Air University Review, May-June 1985
AMERICAN Strategic retaliatory forces have been developed with increasing sensitivity to their survivability against a Soviet first strike. During the Carter and Reagan administrations, this concern for the protection of retaliatory forces also included the survivability and endurance of the command, control, and communications (C3) to ensure the performance of C3 after war began.
Future planners will have to address the question of marginal utility in providing additional survivability to forces, commanders, and the communications that link the two. The possibility that increased ability to detect Soviet preparations for attack (strategic warning) is relatively more important than additional increments of force and command survivability should be considered in future planning. Soviet surprise may be more demanding on political and military leaders than the inadequacies of forces or communications.
The invulnerability of U.S. forces to surprise attack means in practice that the United States can retaliate after absorbing that attack and inflict unacceptable losses on Soviet forces, military and political leaders, and society. Whether U.S. forces have ever really approached this declaratory standard is debatable.
The vulnerability of the U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force to Soviet first strike has been asserted by commentators since the middle of the 1970s.1 Even analysts who disputed the imminent vulnerability of U.S. ICBM foresaw eventual vulnerability if the Soviet Union improved its ICBM accuracies as expected.2 Whether the Soviets would attack U.S. ICBMs surgically or as part of a larger counterforce attack was scenario dependent. 3
Survivability of fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) was taken for granted by many commentators until the question of the survivability of communications between submarines and higher-level commanders was studied extensively. Desmond Ball reported in 1981 that communications to the SSBN force might not survive the early stages of nuclear attack.4 The Reagan strategic modernization program would reduce the force of U.S. SSBNs from its present size of thirty-four to about twenty by 1990s.5 Breakthroughs in Soviet antisubmarine warfare (ASW) could take advantage of a smaller number of platforms.
Bomber survivability depends on timely receipt of warning and bomber ability to get airborne before airfields are struck by Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Those missiles might reach inland bomber bases in the United States within fifteen minutes if they were launched from favorable locations off the Atlantic coast.6 Attacks on bomber bases could be timed to precede attacks on U.S. ICBMs from Soviet ICBMs on polar trajectories. Although such a strategy might allow more U.S. ICBMs to escape, it would more severely cripple the bomber force, which carries the largest share of hard-target warheads.7
If the various components of the U.S. strategic Triad are not necessarily survivable individually, they might be survivable collectively. Vulnerabilities in one leg of the Triad might be offset by characteristics of another. This cumulative invulnerability would depend on the survivability of command, control, and communications after attack began.
Such survivability cannot be guaranteed, according to expert analysts. John Steinbruner has suggested that the U.S. strategic C3 may be disconnected by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and other residual effects of nuclear explosions.8 Desmond Ball argues that commanders and their communications cannot be relied on to survive much beyond the immediate transattack period, after the first salvos of U.S. and Soviet strategic forces.9 Paul Bracken notes the irony that Soviet countercommand attacks might succeed, although not necessarily to their ultimate advantage. Success in disconnecting top U.S. political and military leaders from their force commanders might allow authority to cascade downward in the hierarchy, precluding war termination on favorable terms.10 A symposium at the Mitre Corporation co-sponsored by the Electronic Systems Division of the Air Force reported testimony by numerous experts that the C3 architecture was insufficiently robust to conduct protracted nuclear war as required in Carter and Reagan declaratory policies.11
The Reagan strategic modernization program will not alleviate all or even most of these vulnerabilities. Deployment of MX ICBMs in Minuteman silos does nothing to diminish vulnerability of the U.S. land-based missile force.12 Improved communications between the National Command Authority (NCA) and the strategic submarines has been impeded by legal obstacles to deployment of the proposed extremely low-frequency (ELF) communications system in Wisconsin and northern Michigan.13 Deployment of the B-1 bomber to replace the B-52 as a penetrator of Soviet air defenses in the latter 1980s will not increase the warning time available to NCA or Strategic Air Command if the Soviets deploy their SSBN closer to their presumed targets or use depressed trajectories.14 Proposed improvements in strategic C3 will provide more sophisticated attack assessment and real-time targeting information from satellites by the 1990s, but the survivability of the fixed national command posts (SAC, NORAD, the National Military Command Center in Washington, and the Alternate NMCC in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania) remains doubtful.15 At best, the President or his successors could conduct the postattack war from airborne command posts for a few days if communications between the command posts and the strategic forces were still operating.16
The previous citations are not worst-case estimates. Almost all of these strategic analysts assume that the United States would be attacked after a significant period of strategic warning (i.e., after a crisis had developed). This period of tension would result in alerted U.S. strategic forces and attentive decision makers.
Should the Soviets for whatever reason feel desperate enough to attack the United States with strategic nuclear weapons, attacking American forces on "generated alert" would not be their best move. Studies show that U.S. forces on generated alert would inflict far more retaliatory destruction on remaining Soviet forces and society after a Soviet first strike than would U.S. forces on peacetime day-to-day alert." A particular Soviet disadvantage in attacking U.S. forces already alerted lies in the enhanced survivability of U.S. prompt counterforce, which poses a particular threat to Soviet forces withheld from the first strike. Alerted forces might resort to "launch under attack" or launch on warning-a possibility that could not be precluded by conservative Soviet planners.18
Despite the comparative advantage for the Soviet Union in attacking unalerted U.S. forces, U.S. strategists tend to dismiss the "bolt from the blue" attack as a lesser possibility than attack following a prolonged crisis in which U.S. leaders and forces have plenty of advance warning about possible Soviet intentions.19 The assumption that Soviet attack would not come as a bolt from the blue seems robust for situations involving escalation from conventional to nuclear war. In those situations, it would come as no surprise to U.S. politicians and military leaders to learn that Soviet preparations for possible theater and strategic nuclear attacks were in progress.20
In just those situations, however, expectations of possible Soviet attack could make the command system more difficult to manage. Sensitive balancing of positive and negative control would be necessary. Positive control ensures that forces perform their assigned missions in a timely fashion. Negative control prevents unauthorized or accidental launch of forces.21 During a protracted crisis, negative control would become more difficult as positive control became the first organizational imperative.22 The pressure to make certain that forces could not be disarmed would make it more difficult to maintain the layers of checks and balances against ill-considered use.
Throughout U.S. history but particularly during the post-World War II era, U.S. Presidents have had to exert strong personal control over crises to prevent standard operating procedures and organizational routines from propelling events beyond policy control. The Cuban missile crisis is one example. President Kennedy had to order the Navy to move its original blockade line closer to Cuba in order to provide decision time to Soviet leaders. Instructions about the interception of surface ships that approached the blockade line were important to the President and to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who argued about the procedures with the Chief of Naval Operations.23 Political leaders failed to exercise equally strict control over the U.S. Navy antisubmarine warfare exercises, known as hunter-killer routines. Six Soviet submarines were forced to surface during the crisis before the President ordered the ASW efforts restricted.24
The mathematical probability that more U.S. forces would survive and destroy more Soviet forces if U.S. forces were alerted provides small consolation if decision makers cannot manage the alerts in a controlled fashion. The Soviets could exploit that inability to control the "alert bureaucracy" by first raising and then dampening the temperature of a crisis. These ups and downs of threats followed by appeals for peace have their precedents in Soviet crisis behavior: Khrushchev accompanied threats during the Cuban missile crisis with blandishments about his peaceful intentions; his two written communications to President Kennedy differed completely in tone and substance.25 During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev first offered to join U.S. forces in a joint expedition to restore peace; then he threatened unilateral intervention when the United States expressed no interest. Although in this case the joint expedition was clearly an insincere proposal designed to buy time for beleaguered Egyptian forces, in a different crisis American leaders might want to believe in the sincerity of a proposal that offered a way out.26
The Soviets could also exploit the cry-wolf syndrome with repeated conventional exercises in Europe to which NATO became so accustomed that no single exercise would seem particularly threatening. Expectation of large Soviet maneuvers could become the norm rather than the exception, even during a protracted crisis extending over weeks or months.27 To some extent, a successful cry-wolf attack is what the Egyptians accomplished against the Israelis in 1973. Israel had reacted to earlier mobilizations by the Egyptians, which had not resulted in the actual outbreak of war. As a result, Israeli and U.S. leaders interpreted the events of September and October 1973 as more political posturing rather than military preparations for an actual attack.28
The fear that alerts and crises cannot be managed has prompted American efforts to centralize command and control in order to attain more complete vertical integration.29 The concern about mismanaged alerts has almost always been stated as concern over failures of negative control, i.e., accidental launch. But crises can be mismanaged in another way. The United States might need to respond to crises with heightened alerts maintained for long periods or, if deterrence fails, with retaliatory strikes. Whether we could do either successfully would depend not on a game against nature but on a game against an opponent. The strategic doctrines and preferred warfighting strategies of that opponent are thus relevant to our expectations about crisis management and war.
The question of Soviet military "doctrine" is complicated by the plurality of references implied by the term doctrine in the hands of many Western writers. The Soviets are more specific. Military doctrine is the policy of the Soviet state with regard to the kinds of wars they can expect to fight and the overall objectives in fighting them. It is political guidance to the armed forces at the highest level.30 Military art derives from military doctrine and applies at three levels: strategy, operational art, and tactics.31 Also unlike the West, the Soviet definition of strategic is not defined by the kinds of technologies employed in warfare but in the objectives for which the war is fought.32 Having committed themselves to battle, Soviet party leaders expect their generals to direct the combat to victory, at whatever level the combat is joined.33 Victory is nothing less than the attainment of state policy objectives; at a minimum, it includes the destruction of the opponent's military forces, command and control, and society to the extent necessary.34
How these doctrinal precepts would play out in a strategic nuclear confrontation is partially, but not totally, scenario dependent. However war developed, the Soviets would have every incentive to attack the West on several fronts simultaneously. A war in which U.S. and Soviet forces fought one another directly would have a high probability of spreading from one theater of operations to another; the Soviets set little store by intrawar deterrence, escalation control, and other refinements of Western deterrence logic.35 The Soviets do not casually enter wars against major adversaries, but once in them they can be expected to try to win them. Analysts of various persuasions seem to agree that the Soviet war-termination story involves defeat for the opponent even if the Soviet Union absorbs significant but not decisive losses along the way.36
Therefore, it is not likely that the Soviet Union expects to win a nuclear war against the United States without absorbing significant damage. Whether the sum totals of postattack megatonnage favor the Soviets or the West will matter less to them than the comparative survivability of the Eastern and Western political systems and their rulers. An unsuccessful nuclear war threatens Soviet postwar political control if their society absorbs too much devastation and if their forces are too denuded of power even to maintain internal security.37 Even a best-case scenario for the Soviet Union's postattack predicament allows for unprecedented death and destruction, as well as a possible return of the political anarchy that characterized Russia during the First World War.38 Although the Soviet Union's control structure seems robust by peacetime standards, Russian history is not reassuring to those in power who must contemplate unprecedented postwar devastation if they absorb U.S. retaliation.39
What these doctrinal predilections and societal vulnerabilities imply is that the Soviets would emphasize surprise and the initiative in conventional or nuclear war against the West. Preemption is not foreclosed in Soviet doctrine for nuclear warfighting, although some authors have been more willing than others to see preemption as central to Soviet planning.40 The Soviet notion of preemption may differ from our own, however. American concepts of preemption emphasize almost certain detection of enemy intention to attack; Soviet preemption might be risked if the Politburo considered a U.S. first strike plausible although not certain.41
Looked at from the Soviet end of the barrel, failure to preempt would be politically un-Marxist and militarily self-defeating. Assuming they feared that attack from the West was imminent, Soviet politicians would be obligated to request from their generals a strategic plan for victory, which would have to include getting in the first decisive blow.42 From the standpoint of a scientific man from Mars, such a decision might be foolish in the extreme. Repeated scientific estimates concur on the possibility of mutually suicidal side effects from U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict in which most of their weapons are exchanged.43 But a scientific man from Mars will not be advising the Politburo during a crisis. And the Politburo is committed to the Marxist, not the Pugwash, version of historicism, in which no technology can be permitted to reverse the course of history. If such a technology in the hands of hostile capitalists might threaten such a reversal, it must be removed as expeditiously as possible.
Once convinced that war with the West was inevitable, the Soviets might exploit substantial Western fears of war through combinations of carrots (peace programs and arms control proposals) and sticks (reminders of what can go wrong if Soviet objectives are not accommodated). A certain minimum of Western psychological disarmament, in the form of disbelief that anybody could deliberately initiate nuclear war, would be imperative to produce the necessary mindset in the national capitals of their opponents. That necessary mindset need not be appeasement; a high state of ambiguity and uncertainty about real Soviet intentions would do, for the United States and its allies might well be unable to react to anything less than a totally unambiguous warning that an attack has begun. An unambiguous warning is the last thing that their Soviet adversaries will want to give them, at least until it is too late. There exists in the West substantial misunderstanding about this issue. The Soviets will assume that, once U.S. satellites and computers have confirmed their attack, our strategic retaliatory forces will be launched. Launch on tactical warning is neither precluded nor required by current U.S. policy.44 If the Soviets have done their political work well prior to the launching of their forces, however, they will catch U.S. forces not ready and minimally alerted due to preconceptions of disbelief by American politicians. Catching U.S. strategic forces on day-to-day rather than generated alert does not guarantee victory, but it does measurably improve Soviet postattack force survivability and societal recovery potential.45 The greatest asymmetry between U.S. and Soviet strategic capabilities lies in the probability that American policymakers may not really believe an attack could ever happen. Therefore, they might simply go on searching for computer malfunctions, such as those of the past, while Soviet warheads rained on U.S. ICBM fields.46
In recent studies, Carl Sagan and other scientists have suggested that the side effects of U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear war may be catastrophic for the ecology of the planet.47 Although this outcome has been asserted by other writers, the TTAPS study attempted to quantify the specific consequences of soot, smoke, and other particles that could affect planetary climate in enduring ways.48 other studies have verified that the societal destruction of nuclear war between the superpowers would reach unprecedented levels and that social reconstitution and recovery would be difficult if not impossible for both nations.49 Of particular concern to military planners would be the possibility that a first strike alone, of sufficient magnitude to defeat the opponent, might by itself trigger the nuclear winter. This possibility would seem to imply that a strategic nuclear surprise is self-defeating.
Although the prospect of climatic catastrophe may raise the nuclear threshold, it is not certain to do so, for several reasons. First, the effort to establish a threshold above which Armageddon is certain to occur may imply that wars fought below that threshold are acceptable. Second, while political doves may conclude from nuclear winter data that disarmament is mandatory, hawks may decide that missile defense is imperative. It would be ironical if the policy consensus shifts toward the more imminent deployment of missile defenses because advocates of "Star Wars" believe the nuclear winter data but draw different policy cues from it. Third, the prospect of nuclear winter may have more meaning for declaratory policy than for employment policy, or actual war plans.50 What difference expectations about climatic catastrophe can make in the day-to-day activities of the joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, or in the operational guidance provided by nuclear weapons employment policy, is not clear. Declaratory policy might be affected, however. Expectations about U.S. ability to conduct "protracted" nuclear war and to maintain "escalation control" during war itself should not be hyperventilated. Fourth, it is not clear that findings about nuclear winter will have any effect on Soviet military planning and political expectations. Soviet military doctrine has consistently taken the position that the Soviet Union will get into major wars only as the result of policy, notwithstanding the uncertainties of scientists.51
Therefore, it is important for the United States to do two things, about which nuclear winter expectations may not be influential: first, to take care to prevent the Soviets from concluding erroneously that they are about to be attacked preemptively; and, second, to provide for survivable forces, commanders, and connectivity to make any Soviet surprise attack obviously unappealing.
The vulnerability of U.S. strategic forces and C3 is related to the character of our expectations about war. The susceptibility of expectations to manipulation by an opponent is a potential danger. In this more subtle sense, the bolt from the blue cannot be discounted. Although some U.S. strategic forces are always in readiness for prompt retaliatory missions, the readiness of our decision structure cannot be presumed. The possible disbelief in the very idea of a Soviet strategic attack, especially when a crisis seemed to be fading, could demobilize the U.S. counterattack to relatively more preferable outcomes for the Soviets.
Pennsylvania State University, Media
Notes
1. Colin S. Gray, The MX ICBM and National Security (New York: Praeger, 1981), esp. p. 29.
2. Matthew Bunn and Kosta Tsipis, "The Uncertainties of Preemptive Nuclear Attack," Scientific American, November 1983, pp. 38-47.
3. Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, Counterforce Issues for the U.S. Strategic Forces (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978).
4. Desmond Ball, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled? Adelphi Papers, No. 169 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Autumn 1981).
5. Congressional Budget Office, Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces: The Administration's Program and Alternatives (Washington: Government Printing Office, May 1983), p. 57. Also, see D. Douglas Dalgleish and Larry Schweikart, Trident (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984).
6. President's Commission on Strategic Forces, Report (Washington, April 1983).
7. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
8. John Steinbruner, "Nuclear Decapitation," Foreign Policy, Winter 1981-82, pp. 16-28.
9. Ball, op. cit.
10. Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
11. Electronic Systems Division/Mitre Corporation, Strategic Nuclear Policies, Weapons and the C3 Connection (National Security Issues Symposium, 13-14 October 1981).
12. Congressional Budget Office, Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces.
13. "Ex-Admiral Claims ELF Isn't Needed," Milwaukee Journal, 22 February 1984, p. 14.
14. The problem of assessing bomber survivability against SLBM attacks is extremely complicated. See Appendix E. "Bomber Launch Survivability," in Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces, pp. 99-110.
15. Peter Pringle and William Arkin, SIOP: The Secret U.S. Plan for Nuclear War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983).
16. ESD/Mitre, Strategic Nuclear Policies, Weapons and the C3 Connection. See especially the comments by Brent Scowcroft.
17. Congressional Budget Office, Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces; Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Military Posture for FY 1983 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 24-25.
18. For the feasibility of early launch in the context of a Soviet attack on U.S. ICBM fields, see John Steinbruner, "Launch under Attack," Scientific American, January 1984, pp. 37-47.
19. Albert Carnesale et at., Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983); Congressional Budget Office, Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces; President's Commission on Strategic Forces, Report.
20. Richard K. Betts notes that U.S. strategic forces have been planned for operations under conditions of surprise but argues that a "bolt from the blue" not preceded by crisis is implausible as long as the United States has survivable forces. See Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1982). pp. 229-38. How much confidence Betts has in this assessment is debatable, since he also recommends that, during a crisis, U.S. declaratory policies create "calculated ambiguity" in the minds of Kremlin leaders about whether we might launch on warning or predelegate nuclear retaliatory authority in case the National Command Authority is destroyed, p. 238.
21. For a discussion of negative control, see Steinbruner, "Launch under Attack."
22. Bracken suggests that, under crisis conditions, information from warning and intelligence systems may overwhelm political authorities and their staffs. Some parts of the system will execute irrelevant standard operating procedures; others may "hang" in the air, awaiting orders that never come, pp. 58-59.
23. Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), pp. 136-37.
24. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), p. 138.
25. Abel, pp. 158-68.
26. See, for example, the description of the role played by Henry Kissinger in the 1973 October War in John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, third edition (New York: St. Martin's, 1982), pp. 170-71.
27. Betts, p. 203.
28. Ibid., pp. 72-73.
29. Bracken, op. cit.
30. See Colonel M. P. Skirdo, The People, the Army, the Commander (Moscow, 1970), published under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force, pp. 98-99.
31. John J. Dziak, Soviet Perceptions of Military Power: The Interaction of Theory and Practice (New York: Crane, Russak, 1981), pp. 21-38.
32. P. H. Vigor, Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory (New York: St. Martin's, 1983).
33. See John Erickson, "The Soviet Military System: Doctrine, Technology and 'Style'," in Soviet Military Power and Performance, edited by John Erickson and E. J. Feuchtwanger (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1979), pp. 18-44.
34. Benjamin S. Lambeth, How to Think about Soviet Military Doctrine," in The Defense Policies of Nations, edited by Douglas J. Murray and Paul R. Viotti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 146-53.
35. Benjamin S. Lambeth, "On Thresholds in Soviet Military 'Thought," in Strategic Responses to Conflict in the 1980s, edited by William J. Taylor, Jr., Steven A. Maaranen and Gerrit W. Gong (Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, 1983), pp. 347-65. See also Major General V. Zemskov, "Some Problems in the Conduct of War," Selected Soviet Military Writings, 1970-75 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 124-34 (Published under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force).
36. Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style, Vol. I, (Croton-on-Hudson, New York: Hudson Institute, 31 July 1981).
37. Gary L. Guertner, "Strategic Vulnerability of a Multinational State: Deterring the Soviet Union," Political Science Quarterly, Summer 1981, pp. 209-23; John M. Weinstein, "All Features Grate and Stall: Soviet Strategic Vulnerabilities and the Future of Deterrence," Strategic Issues Research Memorandum (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, July 1983).
38. Norman Stone, "The Historical Background of the Red Army, " in Soviet Military Power and Performance, edited by John Erickson and E. J. Feuchtwanger, pp. 3-17.
39. Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, The Soviet Control Structure: Capabilities for Wartime Survival (New York: Crane, Russak/National Strategy Information Center, 1983).
40. For differing views, see Robert P. Berman and John C. Baker, Soviet Strategic Forces: Responses and Requirements (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1982); and Fritz W. Ermarth, "Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought," in Soviet Military Thinking, edited by Derek Leebaert (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp. 50-69, esp. p. 66.
41. Raymond L. Garthoff contends that the Soviet concept of preemption in the 1950s shifted by the late 1960s to a launch on warning or launch under attack doctrine, which helps to explain lack of Soviet interest (compared to ours) in ballistic missile defense for silo defense. See Garthoff, "BMD and East-West Relations," in Ballistic Missile Defense, edited by Ashton B. Carter and David N. Schwartz (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1984), pp. 275-329, esp. pp. 309-10.
42. That this applies to nuclear war as well as other kinds of wars in which the Soviet Union might be engaged is clear in Marxism-Leninism on War and Army (Moscow: Progress, 1972).
43. See, for example, Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1979); and An Analysis of Civil Defense in Nuclear War (Washington: Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, December 1978).
44. Louis Rene Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America's Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Massachusetts, D. C. Heath and Company, 1983), p. 20. Even temporary failure of the alert apparatus, according to Beres, would mean that no decision to launch U.S. forces might be possible in the few minutes available.
45. Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, Retaliatory Issues for the U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces (Washington: Government Printing Office, June 1978).
46. Improved post-attack communications redundancy may be provided by the ground wave emergency network (GWEN), which will be designed to survive the initial stages of nuclear conflict. Eventual full operational capability would include 300 nodes distributed throughout the United States. See Walter Pincus, "President's Command Jet Shifted Inland," Washington Post, 23 September 1983, p. 3. The post-attack reliability of extant systems, including the MEECN (minimum essential emergency communication network) and the PACCS (post-attack command and control system) is assessed in Ball, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled? A more optimistic evaluation of U.S. attack assessment capabilities than mine appears in Pringle and Arkin, SIOP: The Secret U.S. Plan for Nuclear War, pp. 89-99; the authors contend that an accurate attack assessment would be available within six minutes from Soviet launch.
47. Carl Sagan, "Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe: Some Policy Implications," Foreign Affairs, Winter 1983/84, pp. 257-92.
48. Richard P. Turco, Owen B. Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman. James B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (TTAPS), "The Climatic Effects of Nuclear War," Scientific American, August 1984, pp. 33-43.
49. U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, An Analysis of Civil Defense in Nuclear War (Washington. December 1978); Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1979); Arthur M. Katz, Life after Nuclear War: The Economic and Social Impacts of Nuclear Attacks on the United States(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1982).
50. Donald M. Snow, "Levels of Strategy and American Strategic Nuclear Policy," Air University Review, November-December 1983, pp. 63-73. Employment policy is also called action policy.
51. For example, see Colonel B. Byely et al., Marxism-Leninism on War and Army (Moscow, 1972), Soviet Military Thought Series, published under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force.
Stephen J. Cimbala (B.A., Pennsylvania State University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is Associate Professor of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County Campus, Media, Pennsylvania, and a Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, and other political and social science journals. Dr. Cimbala is a previous contributor to the Review.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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