Pentagon wants to lace Iron Curtain with explosives

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 18

Pentagon wants to lace Iron Curtain with explosives

NZPA-NYT Washington Pressed to find a politically feasible way to strengthen N.A.T.O. defences, the Pentagon has proposed the novel and untried idea of stitching the Iron Curtain with pipes full of liquid explosive. The network of vertical underground pipes, termed a “bomb pipeline” by Dutch officials briefed at the Pentagon, would be filled with explosive if a Soviet invasion appeared imminent, and would be detonated as Soviet tanks poured across N.A.T.O/S borders. The Pentagon made its, proposal as it urged the alliance to undertake a serious new commitment to improve its defences along the border with the Warsaw Pact. The idea recalls France’s infamous Maginot Line and American proposals for electronic barriers between, North and South Vietnam during the 19605. In fact, the bomb pipeline idea is the latest of a series, of United States proposals, so far thwarted by European political resistance, to beef up the alliance’s conventional defences — including border fortifications such as deep anti-tank ditches, minefields, explo-sive-rigged bridges, and the bulldozing of natural terrain into defensive positions. Pentagon officials, in urging N.A.T.O.’s adoption of

such measures, stressed that they must be undertaken in peacetime because N.A.T.O. would have no warning time to construct them during a crisis. United States officials are pushing for such border barriers for two reasons. First, they say, such barriers can provide N.A.T.O.’s outmanned and outgunned forces considerable protection at relatively low cost. Second, improved conventional defences would reduce N.A.T.O.’s present reliance on nuclear weapons to halt a Soviet advance into western Europe. Though N.A.T.O. officials agree that the alliance should reduce its dependence on nuclear weapons, they have been reluctant to strengthen conventional defences because of “political sensitivities,” according to declassified portions of a secret Pentagon report. Much of the political opposition comes because the border regions contain some of Western Europe’s most heavily populated areas. Within 100 kilometres of West Germany’s border with East Germany and Czechoslovakia, for instance, lie 40 per cent of the nation’s people and 60 per cent of its industry. Aside from aesthetic objections — German housewives not wanting tank traps under their

clotheslines — West German officials have argued that fortifications along the inter-German border would signal a final acceptance of the division of East and West Germany, an acceptance which Bonn has been unwilling to formalise. Privately, some United States defence officials have complained that the Euro- & Allies are simply ret to face the possibility of a highly destructive war being fought within their countries. These officials are critical of N.A.T.O.’s decision last spring to concentrate on the uncertain development of expensive high-technology weapons rather than committing more money now for more practical defences such as border barriers. The Pentagon report on N.A.T.O.’s conventional defences acknowledged that West Europeans “are no more eager to fortify their borders than the people of Texas or North Dakota.” The bomb pipeline idea was raised to meet such objections. “The whole point of these things is that they would be invisible and not even armed until the last minute,” said a Pentagon official. The idea of such devices is not to destroy oncoming Soviet armoured units, but to slow attacking forces and channel them into “killing zones” where . allied firepower. is concentrated.