Document created: 18 August 03
Air University Review, January-February 1975

Strategic Targeting

The announcement some months ago by Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger relating to retargeting of U.S. long-range missiles again focused attention on the strategic targeting policy of this country. More recently, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger expressed concern over the nuclear "numbers game" that colors our relationships with the Soviet Union.

For more than a decade our targeting policy has held Soviet cities hostage to our ability to destroy them in the event of a Soviet first-strike attack. This concept of "assured destruction" of the major population centers of the Soviet Union was intended to deter the launching of a Soviet first strike on the basis that such an attack would provoke massive retaliation by the U.S. and thus would be an act of national suicide on their part.

Whether this policy was in fact the "realistic deterrence" proclaimed by former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird in 1971 can be argued. What cannot be argued is the fact that--for whatever reason--the Soviet Union has not launched a missile attack against the United States or anyone else during all these years.

With continuing improvement in missile capability, particularly in the realm of accuracy, the Soviets have developed a potential for options other than a massive first strike. To counter this new potential, the U.S. must have options other than massive retaliation. Retargeting and research to improve the accuracy of our missiles are intended to provide to the President a capability for alternative responses.

The customary measurement of the effectiveness of the assured destruction posture has been the number of fatalities our reflexive strike could impose upon the Soviet Union after our forces have absorbed a postulated Soviet first strike.

The use of this yardstick leads one almost inevitably to the major cities targeting concept. By hitting the cities, we can theoretically inflict the greatest number of fatalities with a given number of missiles of a specified yield and accuracy.

The new strategy announced by Secretary Schlesinger in fact appears to leave the concept of assured destruction inbeing, on a reduced scale but one which is still considered adequate for deterrence. The missiles thus made available can then be marked for target sets other than the cities, to provide the alternative responses desired.

However, target strategies cannot be designed in a vacuum. They are valid only in terms of their ability to achieve one or more specified objectives.

If our national objective in case of nuclear war is simply to inflict more casualties on an enemy than he inflicts on us, then the capability to destroy his cities if he attacks us may have strategic merit.

But one must ask: Is there really any significant variance, in terms of national survival, between fatalities inflicted and fatalities suffered when considering the meganumbers conjured up by the vision of all-out nuclear war?

The principal objectives of our strategic forces have been defined as twofold: (1) deterrence of nuclear attack upon the United States and (2), if deterrence fails, resolution of the ensuing conflict in our favor.

The concept of assured destruction may serve admirably the first objective. But it is difficult to accept the premise that a nuclear war has ended in our favor when we have inflicted, for example, 30 million fatalities in exchange for "only" 20 million fatalities suffered. Such an exchange is hardly likely to mean much of anything but the end of both the United States and the Soviet Union as national entities.

Is there an alternative?

Our civilization operates at a highly sophisticated level of specialization. Destruction of such vital resources as power generation and distribution, fuel storage, water supply, sewage disposal, and food production and distribution (together with unavoidable concurrent casualties) could easily be more destructive than "pure" fatalities.

In this regard the economic dislocations that even now appear to accompany a relatively minor reduction in energy resources carry a pertinent message.

Large areas of the Soviet Union are less "civilized" than the United States; yet the situation just described certainly holds for the major population centers of that country, and specifically for those centers engaged in national government and international affairs.

On a scale of destruction of national resources, there is some point at which the efforts of surviving leadership must be diverted from national survival to individual survival. That point was never reached on a national scale during World War II, although it was approached at different places at different times.

Military analysts, politicians, and the press all speak of fatalities in the stratospheric millions without apparent regard for the odds against half of us surviving when the other half shall have been eliminated. Our total interdependence and--perhaps even more important--our total dependence on our resources and the continued operation of our facilities do not appear to have been considered at all.

There is no real trade-off of fatalities at the higher levels. Instead, there is some level of resource loss above which it is simply not possible to conceive of the survival of either the United States or the Soviet Union in any meaningful national sense. Below that level assured destruction does not exist; above that level there is no economic or political return for dollars expended to achieve additional destruction.

Instead of holding tens of millions of citizens hostage, assured destruction--and its corollary, realistic deterrence--should thus be equated with that point on a continuum of resource assets at which survival of the enemy as a viable, outward-looking nation terminates.

Under the concept of mutual deterrence implicit in the SALT discussions, the strategic objective of both the United States and the Soviet Union must be to retain, under any and all foreseeable circumstances, the ability to respond to an attack with sufficient force to insure the imposition of that calculated level of resource destruction at which national integrity disappears.

Defining that critical level is, of course, an extremely difficult task--a task that probably lies in the realm of the economist and sociologist rather than the military analyst. Members of those two disciplines who are thoroughly familiar with the Soviet society, with others as needed, should be able to define those resources the loss of which, when combined with an associated level of population fatalities, must compel the survivors to devote all their energy to personal survival.

It then becomes the task of the military to assure the availability of the appropriate weapons in the appropriate numbers to inflict that necessary level of damage in the face of Soviet defenses. The measure of effectiveness must be the ability of the total strategic structure, after absorbing a first strike, to deliver a sufficient number of weapons of the proper size on the designated targets to preclude the continued existence of the enemy as an international force.

The question of credibility needs also to be addressed. It is not enough that the United States possess the right number and mix of strategic forces. It must be apparent to the Soviet Union that we have those forces, that they are in fact sufficient to the objective, and that we have the national will to use them.

In addition, there are of course subordinate strategic objectives: maintenance of the sovereignty of our airspace, limiting damage from small-scale attacks (accidental or intentional), deterrence of attack on our allies, etc. Other measures of effectiveness must be developed in terms of these specific objectives and our strategic structure modified if necessary to accommodate them. In some cases forces necessary to meet one objective will at the same time satisfy another; in other cases changes or additions to the basic force may be needed.

The presence of peripheral issues does not, however, affect the validity of the point made here. The objectives of our strategic forces must be meaningful, not based on statistical escalation without regard for the significance of that escalation. If "one" is good, "two" is not necessarily or automatically better.

Assured destruction lies not in the realm of tens of millions of fatalities-- despite the terror value of such numbers--but rather in the coldly calculated ability to terminate the existence of the enemy in terms of his potential to continue to operate in the international arena as a viable national entity.

Colonel Emanuel M. Abramson, USAF (Ret), (M.B.A., Syracuse University) was Chief, Command and Control Division, ACS/Studies and Analysis, Hq USAF, at the time of his retirement in 1970. Commissioned from OCS in 1943, he accepted a commission in the regular Air Force in 1958. He served in controller and operations assignments in ADC and ARDC. Colonel Abramson is a graduate of the Ground Electronics Officer Course and Weapons Controller Course. Since retirement he has been a financial counselor and published articles in that field.