament. The most recent scholarly study of the Baruch Plan, Gregg Herken’s _The Winning Weapon_, based upon documents declassified in the seventies, as well as older treatments of the origin of the Cold War, such as Lloyd C. Gardner’s _Architects of Illusion_, substantiate my interpretation. Charge 6: The U.S. Minuteman, a solid-fueled ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) was not as reliable as its liquid fueled predecessors. Dunn refers to a report in A. Ernest Fitzgerald’s _The High Priests of Waste_ that approximately 40 percent of the Minuteman missiles were down in the 1967 period. That 40 percent figure refers not to the entire Minuteman force, but to the Minuteman II, which was first deployed in 1966 as a supplement to the Minuteman I. Dunn also provides no statistic for the first generation of U. S. liquid-fueled ICBMs with which to compare the 40 percent figure. The first-generation liquid-fueled ICBMs were so notoriously unreliable that Herbert York, who served as Director of Defense Research and Engineering under Eisenhower, estimates in _Race to Oblivion_ that only 20 percent of the operational Atlas liquid-fueled ICBMs would have reached their targets in a real war situation. Dunn’s evidence, therefore, says nothing about the comparative reliability of the Minuteman and its predecessors, but only indicates that the Minuteman II was initially less reliable than the Minuteman I. Charge 7: The U. S. first deployed MRVs (multiple reentry vehicles) not in 1964, but after 1970. The U.S. government did not officially confess to doing so until the seventies, but most sources date the fitting of MRV warheads in the mid-sixties. In a chronology of the arms race in _World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1974_), the internationally respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute lists 1964 as the year the U.S. put MRVs in service. The fairly cautious Center for Defense Information, headed by retired Admiral Gene LaRoque, agrees on this date and places the first U. S. MRV test in 1963. George B. Kistiakowsky, President Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Science and Technology, wrote in the March 22, 1979 issue of _The New York Review of Books_ that MRVs were placed on Polaris missiles in the mid-sixties. The most judicious examination of the publicly available evidence, Ronald L. Tammen’s _MIRV and the Arms Race_, is also consistent with the 1964 date. Charge 9: In computing the hard-target kill probability for the Soviet SS-18 ICBM, I used dated information on the missile’s accuracy from a 1977 reference. This charge is simply false. I relied on two sources, both of which were published in 1980 — John M. Collins’s _U.S. Soviet Military Balance_ and “Soviets’ Nuclear Arsenal Continues to Proliferate,” _Aviation Week and Space Technology_ (June 16, 1980). Collins, who had access to classified information, is a hard-boiled militarist with no incentive to underestimate Soviet capabilities and _Aviation Week and Space Technology_ is the semi-official propaganda arm of the aerospace industry. I am skeptical of Dunn’s estimate that the CEP of the SS-18 is already at 600 feet, with a kill probability of better than 90 percent, which comes from the March 9, 1981 issue of _Aviation Week and Space Technology_ and which I have not seen confirmed in any other recent source. In any case, it appeared after I had submitted my article. The determination of CEPs (circular error probables) for Soviet missiles is a difficult undertaking. Not only do the Soviets keep secret their CEPs, but U.S. intelligence estimates of Soviet CEPs are also classified. Published figures, therefore, being guesses about U.S. intelligence guesses about about Soviet capabilities, vary considerably. The two sources I used for my figures were the most reliable and up-to-date I could find at the time, with the additional advantage that they corroborated each other. Even if one accepts 600 feet as the SS-18’s CEP, there are still other degrading factors, such as missile reliability, warhead fratricide, accuracy bias, and operational difficulties, that would dissipate Dunn’s alleged overwhelming margin for the Soviets against U.S. ICBMs. Now let us turn to the four cases where Dunn has either misinterpreted or misrepresented. Charge 2: The Soviet Tu-4 “Bull” bomber, introduced in 1946, disproves my claim that the Soviet Union had no means of delivering atomic weapons prior to 1955. I asserted that before 1955, the Soviet Union was unable “to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons \[emphasis added\],” which is not the same as denying that the Soviets had any nuclear delivery vehicle whatsoever. The Soviet Tu-4 was a medium-range bomber with a combat radius of 1500 miles. Since the Soviet Union had no foreign bases within 1500 miles of the U.S. and had not perfected in-flight refueling, its medium-range bombers did not pose the same atomic threat to the U.S. that U.S. medium-range bombers posed to the Soviet Union. My article should have qualified my claim with two exceptions. First, Alaska has always been within range of Soviet medium-range bombers. Second, if the Tu-4 had been flown on a one-way suicide mission out to its maximum 3000 mile range, then the northwest portion of the United States, approximately as far south as San Francisco and as far east as Montana, was vulnerable to a Soviet nuclear strike. Charge 3: The fact that the Navaho cruise missile, when cancelled in 1957, had not been flight-tested disproves my assertion that the U.S. was “well along the road to deploying” the Navaho. The criticism hinges on one’s interpretation of the metaphor, “road to deploying.” The Navaho project was initiated in 1947. Although it was cancelled ten years later, in 1957, the missile was still successfully flight-tested 11 times in 1958. Thus, when cancelled, the Navaho was two, or no more than three, years from deployment. I think that a weapons system that has been in the process of development for ten years and that is a maximum of three years from deployment can be characterized, without exaggeration, as “well along the road” to deployment. Charge 8: My claim that the U.S. had 1.85 million troops available for a potential war in Europe, as opposed to 1.7 million for the Soviet Union, ignores (1) Soviet superiority in reserves and (2) the larger proportion of Soviet military personnel assigned to front-line combat roles. This criticism leaves me dismayed. The paragraph immediately following my comparison begins with this sentence: “Of course, when comparing only ground troops, the Soviet advantage reappears, and it extends, at least in numbers, to such military hardware as tanks and artillery.” In effect, Dunn treats as an error of fact an admittedly suggestive but factual comparison, despite my bringing to the reader’s attention a far more relevant limitation upon the comparison than either of the two which Dunn condemns me for omitting. Charge 10: The Minuteman III ICBM does not have a significant counterforce capability, because it could only eliminate half of the Soviet ICBM force in a counterforce attack. Dunn’s calculations about the number of Soviet silos that a U.S. first strike would destroy is a _non sequitur_. My statement was, “In short, U.S. and Soviet counterforce capabilities are roughly equivalent, and _neither side has the ability to make a successful first strike_ \[emphasis added\].” The unfeasibility of a first strike for the U. S. has no bearing on my claim that U.S. and Soviet counterforce capabilities are roughly equivalent, because a Soviet first strike is equally unfeasible. Rough equivalence: the single-shot hard-target kill probabilities of the Soviet SS-18 range from 40 to 85 percent; those of the U.S. Minuteman, from 55 to 85 percent. Substituting Dunn’s inflated estimate of SS-18 accuracy in Charge 9 increases the upper bound on the SS-18 kill probabilities to 93 percent. Dunn also wishes to double the overpressure which a Soviet ICBM silo can withstand, from 2500 to 4500 psi (pounds per square inch). I discounted this report and stuck with the more generally accepted 2500 psi figure, largely because Kosta Tsipis in _Nuclear Explosion Effects on Missile Silos_ raises strong doubts about the physical possibility of hardening a silo beyond 3000 psi. Even the Soviets do not know with absolute certainty how much overpressure their silos can withstand. (This uncertainty also extends to U. S. silos, but so far, Dunn and I seem to be able to agree on a 2000 psi hardening for them.) If we incorporate the 4500 psi figure, it reduces the lower bound on the kill probabilities for the Minuteman III to 43 percent. The new range—40 to 93 percent for the SS-18 versus 43 to 85 percent for the Minuteman III — still sustains the assertion that U.S. and Soviet counterforce capabilities are roughly equivalent. Finally, the two cases where Dunn’s criticisms have some validity. Charge 5: The table in the sidebar which _LR_ added to my article presents the U.S. as deploying a SLBM in 1954, prior to the Soviets, while the first U.S. SLBM was not actually deployed until 1960. This criticism is absolutely correct. But a minor change in the wording—substituting “submarine-launched missile” for “submarine-launched ballistic missile”—would make the 1954 date accurate, because that is the year in which the U.S. deployed the Regulus, a submarine-launched _cruise_ missile. Dunn neglects to mention that the SS-N-4 was more analogous to the U.S. Regulus than to the Polaris: Soviet submarines had to surface before launching it, and only carried two or three missiles per sub. The first Soviet SLBM similar to the Polaris, the SS-N-6, did not appear until eight years after the Polaris. Charge 4: U.S. B-52 long-range bombers were too slow to attack the early Soviet ICBMs within the half-hour required for pre-launch preparation. The strength of this criticism depends upon the location of Soviet ICBMs as well as on the speed of the B-52. My statement applied to the year 1960, when the very few operational Soviet ICBMs were emplaced near Plesetsk, 475 miles north of Moscow. This site was approximately 400 miles south of the Arctic Ocean and 300 miles east of the Finnish border. The U.S. B-52G, which became operational in 1959, could cover within half an hour 330 miles at its top speed and 295 miles at its cruising speed. Thus, while Dunn is technically correct and the U.S. B-52s could not reach the Plesetsk ICBM site within the one-half hour after being detected by Soviet radar, they could get very close. jet bomber, though not quite as fast as the B-52, had been flying 500-mile, low-level training missions since 1959 and might have been able to fly beneath Soviet radar. Of course, as the Soviets set up ICBM sites further from their borders, the vulnerability to U.S. strategic bombers declined, although it did not disappear entirely until the Soviets put their ICBMs in hardened silos. There may be some mistakes in my arms race article that even Michael Dunn overlooked, but if his letter represents the strongest attack that someone professionally employed by the military-industrial complex can mount, I am more than satisfied. In addition, the half-hour fueling time for Soviet ICBMs was an absolute minimum, and fueling might have taken much longer, depending on alert status and crew training. And Soviet ICBMs were also threatened by two U.S. medium-range bombers in 1960—the B-58 could cruise at twice the speed of sound and cover 738 miles within the half-hour after detection, and the B-47 Child’s “Leonard E. Read: an appreciation” was a lovely idea, too. DORIS GORDON Wheaton, MD Congratulations on fishing Bill Birmingham out of the detox center or whatever hole the wharf rat has been secreting himself in for these many months and returning him to his temple of dementia: Opening Shots. His bile makes me smile. JACK SHAFER Venice, CA ## And dislikes You call Jack Shafer’s prating in _LR_ 6/81 a book review? Sifting through writing in which the author is having a narcissistic word-affair with himself is a waste of this reader’s time. I read _LR_ in search of mental stimulation, NOT to determine who among us can be “cutest.” MICHAEL McCASEY Shelby, IN ## Likes I was delighted to see Leonard Read’s pamphlet, “Conscience on the Battlefield” reprinted in the June _LR_, for I had just read it and was wondering how it could get a wider audience. _LR_’s decision to follow the reprint with Roy