resources to exploit technology across a wide range of military missions. Their introduction of approximately 200 major systems every ten years, as well as a significant number of lesser modified systems for the past three decades, is convincing evidence of the intense and pervasive Soviet military development effort. Our intention has not been to match the Soviets weapon for weapon, but to continue to build upon our echnology advantage to neutralize the Soviet numerical advantage.

The tremendous imbalance between the Soviet Union and the U.S. in the production of military hardware remains of great concern. As shown in Table I-1, the Soviets have maintained their significant numerical advantage in the production of military equipment in most weapon classes. The production of our NATO Allies offsets some of this imbalance, but the Warsaw Pact still enjoys significant numerical superiority.

The extent and thrust of the Soviet research, development, and acquisition

effort intensifies the U.S. need to sustain modernization efforts and to further exploit our technological advantages. In addition, the competitive forces of a free society which stimulate innovation are important in keeping the Soviets from eroding our strength through their massive investment effort. In this regard, emphasis by the commercial sector on R&D investment has helped to limit Soviet versus U.S. asymmetry in expenditures for military research and development.

Our research and development program is designed to ensure the military capability to counter the threats posed by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact Allies, as well as other potential adversaries. Our continuous process of threat assessment and evaluation of our capabilities to deal with the threat is an important component of our efforts to ensure that scarce resources are allocated to the highest priority areas.

RDT&E PROGRAM

DEVELOPMENT

FY 1987 RDT&E investments are consistent with this Administration's overall defense priorities:

• To enhance nuclear deterrence, we are modernizing our strategic nuclear capabilities and their command and control assets.

To increase our conventional deterrence, developments are stressed that will multiply conventional force capability and raise the nuclear

threshold.

To strengthen readiness and sustainability, the reliability and maintainability of weapons and support systems are being improved.

To support the Department's emphasis on recruiting and retaining quality people, we are insisting on system designs that enhance the "person-in-the-loop" contribution to system performance.

To maintain and revitalize our alliances and obtain greater returns from our combined resources, we are increasing emphasis on cooperative research and development with our allies. Specifically, we are directing a major part of this emphasis to early deployment of systems employing emerging technologies.

The remainder of this chapter will highlight the important elements of our program.

Strategic Force Modernization

We are proceeding with a force modernization program that is yielding

As Soviet defenses become more capable, however, we will rely increasingly on the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB), with its low observable technologies, to maintain penetrating bomber effectiveness against critical Soviet targets, such as the growing number of strategic relocatable targets. Details of progress and schedule for the ATB program remain classified, but, to date, no significant technical problems have emerged to slow our work. The program is proceeding smoothly toward the first ATB test flight and a production decision.

For the third leg of our strategic triad, land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), the immediate future may be something of a crossroads. Three years ago the Scowcroft Commission recommended the deployment of 100 M-X missiles (the Peacekeeper) in existing Minuteman silos, the development of a Small ICBM (SICBM), and the aggressive pursuit of strategic arms control. Now, as we enter 1986, we have Congressional approval for only 50 Peacekeeper missiles, the requirement to develop an alternative survivable basing mode for a second 50 Peacekeepers, an ongoing advanced development program for the SICBM, and we have not yet completed the

difficult process of achieving strategic arms control with the Soviet Union.

To date, we have had ten successful flight tests of the Peacekeeper, and the program continues on schedule. Work continues on the SICBM with plans to enter full scale development this year. In parallel, we are proceeding with our evaluations of survivable basing modes for both missiles. Significant potential exists with the hard mobile concept for the SICBM and on superhard silos for Peacekeeper. SICBM in hard mobile basing can be made survivable. The main challenge is its affordability.

The quickest and least expensive way to improve ICBM effectiveness is with Peacekeeper. The minimum cost approach is the original Scowcroft recommendation--deployment in existing Minuteman silos. However, additional survivability can be obtained by deploying the Peacekeeper in superhard silos. This will force the Soviets to employ low confidence tactics or to develop specialized warheads for their ICBMs if they wish to threaten Peacekeeper. We are also examining several additional basing modes including the "carry hard" basing mode. This mode deceptively moves encapsulated missiles among many low cost aim points. If "carry hard" proves feasible, we could provide additional

survivability against any foreseeable Soviet threat.

The future therefore confronts us with a number of challenging issues that must be addressed. We hope that developments this year, including the report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on the Small ICBM, will provide us with needed insights regarding the best approach to continuing modernization of our landbased ICBMs.

These efforts to modernize U.S. strategic forces should go a long way toward restoring the balance between U.S. and Soviet offensive forces. At the same time, however, the USSR is pursuing a vigorous program of modernization that threatens to outstrip us if we do not continue to execute our current plans and fully deploy the systems now in development.

Conventional Force Modernization

As NATO and the Warsaw Pact move closer to nuclear parity, we can no longer rely as heavily on our nuclear arsenals as the mainstay of our deterrent posture. It becomes critically important to build and modernize our conventional forces to complement our strategic forces. Our conventional forces must be sufficiently robust so that the

8

chances of nuclear escalation are reduced.

Several recent developments suggest that conventional deterrence will become increasingly important to us and our allies. In the strategic defense arena, the President's SDI research program has the potential to contribute to protection against a first strike and, combined with limits on offensive weapons, to a common defensive posture for both the U.S. and the USSR. If we move toward an era where defensive systems dominate over offensive ones, we will be required to rethink our whole approach to deterrence. Our defense policy will have to evolve to reflect such changes. In this context, an increasingly important objective for research and engineering will be to exploit technology that can increase capability to maintain a credible conventional deterrent.

We

our

are currently exploiting emerging technological capabilities to - detect, track, target, and strike the enemy deep in his own territory. Elements of the SDI program such as battle management, target information transfer, and kinetic energy weapons research will yield results useful for improving our conventional capabilities as well.

Across a broad front, we are aggressively pursuing the technologies associated with reducing the natural signature (electronic and acoustic) of platforms. The design of systems to achieve this involves the blending of numerous factors including performance, cost, and survivability. Signature control technology offers a means of making large portions of the threat obsolete by drastically limiting the ability of enemy sensors to acquire, track, and provide the information required for engagement of U.S. weapon platforms when they are countering enemy attacks. In the future, it will be increasingly important for us and our allies to use these and other developments to achieve the force multiplier effects necessary to strengthen conventional deterrence.

An important element of our conventional force modernization program is our "Conventional Initiatives" package of developmental programs that will allow us to both see and strike the enemy throughout the depth of the battlefield. This set of programs include advanced long-range sensor systems such as Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), Precision Location Strike System (PLSS), and Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS) that will provide real-time