are near deployment of the long-range SS-NX-21 submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM) and are testing another new long-range cruise missile, the SS-NX-24. The Soviets are developing replacements for the SS-N-20 and SS-N-23 SLBMS for their next round of modernization.

The Soviets continue to deploy the new Bear-H bomber, armed with modern, long-range, air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs), and are developing another intercontinental bomber, the Blackjack. These systems will complicate the tasks of U.S. air defense forces and enhance the flexibility of Soviet offensive forces.

Chart I.B.1

A Comparison of U.S. Strategic Force Procurement with the
Estimated Dollar Cost of Soviet Strategic Force Procurement

In addition, the Soviets continue to pursue vigorously both passive and active strategic defense programs. Soviet passive defense measures include the hardening of ICBM silos and launch control facilities (far above the strength of our Minuteman silos); the proliferation of a vast network of hardened leadership and command, control, and communications (C3) bunkers; and an extensive civil defense effort. Soviet advantages in active strategic defense are substantial and increasing. While we maintain only limited homeland defenses, the Soviets boast a vast force of interceptors and surfaceto-air missiles (SAMs). The Soviet Union has the world's only operational antisatellite (ASAT) weapon capable of destroying satellites in low-earth orbit. It is also modernizing its 100 launcher antiballistic missile (ABM) system around Moscow, the only operational ABM system in the world. Other advances include construction of a new large phased-array radar network, including a radar at Krasnoyarsk, Siberia that is in clear violation of the ABM treaty. These Soviet defensive measures have no U.S. counterpart, which means that while our offensive forces may appear to be "equivalent" to theirs, they are not equivalent in their actual capabilities.

Measured by their dollar cost, Soviet strategic force procurement programs as a whole are considerably larger than ours, with an even greater disparity in strategic defense procurement programs (see Charts I.B.1 and I.B.2). These estimates exclude wartime mobilization and civil defense programs, which are far more extensive on the Soviet side.

Chart I.B.2

A Comparison of U.S. Strategic Defense Procurement Expenditures with the Estimated Dollar Cost of Soviet Strategic Defense

The U.S. strategic modernization program is replacing and augmenting our older systems, the majority of which have served for well over two decades. The B-1B bomber is now operational, providing an enhanced capability to penetrate steadily improving Soviet air defenses, a capability the B-52 is rapidly losing. Together with the air-launched cruise missiles deployed on selected B-52 bombers, the air-breathing leg of the Triad provides us with an effective and flexible deterrent capability, to be further augmented in the future with the introduction of the advanced cruise missile (ACM) and the advanced technology bomber (ATB).

We are continuing to build one Trident SSBN a year. The development of the improved Trident II SLBM, the D-5, remains on schedule for its 1987 flight test. The quietness, and other advanced features, of the Trident submarine increase the already very high survivability potential of our SSBN forces. With the introduction of the more accurate Trident II, our SSBN forces will acquire new, survivable capabilities that will discourage the Soviets from contemplating an attack against our land-based forces. We are also continuing to deploy submarine-launched cruise missiles aboard selected surface ships and submarines to make it more difficult, perhaps impossible, for the Soviets tc design an attack that effectively compromises our retaliatory capability.

The deployment of 50 of the Peacekeeper ICBMs, with the 10 very accurate warheads on each, will reduce the current disturbing asymmetry in U.S.-Soviet prompt, hard-target-kill capability. The 100 Peacekeepers, including the remaining 50 we seek this year, are not sufficient to threaten the entire Soviet ICBM force, but will strengthen our deterrent. We have also accepted the congressional desire for us to acquire the small, single-warhead missile.

A less publicized, but perhaps even more important part of our strategic modernization program serves to improve the survivability of our command, control, communications, and intelligence (CI) systems. The improved survivability of these systems helps to deter a nuclear attack designed to incapacitate the U.S. National Command Authorities (NCA) and their control over U.S. nuclear forces.

For the immediate future, our planned offensive force modernization appears sufficient to maintain a robust deterrent to a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States and our allies. While the Soviets apparently seek a capability to combine offensive strikes and defensive preparations designed to limit greatly the damage a U.S. retaliation could do, they do not have that capability, and are unlikely to believe that they do. In deterring other forms of attack -- in particular, more limited nuclear attacks overseas or a conventional attack on NATO we rely on a broad array of forces, including tactical nuclear weapons and, of course, strong conventional forces.

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By the late 1990s, more advanced defenses may substantially change the basis of deterrence and the nature of the strategic balance. The Soviets continue to work to secure active defenses. Our Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has made substantial progress in developing technologies to make defense against ballistic missiles feasible. When these efforts come to fruition, we can move away from an almost exclusive reliance on, and attention to, offensive strategic forces. To the extent that defenses render offensive forces ineffective, any temptation the Soviet rulers might feel to use their offensive forces would be overcome, not simply by their calculations about the prospect and effects of our retaliation, but by an assessment that their attack would be unsuccessful to begin with.

The Soviets have been pursuing advanced defenses, including many of the technologies being examined in our SDI. Their effort is both larger than our own and has a longer history. Some parts of it have been under way for more than two decades. The Soviets now have prototype ground-based lasers that could interfere with U.S. satellites. Prototype space-based antisatellite laser weapons and prototype ground-based lasers for defense against ballistic missiles are possible by the end of the 1980s. The Soviets, unhampered by any "scientists" who oppose their SDI, or any other unpermitted unfavorable reaction, are also continuing full-scale strategic defense research in particle beam, radio frequency, and kinetic energy weapons, and could field selected prototypes of these weapons by the mid-to-late 1990s. Nonetheless, the importance of precision manufacturing, microelectronics, and other advanced technologies for advanced defenses make this an area where the United States can draw on fundamental advantages if we are permitted to continue our needed work with reasonable funding.

5. Major Regional Balances

U.S. conventional forces are designed to help deter attacks on ourselves, our allies, and our friends. The discussion that follows focuses on those regions that are most directly threatened by Soviet aggressive behavior: Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. A principal focus of the regional analysis is on land power and air power, since these two elements of U.S. and allied forces will likely play a major role in defeating Soviet aggression in these regions. Crucial to their success, however, will be the contribution of naval power in maintaining control of the seas, and our power-projection forces in deploying units rapidly to these critical regions. Given their unique roles, both naval and power

projection forces are discussed separately.

a. The NATO-Warsaw Pact Balance

The conventional forces balance in Europe has historically favored, and still favors, the Warsaw Pact by very sizeable margins. For example, in terms of forces within the NATO guidelines area, the Pact has maintained an advantage of over 2-to-1 in main battle tanks and around 2-to-1 in combat aircraft for the past 20 years. Over the same period they have increased their advantage in artillery from less than 2-to-1 to over 3-to-1. Since 1965, NATO has lost its advantage in surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) and combat helicopters.

Chart I.B.3

Production of Selected Weapons for NATO and Warsaw Pact Forces (1977-1986)

The Pact currently holds an advantage in both of those categories of around 2-to-1. The Pact has consistently deployed infantry fighting

Today they hold roughly a 3-to-1

vehicles faster than NATO.
advantage in those types of systems.

These increases in Pact in-place ground forces reflect weapons production rates that have exceeded those of NATO for at least the last ten years (see Chart I.B.3). These rates have allowed the Pact simultaneously to expand and modernize the maneuver elements of their ground forces.

Those modernization efforts, in conjunction with the Pact's quantitative advantages, have resulted in a continuation of the trends adverse to us in ground force combat power. By one measure, which accounts for both quantity and quality of forces, the Pact's advantage in in-place ground force combat power has increased from around 1.5-to-1 in 1965 to more than 2.2-to-1 today.

Collectors of esoteric isolated statistics are fond of seizing upon single indicators, such as the fact that NATO has a greater GNP than the Warsaw Pact, to give them comfort to further their thesis that we do not need to spend very much on defense. But the annual weapon output of the Warsaw Pact, and the quality of those weapons, remain the most vital statistics of all, and they should be the most energizing for the West.

While we have done substantially better in terms of keeping the Pact from improving their tactical air power advantage, we have not been able to reduce that advantage. By one measure of tactical air power, which again incorporates both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the air balance, the Pact in-place air force advantage in their Western TVD has gone from less than 1.5-to-1 in 1965 to around 1.7-to-1 today. This situation is of additional concern since it complicates our effort to use tactical air forces to compensate for insufficient in-place ground forces.

Increases in the number of Pact long-range, dual-capable surfaceto-surface missiles (SSMs) pose a new and serious threat to NATO's air forces and air defense systems. Opposite NATO's Central Front the Pact has deployed around 600 SSM launchers with as many as four refire missiles per launcher. This threat will increase further as the Pact continues to modernize its SSM force with longer range, more accurate systems.

NATO can no longer rely as heavily as it once did on its nuclear forces in Europe to compensate for the Pact's conventional advantages. In recent years, the Soviet Union has made substantial improvements across the full range of its nonstrategic nuclear forces. These improvements include a substantial increase in nuclear-capable howitzers, fielding of improved shorter-range INF systems (e.g., the SS-23), and worldwide deployment of at least 441 SS-20 missile launchers. At the same time, the Soviet Union is developing an overall force structure and military strategy which would seek to neutralize NATO's capability for nuclear response early in a conflict.

Despite these adverse conditions and trends in conventional ground and air force combat power, as well as in the theater nuclear balance, we view it as unlikely that the Soviets would judge their force advantages sufficient now to achieve their political-military objectives in the time they require. Moreover, while the Soviets desire a capability to prevent NATO from employing nuclear weapons, we believe they have not attained that capability, and therefore that they must remain concerned with the risks of escalation.