Missile gap
In the United States, during the
Background
The Soviet launch of
Political opponents seized on the event, helped by Eisenhower's ineffectual response, as further proof that the US was "fiddling as Rome burned." Senator
Discrepancy between intelligence and information made public
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 11-10-57, issued in December 1957, predicted that the Soviets would "probably have a first operational capability with up to 10 prototype ICBMs" at "some time during the period from mid-1958 to mid-1959." The numbers started to inflate.
A similar report gathered only a few months later, NIE 11-5-58, released in August 1958, concluded that the USSR had "the technical and industrial capability... to have an operational capability with 100 ICBMs" some time in 1960 and perhaps 500 ICBMs "some time in 1961, or at the latest in 1962."[1]
However, senior U.S. leadership knew these estimates of existing Soviet missile capabilities were completely inaccurate. Beginning with the collection of photo-intelligence by high-altitude
Curtis LeMay argued that the large stocks of missiles were in the areas not photographed by the U-2s, and arguments broke out over the Soviet factory capability, in an effort to estimate their production rate.
In a widely syndicated article in 1959, Joseph Alsop even went so far as to describe "classified intelligence" as placing the Soviet missile count as high as 1,500 by 1963, while the US would have only 130 at that time.[5]
It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes, was 4.[6]
Although U2 intelligence programs provided unprecedented and reassuring evidence that there was a missile gap in favor of the United States, President Eisenhower’s administration was accused of allowing the Soviet Union to accumulate a missile gap against the United States. The false claims behind a Soviet Missile gap began after CIA Director Allen W. Dulles presented new estimates of the Soviet’s nuclear program to the National Security Council on January 7, 1960. The report presented by Dulles showed the Soviet Union did not have a crash program to build ICBMs and that they only had 50 ICBMs operational. Disagreements between the future capabilities of the Soviet Union to produce ICBMs by members of the National Security Council leaked to the public causing the false notion of a missile gap. As members of the National Security Council, representatives of the U.S. Air Force pessimistically estimated that the Soviet Union could possess more than 800 ICBMs by 1963. One week after the National Security Council meeting, Washington Post reporter, John G. Norris, published an article that selectively reported and misinterpreted highly classified information that claimed the National Security Council acknowledged a missile gap with the Soviets and that they would possess over 1000 ICBMs by 1963. Later that month, The New York Times would publish an article that claimed that there was “clear evidence that the Russians [had] superiority in intercontinental ballistic missiles.” The distortions and inconsistencies caused by the inaccurate articles in the media led the public to mistrust the Eisenhower administration. Senator Symington accused the administration of “deliberately manipulating the intelligence estimate to mislead the public.” Journalists, such as Joe Alsop, charged the Eisenhower administration with “gambling the nation’s future” on questionable intelligence. Alsop’s ideas would appeal to John F. Kennedy who incorporated them in his election campaigns that criticized the Eisenhower administration for allowing a missile gap to exist.[7]
Political use
Hawkish members of Congress, such as Senator
In 1958, Kennedy was gearing up for his Senate re-election campaign and seized the issue. The
Eisenhower refused to refute the claims publicly for fear that public disclosure would jeopardize the secret U-2 flights. Consequently, Eisenhower was frustrated by what he conclusively knew to be Kennedy's erroneous claims that the United States was behind the USSR in its number of missiles.[10]
In an attempt to defuse the situation, Eisenhower arranged for Kennedy and
In January 1961, McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and
The missile gap was greatly in the US's favor. Satellite photographs showed the Soviets had 10 operational ICBMs, the US 57. According to Budiansky, the
During a transition briefing, Jerome Wiesner, "a member of Eisenhower's permanent Science Advisory Committee,... explained that the missile gap was a fiction. The new president greeted the news with a single expletive "delivered more in anger than in relief".[14]
During McNamara's first press conference, three weeks into his new role as Secretary of Defense, he was asked about the missile gap. According to Budiansky, McNamara replied, "Oh, I've learned there isn't any, or if there is, it's in our favor." The room promptly emptied as the Pentagon press corps rushed to break the news.
Now the president, Johnson told a gathering in 1967:[12]
I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor.
Effects
Warnings and calls to address imbalances between the fighting capabilities of two forces were not new, as a "bomber gap" had exercised political concerns only a few years earlier. What was different about the missile gap was the fear that a distant country could strike without warning from far away with little damage to themselves. Concerns about missile gaps and similar fears, such as nuclear proliferation, continue.
Promotion of the missile gap had several unintended consequences. The R-7 requires as much as 20 hours to be readied for launch so they could be easily attacked by bombers before they could strike. That demanded them be based in secret locations to prevent a pre-emptive strike on them. As Corona could find the sites no matter where they were located, the Soviets decided not to build large numbers of R-7s and preferred more-advanced missiles that could be launched more quickly.[12]
Later evidence has emerged that one consequence of Kennedy pushing the false idea that America was behind the Soviets in a missile gap was that Soviet premier
Second claim in 1970s
A second claim of a missile gap appeared in 1974.
That led to an exercise in competitive analysis, with a group called Team B being created with the production of a highly controversial report.
According to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the USA had a six-to-one advantage in the number of nuclear warheads over the USSR by 1976.[18]
A 1979 briefing note on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the missile gap concluded that the NIE's record on estimating the Soviet missile force in the 1970s was mixed. The NIE estimates for initial operational capability (IOC) date for MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs were generally accurate, as were the NIE predictions on the development of Soviet strategic air defenses. However, the NIE predictions also overestimated the scope of infrastructure upgrades in the Soviet system and underestimated the speed of Soviet improvement in accuracy and proliferation of re-entry vehicles.
NIE results were regarded as improving but still vague and showed broad fluctuations and had little long-term validity.[19]
Popular culture
The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they had read in The New York Times that the US was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a "Doomsday Gap." As the weapon is set up to go off automatically if the USSR is attacked, which occurs as the movie progresses, the president is informed that all life on the surface will be killed off for a period of years. The only hope for survival is to select important people and place them deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation clears. The generals almost immediately begin to worry about a "mine shaft gap" between the US and Soviets. In reference to the alleged "missile gap" itself, General Turgidson mentions off-hand at one point that the United States actually has a five-to-one rate of missile superiority against the USSR. The Soviet ambassador himself also explains that one of the major reasons that the Soviets began work on the doomsday machine was that they realized that they simply could never match the rate of American military production (let alone outproduce American missile construction). The doomsday machine cost only a small fraction of what the Soviets normally spent on defense in a single year.
See also
References
- ^ .
- ^ Pedlow, Gregory W.; Welzenbach, Donald E. (1992). The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance. History Staff; Central Intelligence Agency. pp. 159–160.
- ^ Monte Reel, "A Brotherhood of Spies: The U2 and the CIA's Secret War," (New York: Anchor Books, 2019), pp. 154-55
- ^ Monte Reel, "A Brotherhood of Spies: The U2 and the CIA's Secret War," (New York: Anchor Books, 2019), pp. 118-22
- ^ Joseph Alsop, "True Missile Gap Picture Belies Pentagon Response", Eugene Register-Guard, 13 October 1959
- ^ Dwane Day, Of myths and missiles: the truth about John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, The Space Review, 3 January 2006
- ^ Preble, C. (2003). "Who Ever Believed in the 'Missile Gap'?": John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 33(4), 801-826. Retrieved March 4, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27552538
- ^ Monte Reel, "A Brotherhood of Spies: The U2 and the CIA's Secret War," (New York: Anchor Books, 2019), p. 155
- ^ CNN Cold War - Interviews: Robert McNamara Archived December 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-679-64429-3.
- ISBN 9780742548008.
- ^ a b c Heppenheimer, T. A. (1998). The Space Shuttle Decision. NASA. pp. 195–197.
- ^ ISBN 9780385352666.
- ^ Preble, Christopher A. (December 2003). "Who Ever Believed in the 'Missile Gap'?": John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security"". Presidential Studies Quarterly: 816,819 ). … Herken, 140. This quote taken from Herken's interview with Wiesner conducted 9 February 1982.
- ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
- ^ "Excerpts from the BBC on ABM", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1968
- ^ Barry, Tom (February 12, 2004). "Remembering Team B". International Relations Center. Archived from the original on 14 February 2004.
- ^ "Memorandum of Conversation: J. Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia, President Ford, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State, et al" (PDF). The White House. July 27, 1976. Retrieved 2011-01-03.
- ^ "NIE Track Record" (PDF). DCI Backup Briefing Note. July 11, 1979. Retrieved 19 February 2014.