National Affairs: Questions for Debate

The U.S. is headed right up through space toward an annual defense budget of $60 to $70 billion within the next ten years (v. 1958’s $39 billion) unless it faces up soon to some basic choices. Next week at the U.S. Marine station at Quantico, Va., 175 of the nation’s top military and civilian defense experts will take off coats and jackets, roll up their sleeves to wrestle with the big questions. Items: <I Since the price of military hardware is rocketing (e.g., a B58 costs $8,000,000, the projected B70 “chemical bomber” may cost as much as $20 million), where can cuts best be taken? One favored answer: in manpower, by cutting active forces, reserves and National Guard contingents. One offbeat item that could cut the budget to the tune of $10 billion: an efficient reconnaissance satellite that would keep the U.S. so well posted on the movements of any potential enemy that it might be able to trim its estimates of the losses to be suffered in surprise attacks.

EURJ How many strategic-weapons systems does the U.S. need to be certain that at least one system will be wholly effective? Currently the U.S. is developing five systems: the Navy’s submarine-based Polaris, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the intermediate-range ballistic missile to be based overseas, advanced land-based bombers and carrier-based aircraft. A weapons-systems evaluation group is studying the problem, is scheduled to make recommendations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by next month. «I Can the U.S. still afford to be tied to a procedure that prohibits the use of defensive atomic weapons without a presidential order? As the warmaking prowess of the enemy advances and consequently shortens the reaction time needed for the-U.S. to defend and retaliate, continental-defense commanders believe they should be authorized to use any superweapon in the U.S. arsenal at an instant’s notice. <J Should the U.S. expand its limited war capability? Since it is likely that a U.S.Russian war, if it ever comes, will be an all-out conflict, the so-called “limited” war—if it comes—seems likely to engage the U.S. against a relatively underdeveloped country. The U.S. is fairly well prepared for limited war with airborne Army divisions, Marine units and carrier forces. Says Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, whose Quantico briefcase will be packed with tentative answers to most of the questions: “It would have to be a very big limited war, or one that broke out in several parts of the world simultaneously, for us not to be able to cope with it.” Special problem, still unresolved: civil war where the U.S. cannot commit its own forces, yet cannot afford to let a Communist-backed faction win out.