On the Value of Overseas Bases^[1]

"Their importance here is both more considerable and likely to be more lasting than their increasingly restricted utility to deter attack on the United States. Particularly in conventional limited wars, destructive force is delivered in smaller units and, in general, requires a great number of sorties over an extended period of time. It is conceivable that we might attempt the intercontinental delivery of iron bombs as well as ground troops and ground support elements. The problem of inter-continental versus overseas bombers is mainly a matter of costs, provided we have the time and freedom to choose the composition of our force and our budget size. But there would be enormous differences in costs between distant and close-in repeated delivery at a given rate of high explosives." (p. 31, DBT-longer version)

As for the functions of overseas bases in a central war, I think several are important. There are other uses for overseas bases in central war besides deterrence. On this, DBT (longer version) states:

"In case deterrence fails, they might support a counterattack which could blunt the strength of an enemy follow-up attack, and so reduce the damage done to our cities. Their chief virtue here is precisely the proximity to the enemy which makes them problematic as a deterrent. Proximity means shorter time to target and possibly larger and more accurately delivered weapons -- provided, of course, the blunting force survives the first attack. This is not likely to be a high confidence capability of the sort we seek in the deterrent itself; but it might make a very real difference under some circumstances of attack, particularly if the enemy attack were poorly coordinated, as it might be if the war were started by an accident. In this case the first wave might be smaller and less well organized than in a carefully prepared attack. The chance of even some of our unprotected planes or missiles surviving would be greater. Moreover a larger portion of the attacker's force would remain on base, not yet ready for a following attack. Using some portion of our force not in retaliation but to spoil the follow-up raid by killing or at least disrupting the matching of bombers with tankers, bombers with bombers, bombers with decoys, and bombers with missiles could reduce both the number of attackers reaching our defenses and the effectiveness of their formation for getting through. It would be a fatal mistake to count on poor planning by an aggressor, but, given the considerable reduction in damage it might enable, it is prudent to have the ability to exploit such an error." (p. 29, 30, DBT - longer version)

The quoted passage has become increasingly relevant with the growing currency of the Minimum Deterrence theory. Minimum Deterrence theorists agree that deterrence is important but reject any attempt to fight a war, or even to survive and to alleviate the damage to our cities in case deterrence fails. They regard such attempts as unnecessary because they feel deterrence can be made very certain with a rather small expenditure of effort. And they regard a capability to limit damage to ourselves as actually bad because they think it necessarily provocative and destabilizing. I strongly dissent from the Minimum Deterrence theory as I suspect General Smith does also. Deterrence is vital and feasible but will require a great deal of effort and even a good deterrent can fail. Therefore, we can make good use of preparations against the contingency of failure. Moreover such insurance, I believe, need not be destabilizing.

A critique of the popular Minimum Deterrence theory, however, is another and a longer story. The point here is that, like General Smith, I think deterrence is necessary but not enough. To limit damage and to fight a war in case deterrence fails, overseas based forces, along with the active and passive defense of our cities, can serve a very useful role.

However, for the deterrent function itself, I indicated overseas bases continue to have some use:

"...even with the projected force of aerial tankers, the greater part of our force, which will be manned bombers, cannot be used at all in attacks on the Soviet union without at least some use of overseas areas." (DBT - shorter version, p. 224)

It is apparent from the above that, while General Smith and I may weigh the importance of various uses of our overseas bases differently, we are in agreement that overseas bases are important.

II. A Dilemma in Attacking Bases Overseas and on the Continent?

Yes, we do have some disagreements. The most important stems from an assumption, implicit in General Smith's argument, that the united States should or would fire ballistic missiles from overseas areas or from the ZI on the strength solely of radar detections. We disagree totally here. But before turning to our disagreement on this central question, it would be good to analyze the dilemma of coordination which General Smith and many other responsible strategists suggest is posed to an aggressor by the mere presence of soft IRBMs overseas. The reader will recall the dilemma suggested. Even in a coordinated attack, the enemy must, we are told, either (a) give extra warning to the continent, or (b) never complete his salvo (specifically, that part of it directed overseas). Our differences on the subject of this suggested dilemma can be settled by calculation, using only public information. Moreover, even if we supposed, for the sake of the analysis, that we were to open fire on the evidence of radar blips alone (even on that of a single detection), the calculations do not support the view that there is a dilemma.

Therefore, in this section I shall put aside the critical question as to whether we should or would fire ballistic missiles on the strength of radar indications. Let us assume we shall and examine this rather widely accepted dilemma of coordination.

Take first the case proposed by General Smith in which the Russians launch a missile from Vladivostok to some target near San Francisco, like Hamilton Air Force Base, and expect to follow it with another missile from Vladivostok to a target on Okinawa, timed to arrive as the first missile lands in the vicinity of San Francisco. A missile can be sent from the launch base at Vladivostok to the target at San Francisco on any of a great variety of trajectories which would not be within the line of sight of a radar placed on Okinawa. However, this missile certainly could be seen from the BMEWS station at Alaska. Could it be seen soon enough for the Okinawa base to launch its missiles toward Vladivostok and to destroy the Vladivostok target before it launches missiles at the Okinawa complex itself? If the Russians launch their missile on a flat trajectory, total flight time to the San Francisco area would amount to some 24 minutes. If we make the arbitrary but generous assumption that the lower beam of the ballistic missile radar has a zero degree angle of elevation or, in other words, that the only limitation is the horizon, radar intercept would take place in 11 minutes after launch leaving 13 minutes before impact. And 3 minutes before the launching of the enemy missile against the Okinawa target. In these 3 minutes, in order to prevent launching of the enemy missiles toward Okinawa, we would have (1) to interpret the radar signals and recognize them as a raid, (2) get the decision made to retaliate, (3) have this decision transmitted and received, (4) prepare, count-down and launch our own missiles from Okinawa, and (5) cover the trajectory from Okinawa to the Vladivostok target. However, our time of flight alone (assuming we also use a short low angle trajectory) is very very considerably longer than the 3 minutes allotted. To put it briefly, it is infeasible.

If we vary this case slightly by having both sides use minimum energy rather than low angle trajectories, it remains true that our time of flight alone exceeds the interval between detection of the San Francisco bound missile and the launching of the missile toward Okinawa.

Of course, it would be possible to put another radar in between Okinawa and Alaska, for example in Northern Japan, which would detect the missile launched from Vladivostok toward the San Francisco area a few minutes sooner. But the example proposed is arbitrary, and the enemy need not launch his missile at the San Francisco target from Vladivostok. In fact, flight times would be considerably shorter if he launched them from Kamchatka or Anadyr, which are closer. Flight time from Anadyr to a target in the vicinity of San Francisco on a low-angle trajectory would amount to some 10 minutes. For the purposes of detecting such a missile our Alaskan stations are almost ideally placed. But if we again assume that only the horizon is the limit, detection would take place in 4 minutes, leaving 12 minutes to impact. And only two minutes until the enemy launches his missile against the Okinawa bases from Vladivostok.

We have, surely, some freedom as to where we may locate our missile bases and where we might build our new radars. But the enemy has an even greater freedom as to the choice of launching sites within his national boundaries and also in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

So far we have only considered an example of launching against bases at San Francisco and Okinawa. However, we should consider various attacks from a multiplicity of hypothetical launching sites against a multiplicity of targets. We might vary the overseas locations of (1) our missiles or (2) our radars. The enemy can vary (1) the size or maximum range of the missiles he uses, (2) his missile trajectories, and (3) his launching point and target pairings. This takes a good deal more calculation, but it is necessary to give a fair test to the hypothesis that there is a dilemma. A variety of such map exercises fails to sustain the view that the time from the first detection will be enough to disrupt the opening salvo against us. When such exercises are run through, the typical results for an enemy attack using land-based missiles only and low-angel trajectories leave a maximum of 20 minutes or so between first detection and impact; for attacks using missiles launched from submarines on station, at most about 10 minutes, even if we assume the launchings are detected without delay. In either case, the entire sequence of enemy firings against overseas bases can be completed in less time after the first detection than would be involved in time of flight of our counterattacks. The inadequacy of a strategy in which we depended on soft fixed missiles and ballistic missile early warning would be even more obvious, of course, if we considered not just flight time but, more realistically, time of preparation, and especially, time to interpret, to decide and to transmit the decision. In fact, the dilemma seems plausible only because we forget how short these flight times are, and, in particular, because we forget that the enemy doesn't need to fire from a single point like Vladivostok, toward widely dispersed points, like Okinawa and Hamilton Air Force Base at San Francisco. The selection of launch points offers a natural way of compressing total time of flight as well as the interval between first and last launch for a simultaneous impact salvo. This makes extreme lofting of trajectories over short distances quite unnecessary.

General Smith agrees that for the Soviets to compute a time for the ballistic missile salvo presents no major problem. We would agree then that we should not rely on poor enemy coordination for deterrence. The calculations I have described make clear that a well coordinated simultaneous time-on-target strategy does not permit time enough for disruption.

III. The Other Horn of the Supposed Dilemma

So far we have discussed only the simultaneous impact strategy and the amount of warning overseas bases might get from radar detection of missiles bound for targets in the United States. If the enemy thought seriously that we would fire on the basis of radar warning, his strategy would involve net simultaneous time-on-target, but an essentially simultaneous penetration of all warning barriers. In this case, well coordinated firings against overseas bases add no extra warning to that available from attack or continental bases. In other words, the second half of the dilemma, like the first, is not a real one.

First consider radar warnings of ballistic missiles attacking Okinawa or other overseas bases. In most overseas areas, and in Okinawa too, there are, of course, no ballistic missile radars. It would cost over a quarter of a billion dollars to put in one such radar and its associated communications and other systems. Even if we neglect "noise" problems, it is doubtful that such a radar would guarantee any significant detection time at Okinawa of missiles launched against Okinawa's targets. They might be launched from much closer in than Vladivostok: from China for example, or from a submarine. Even if there were a radar there, detection would hardly precede bomb impact by very much. Warning at Okinawa by radar penetration by missiles on the way there could be timed simultaneously with radar penetration by missiles on the way to the continent. This clearly would provide no extra warning to the bases on the continent. In fact, report of the bomb impact at Okinawa itself, so long as it was timed to coincide with or follow radar warning of the Hamilton Air Force Base bound missiles, would add no information needed for our decision to respond, if we accept the basic premise of the dilemma that radar warning of the Hamilton Air Force Base bound missile itself will trigger the most momentous of all decisions; namely the decision to wage World War III.

Analogous comments are appropriate for most overseas locations. To sum up this second half of the dilemma: Against an opponent willing to fire missiles on the basis of radar detections alone, the best strategy of attack is to penetrate warning simultaneously. In this case, overseas areas have less warning time than might be available to deep continental bases. And the overseas areas do not add to the warning available to bases on the continent.

IV. The Decision to Fire Missiles

In analyzing the first half of the supposed dilemma we showed that a well coordinated simultaneous time-on-target strategy could be completed without interruption by counterfire from overseas bases. But if the time after detecting the first enemy missile is too short for us to prevent the launching of his last missile in a well coordinated salvo, isn't there enough time to get our own missiles off before his warheads explode at our bases? If so, this could mean saving our ZI-based missiles as well as those based overseas. In the event of a simultaneous time-on-target salvo, continental bases have as much time between detection of the first enemy missile and its impact as the overseas bases. And more time than the overseas bases in case the salvo is scheduled for simultaneous detection. But to answer this question we have to consider seriously much more difficult matters than the measurement of times on trajectory, and the like. We have to consider the decision problem on firing missiles, which we have so far deferred. On this subject, I stated:

"The decision to fire a missile with a thermonuclear warhead is much harder to make than a decision simply to start a manned aircraft on its way, with orders to return to base unless instructed to continue to its assigned target. This is the "fail-safe" procedure practiced by the U.S. Air Force. In contrast, once a missile is launched, there is no method of recall or deflection which is not subject to risks of electronic or mechanical failure. Therefore, such a decision must wait for much more unambiguous evidence of enemy intentions. It must and will take a longer time to make and is less likely to be made at all. Where more than one country is involved, the joint decision is harder still, since there is opportunity to disagree about the ambiguity of the evidence, as well as to reach quite different interpretations of national interest." (DBT - shorter version, p. 226)

"I cannot see for the foreseeable future how we can launch them [ballistic missiles] on the basis of radar detection alone. This is why their sites have to be hardened, and this is why they must be complemented with a manned bomber force that we can get off the ground and insure survival."[4]

It is not, then, United States policy to let the decision for World War III be made by a piece of electronic equipment on the evidence of some electromagnetic signals. I think our policy in this respect quite sound. Radar or infrared signals might be reduced or suppressed, or they might be confused by "noise," that is, in General Power's phrase, "spurious signals" -- either man-made like the sputniks he mentioned or simply part of the variable natural background. Every sensing system with a significant probability of detecting a raid of a given magnitude has a finitely probable false alarm rate that goes with this capability. And above all, the time available for receiving such signals, transmitting them, processing them, and using them for decision is likely to be terribly short and possibly nonexistent. The time between impact and first detection by radar of land-based missiles launched along fixed flat trajectories might vary between zero and 2 minutes overseas and between 13 and 16 minutes in the United States. Flight time of missiles launched from submarines on station against bases deep in the United States comes to about 10 minutes; against coastal or island bases, much less.

For such reasons, the security of our retaliatory force must not rely on warning and timely reaction as its sole or principal defense. This is true for our bombers as well as our missiles even though the bombers can be committed to the air more swiftly since this commitment can be reversed. In spite of this advantage, the Air Force has recommended a mode of protection for the B-52's which does not depend on warning; namely to keep a fraction up in the air at all times. In fact, it is now widely recognized that in the future we will have to emphasize modes of defense of our retaliatory force such as mobility, concealment, extreme hardness and dispersal which do not depend for their success on receiving warning.

The remarks on the coordination of ballistic attacks on our overseas bases which General Smith cited were made in the context of an analysis of the decision to station soft fixed Thors and Jupiters overseas. I said:

"...we must face seriously the question whether this move will in fact assure either the ability to retaliate or the decision to attempt it, on the part of our allies or ourselves. And we should ask at the very least whether further expansion of this policy will buy as much retaliatory power as other ways of spending the considerable sums involved."

Let me expand a little on the continuing relevance in the 1960's of these special problems of overseas bases. In order to minimize warning, the enemy has to restrict the size and composition of his initial attack. For example, he may restrict it to ballistic missiles or even to submarine-launched ballistic missiles which are in general less accurate and more limited in payload than aircraft. Since we may survive his initial warningless attack, for example, by shelter, one possible tactic of the enemy is immediately to follow his ballistic missile attack with bombers, using the missiles essentially to pin us down until the bombers arrive. The smaller the detection time we have against bombers, the more feasible is this pin-down tactic. Overseas bases suffer from the disadvantage that they are subject to an initial missile wave with greater accuracies and bomb yields (making blast protection harder) and the missiles also can be followed by bomber attacks more quickly (making the pin-down requirements less severe). On some overseas locations, no substantial warning is feasible against even the bomber attack so that these could be used on an initial wave. In short, the fact which General Smith mentions, that overseas bases in general have only a small interval between first detection and arrival at their base of enemy manned bomber attacks, has significance even in the ballistic missile age.

Overseas bases are of great importance, but not all arguments to support their importance are right. Among those that are wrong is the notion that in the face of a well coordinated enemy missile attack, missiles placed overseas without protection are sure either to retaliate and disrupt the opening enemy salvo or to provide extra warning for the continental U.S. They can guarantee neither one. But deterring a well coordinated thermonuclear attack on the U.S., while vital, is by no means all we want to do. We must have insurance that we can limit damage in case deterrence fails whether by accident or deliberation. And overseas bases can help disrupt the poorly coordinated attacks that are now likely in the event that the war starts by accident (and this, in turn, if we have a good high confidence deterrent, is more likely to be the way a war starts if it starts at all). Finally, the overseas bases play a principal role in limited wars.

"The Delicate Balance of Terror," in opposition to those who think deterrence in the 1960's is automatic or easy to come by, argues that, while feasible, it will be hard and it will require a considerable effort. As for overseas bases, while these have continuing value and a variety of functions, the article stated that assuring retaliation against enemy attack would be particularly difficult close in. We must be prepared for an increase in the weight of attack which the Soviets can deliver with little warning and the growth of a significant Russian capability for an essentially "warningless" attack. This is true for the ZI as well as overseas, but the overseas bases are subject to a wider variety of attacks with shorter warning and with larger yields and greater accuracy than bases at intercontinental range. This is a statement of fact. It is not inconsistent with the fact that overseas bases continue to have many uses and, like our alliances themselves, are indispensable.

[2]"The Delicate Balance of Terror," Foreign Affairs, January 1959, Air Force, February 1959.

[3]The more extended version of the article was not easily available to General Smith in Okinawa. The shorter version, while I believe quite correct, was too brief to permit emphasis on the points to be elaborated now. In what follows I shall refer to the RAND P-1472 as "DBT - longer version" and to the Air Force and Foreign Affairs form of the paper as "DBT - shorter version."

[4]A more extensive quotation from General Power's testimony is useful here.

    "Let us imagine these BMEWs have been built, and it is 2:30 in the morning. The man operating the BMEWs has me on one end of the telephone and General Partridge on another circuit. The conversation goes something like this:
    'The radars have picked up 1,000 objects. The computer says they are ballistic missiles, and they will impact in the United States.'
    I have about 12 minutes left because it took him at least 3 minutes to do that.
    What am I going to do?
    I can launch the alert force.
    ...I will do that without any hesitancy because I know that, if this turns out to be a spurious signal, no harm is done...But in this time period we will also have a button whereby I can send the ICBM's on their way. I will have missiles at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Cheyenne, Offutt, Fairchild, and -- I don't know whether Topeka will be in at that time or not, but let us assume it is.
    I can press that button and send the missiles on their way.
    Do I want to do it, assuming I had authority to do so? Because sure as shooting, in another 2 or 3 minutes, this lad will say, 'I am sorry, but those blips have disappeared off the scope.' They were sputniks, interference, or something like that. Therefore, I say the missile will have to ride out the attack."

(Hearings before the Subcommittee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 86th Congress, 1st Session, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1960," Part 2 Financial Statements, Field Commanders, pp. 378 and 379, 1959.)

[5]U.S. News and World Report, May 25, 1959, p. 6.

[6]Mr. Truman stated in the New York Times, November 8, 1951:

"I can make the categorical statement that no nuclear bomb can be triggered by any one person regardless of rank without the expressed and personal order of the President of the United States."

"No, there is no arrangement that puts the President's authority in anybody else."