231 



1. The United States probably will be unable to duplicate Soviet achievements 

 in very high yield weapon technology. 



2. The United States will be unable to acquire necessary data on the effects 

 of very high yield atmospheric explosions. 



3. The United States will be unable to acquire data on high altitude nuclear 

 weapons effects. 



4. The United States will be unable to determine with confidence the perform- 

 ance and reliability of any ABM system developed without benefit of atmospheric 

 operational system tests. 



5. The United States will be unable to verify the ability of its hardened under- 

 ground second-strike missile systems to survive close-in high-yield nuclear 

 explosions. 



6. The United States will be unable to verify the ability of its missile reentry 

 bodies under defen.sive nuclear attack to survive and to penetrate to the target 

 without the opportunity to test nose cone and warhead designs in a nuclear 

 environment under dynamic reentry conditions. 



7. This treaty will provide the Soviet Union with an opportunity to equal 

 U.S. accomplishments in submegaton weapon technology. 



8. The treaty will deny to the United States a valuable source of information 

 on Soviet nuclear weapons capabilities.^"'^ 



Tlie interim report then turned to the subject of the "safeguards" 

 upon wliich the approval of the treaty by the JCS had been contingent. 

 It noted that Senator Jackson had moved in the subcommittee that the 

 JCS be called upon to report the actions taken to implement these 

 safeguards, and that Senator Russell, chairman of the Armed Services 

 Committee, had transmitted a letter to the JCS to request a statement 

 in response to the motion."^ "Wliile indicating its firm intention of 

 monitoring the implementation of the safeguards in the event the 

 treaty was ratified, the subcommittee emphasized that "even the most 

 rigorous and conscientious implementation of the JCS safeguards 

 will not alter, modifj^, or reduce the military and technical disadvan- 

 tages listed herein which will result from this treaty." ^^^ Moreover, 

 the problem of cheating still had not been laid to rest. Under the limited 

 treaty, "problems of detection, identification, and verification still 

 remain although they are of a lesser order of magnitude than would 

 be true of a treaty banning underground testing." ^^^ 



It might have been noted by the Preparedness Subcommittee that 

 there were some militarj^ advantages to the treaty. It is true that the 

 interim report presents a section of about a page in length titled 

 "Counterarguments." But these were mostly qualifications of state- 

 ments against the treaty. The closest to a positive statement was the 

 following : 



In summary, it was the contention of witnesses who supported the treaty that 

 It will tend to stabilize the advantages which the United States now maintains 

 in military nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. While recognizing that 

 doubts concerning the quality of some of our weapons systems do exist, they 

 maintained that these doubts can be compensated by "brute force" techniques 

 by which quantity is substituted for quality at considerably greater cost to 

 achieve approximately the same results in military system effectiveness. 



The effect of this statement is weakened by the "interesting and 

 sobering" observation, immediately following, that the Soviet Union 

 in several of its publications had also proclaimed its own superiority 

 over the United States in nuclear weaponry.^^^ 



'^1 "Interim Report by Preparedness Investigation Subcommittee," op. cit., pp. 7-S 

 Origrinal in Italic. 

 "2 This material appears in the interim reports Ibid., p. 10. 

 les Ibid., p. 10. 

 »* Ibid., p. 11. 

 !»» Ibid., p. 9. 



