N.A.T.O. worried about the ‘thinking’ bomb

Press, 23 September 1983, Page 17

N.A.T.O. worried about the ‘thinking’ bomb

From

TOM ARMS

in London

“It is quite possible,” says one American defence expert, “to programme a missile launched in the continental United States to fly through the window of Yuri Andropov’s office and land in his righthand desk drawer.”

The opportunities presented by micro-chipped high-tech conventional weapons have opened up a new strategic area which the military planners are only just beginning to explore. In the United States, the first step for smart weapon supporters is to win the support of the Pentagon’s Defence Resources Board. Board members are already debating the pros and cons of hightech weaponry. If they decide in favour, smart weapons will be

included in the budget estimates submitted to Congress in January. It would take at least eight years to develop and deploy the weapons. The new technology has the support of Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, N.A.T.O.’s commander, General Bernard Rogers, and Robert Cooper, director of America’s Defence Advanced Research Project Agency. They claim high-tech weapons could lesson the likelihood of nuclear war by dramatically increasing America’s ability to win a war without using nuclear weapons. Economic, military, and political structures have become so specialised that it is theoretically possible to cripple a nation by knocking out a few selected targets

with well-placed conventional bombs. Smart weapons provide the military means to do this. For instance, the French have developed a special burrowing device which has been successfully tested on concrete runways. Scientists believe that it could be attached to a computer which would direct the missile to a fixed nuclear missile silo, burrow through the protective concrete barrier, and explode inside the silo. Thus the missile would be destroyed without turning thousands of square miles into irradiated ash. High-tech weapons scientists say that soon they will have radar and infra-red sensors which will pin-

point tanks, guns, and headquarters. Accompanying this equipment will be rockets that can pick out and destroy the commander’s tank from a formation of hundreds.

NATO planners have come up with a new strategy which incorporates the high-tech weaponry. They call it the air-land battle. Under this plan, N.A.T.O. strategy would change from one of standing firm and knocking out wave after wave of oncoming Warsaw Pact tanks, to a more flexible strategy of manoeuvrability and co-ordination of land and air forces which would rely on the new technology to knock out reinforcements behind ’enemy lines.

Such a policy would imply relinquishing West German territory in the early stages. This is unacceptable to the Bonn Government, which is the leading European opponent of high-tech weapons.

The Germans are also concerned about the cost of smart weapons, and have called for a report on the problem. Carl Builder, of America’s think-tank, the Rand Corporation, reckons that smart weapons would cost at least three to five times as much as their nuclear counterparts. General Bernard Rogers has called for a 4 per cent real increase in N.A.T.O. countries’ defence spending to deploy the new technology. The Germans, and other European countries, fear America’s lead

in micro-chip technology and the development costs involved would leave Europe more heavily dependent on American weapons and more a hostage of United States foreign policy. Non-nuclear strategic weapons raise the possibility of a “clean” war. Some politicians might be tempted to believe smart weapons would allow them to win a conventional war without it escalating to the nuclear level.

No-one has suggested nuclear weapons would cease to exist. They would be held in reserve for attack on major cities, either as a mopping-up operation or as a lastditch bid for victory if the conventional battle looked lost. Copyright — London Observer Service.