COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

JAMIE L. WHITTEN, Mississippi, Chairman

FREDERICK G. MOHRMAN, Clerk and Staff Director

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS

FOR 1988

TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 1987.

ARMS CONTROL ISSUES/SALT II LIMITATIONS/NUCLEAR TESTING LIMITATION

WITNESSES

FRANK K. GAFFNEY, JR., DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR NUCLEAR FORCES AND ARMS CONTROL POLICY

ROBERT BARKER, ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ATOMIC ENERGY

EDMUND NAWROCKI, VERIFICATION POLICY, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

LEO MICHEL, VERIFICATION POLICY, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

JOHN HAWES, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AND MILITARY AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE LIEUTENANT GENERAL DALE A. VESSER, UNITED STATES ARMY, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC PLANS AND POLICY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF WILLIAM COLBY, FORMER DIRECTOR, GENERAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

INTRODUCTION

Mr. CHAPPELL. The Committee will come to order.

As you gentlemen may be aware, tomorrow afternoon the full Committee on Appropriations will meet to report out the fiscal year 1987 Supplemental Appropriations Bill, and we understand amendments will be proposed to place two legislative limitations concerning SALT II limits and nuclear test ban in that bill.

Would you please explain to the Committee the effects these two legislative limitations would have on the Administration's nuclear policy and its ability to negotiate with the Soviets on arms limitation?

Mr. Gaffney, will you start and then anybody else who wants to be heard in the beginning? Why don't we rotate.

Mr. GAFFNEY. Mr. Chairman, if I may, what I think we propose to do is I will make a few introductory comments about both issues. I think each of us have something to contribute. I am the only one with a prepared statement.

Mr. CHAPPELL. Then we will ask you to speak and then open everything up.

Mr. GAFFNEY. We will try to keep it brief.

Mr. CHAPPELL. Will each of you, so we understand your background, give us a brief introduction of yourselves and your experience?

Mr. GAFFNEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. CHAPPELL. We thank you for coming on such short notice.

SUMMARY STATEMENT OF MR. GAFFNEY

Mr. GAFFNEY. We thank you for giving us an opportunity to comment before an action is taken by the Congress which we believe would have profound and adverse consequences for both the national security and the foreign policy interests of the United States.

My name is Frank Gaffney. I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy.

I have served in this job for three-and-one-half years, previously was a member of the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee and previous to that on the staff of Senator Henry Jackson.

My responsibilities are essentially those that are described in the title.

I have to worry about the policies and the challenges that are posed to us by Soviet military capabilities, and the options that we have to deal with their policies and threats both in terms of our nuclear capabilities and the opportunities for effective, verifiable arms control.

We have, I believe, an excellent panel to provide you numerous points of view and considerable expertise in considering the two amendments, the one on a one-kiloton threshold test limitation and a reimposition of the SALT II MIRV supplements.

If I may, I would just introduce them going from your left to your right: John Hawes, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Political and Military Affairs.

Mr. Hawes is extremely knowledgeable about all the areas we will be talking about today. He has spent considerable time working with me and my colleagues in the Defense Department on nuclear testing issues.

I think you will find his insights into the foreign policy parts of these questions to be very valuable.

Lieutenant General Dale A. Vesser from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Strategic Plans and Policy Section, is both an accomplished military officer and speaks with authority on behalf of the Joint Chiefs on forces and arms control policy questions that we have to deal with.

Dr. Robert Barker, I think, is known to the Committee.

He has a rich background, both as a nuclear physicist associated with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California and a period of service in Washington in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where he was an Associate Director for Verification and currently serves in two capacities now, both, I believe, relevant to one of the topics today.

He is the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy Matters and, therefore, the DOD senior specialist on nuclear programs.

He is also serving as the head of the U.S. delegation to the Nuclear Testing Experts Meeting in Geneva.

He has, in fact, just returned from the latest of those sessions and I don't think there is a better person in Washington to talk about the prospects for nuclear testing arms control with the Sovi

ets and the priorities that we ought to have, both with respect to trying to accomplish effective arms control in this area and what the consequences for the national security are of doing that job badly.

NUCLEAR TESTING PROGRAM

Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would make just a few points about the two amendments in question and I think my colleagues will want to complement these from their various perspectives.

Speaking principally from a policy point of view, first, of the nuclear testing amendment, it is striking to those of us in the Defense Department who have frequently felt the wrath of Congress when Members have rightfully, in my view, expressed indignation and concern that the Department was doing less than everything possible to test the effectiveness, the reliability, in short, the military credibility of weapon systems that we were asking you to fund and perhaps just as importantly, our troops to fight with if they have to.

You are familiar with those debates. They go on even today. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the DIVAD Air Defense Gun, the AEGIS cruiser, more recently the B-1B bomber, and I am sure the list will continue.

The truth is, as I believe the members of this committee are probably uniquely qualified to judge, no weapon system in the United States arsenal is more complex, has more uncertainties inherently associated with it in terms of its reliability, its safety, its effectiveness as a military system, than the nuclear weapons which ironically I believe we depend most critically upon.

Our view is, and it is a view we believe borne of considerable experience, that there is no alternative so long as we must rely upon nuclear weapons for our security, for the ultimate guarantee of both deterrence of aggression against us and deterrence of aggression against our allies, to a continued modest, restrained arms control compliant, but flexible nuclear testing program.

By that, I mean a nuclear testing program which involves underground tests, none of which exceeds 150 kilotons, none of which contaminates the atmosphere, but which, nonetheless, permits us to continue with high confidence to maintain and field nuclear systems which are safe, which are reliable, which will do the job that is required of them as a threat both nuclear and non-nuclear in dimensions evolves and emerges, and which will ensure that we are reasonably protected against surprise Soviet developments, surprise technical breakthroughs on their side.

Testing does that for us.

As I said, our experience is both with trying to do that very difficult, very demanding job in the presence of nuclear testing, and in its absence.

MORATORIUM ON TESTING

I think a few of you, possibly a very few of you, may actually have served in this august body when the United States entered into a moratorium once before on nuclear testing.

From 1958 to 1961, we actually tried to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without conducting nuclear tests, and the experience, frankly, of trying to do so, was most disappointing.

When the Soviets finally broke out of that moratorium with what remains to this day the largest series of nuclear tests conducted by anyone, including the largest single test, we found ourselves substantially disadvantaged in responding to that, disadvantaged in a number of respects, not the least of which is that we had fielded in the interim systems which proved to be defective when we resumed testing of them, and we suffered attrition among the qualified personnel that ultimately are the most important resource in the nuclear infrastructure that allows us to remain an effective nuclear power.

Mr. Chairman, the points that I am addressing are dealt with in greater detail in my statement, which I will submit for the record. One or two more points on this, if I may.

The central point which I hope I could leave you with is that as we debate a proposal which would have the effect, gentlemen, of precluding us from doing useful nuclear tests, useful with respect to continued performance of the jobs that I have mentioned, establishing and validating the safety, reliability, effectiveness and technological competence of these weapon systems, I hope that you will remember that we have, in fact, experimented with a similar notion before and while there are important questions of verification associated with particularly a proposal of the kind being proposed by some of your colleagues, I believe that even if there were no verification problems-and there surely are a proposal which would have the United States, in effect, place a nuclear freeze on its nuclear technology is not only benighted and ill advised, but against the harsh light of actual experience, it is demonstrably contrary to the national interest.

SALT II TREATY

Mr. Chairman, if I could just say a word or two about the SALT amendment. This administration I think has to an extent few others have explored conscientiously and rigorously the various alternatives available to a nation like ourselves faced with a situation which we have faced with respect to SALT II.

If you may let me characterize that situation, we were living under a treaty which had never been ratified by the formal constitutional processes of the U.S., and it was no accident. As a staff member of the body which would have considered that treaty, I can tell you it would not have passed in 1979. And President Carter asked that it not be taken up because it would not have passed, not simply because Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, but because the Treaty was on its face deficient, as the President has said, fatally flawed.

In addition to being fatally flawed, after December of 1985, it had expired. If ever it had any validity, it exceeded the life of the treaty itself, as we moved past December 31, 1985. And perhaps most importantly of all, the treaty was being systematically, and I believe cynically violated by the Soviet Union.