President meets top aides to plot N-arms future

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 8

President meets top aides to plot N-arms future

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles President Reagan interrupted his holiday yesterday to meet his national security advisers and discuss ways of overhauling America’s nuclear arsenal.

Reagan aides said the President would be evaluating a variety of proposals with the Defence Secretary (Mr Caspar Weinberger). Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig), and other officials at a Los Angeles hotel 145 km from the mountaintop ranch where he has been holidaying. The Defence Secretary is the main author of some of the proposals to be reviewed.

Administration sources said these included plans on where to base the MX mobile missile, designed to be able to survive a Soviet nuclear attack, and for building a new Bl manned bomber to replace the ageing 852 fleet. President Carter halted

construction of the Bl in 1977.

Another topic was production of a more accurate missile for the Trident submarine and elimination of delays in the construction programme for the submarine itself.

Mr Weinberger is also interested in revamping the communications system by which American strategic forces are controlled, according to published reports.

Administration sources have said no immediate decisions are expected but that the talks signal the beginning of a full-scale debate within the Administration on how to achieve the nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union which Mr Reagan has promised. ....... Defence planners have said that the new proposals are based on a concept known as “deterrence through survivability.”

According to this concept, the Soviet Union would be deterred from initiating an assault against the West if its leaders knew that American strategic forces could withstand the attack and be able to retaliate.