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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: MX Missile Vote
Message-ID: <645@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Mar-85 12:22:17 EST
Article-I.D.: tty3b.645
Posted: Fri Mar 22 12:22:17 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Mar-85 02:14:09 EST
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 >From: ward@ttidcc.UUCP (Don Ward)
 >I wonder which arms "balance" [Tim Sevener] could be referring to.  Is it the
 >7,000 ICBM warheads the USSR ADMITS to having compared to the 2,000
 >we will have IF all 100 MX missisles are deployed?  Or could it be the
 >hundreds of Soviet IRBM warheads in Europe compared to our few recently
 >installed Cruise/Pershing missiles? 

The Pershing and Cruise deployment will result in 408 U.S. medium-range 
missiles in Europe, not exactly a "few".  This must be added to the British
and French missiles.  There are no corresponding East German or Polish missiles. 

Where Mr. Ward gets his figures I have no idea; perhaps if I believed as he
did, I would also be worried about the alleged inferiority of the U.S. nuclear
capability.  Fortunately, the facts are quite different.  The U.S. has *added* 5500
strategic nuclear warheads over the past decade. (Source: Scientific American,
November 1982)  The Soviets have added about 5000 warheads during that period.
This puts the U.S. at a 9500 to 7800 advantage.  If both strategic and tactical
weapons are counted, the US has about 30,000, the USSR about 20,000.  We have
increased three-fold
the number of nuclear warheads our highly invulnerable submarines carry; we
have three times as many submarine-launched warheads as the Soviets do. (Source:
Paul Warnke in Arms Control Today, May, 1982.)  The International Institute for
Strategic Studies notes, "The premise that the U.S. has stood still is nonsense ...
On any index that is significant, the U.S. retains superiority." (quoted in 
Scheer, Robert "With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War", Random House,
1982.)  

Of course, military comparisons are complex and by emphasizing certain areas,
a serious defficiency can be made to appear evident.  Here is a simple chart:


			U.S.			U.S.S.R.

		More Warheads		More Launchers
		More diversity		More land-based missiles
		Greater Accuracy	Greater megatonnage
		NATO nations have	Warsaw Pact nations do not.
		nuclear weapons

"There is still 'rough equivalence.'  The US has and will continue to have
the ultimate deterrent." -- Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, 1982.

It is interesting that many of the same people who rightly criticize the
Soviet economy as inefficient and bureaucracy-ridden believe that same economy
can produce superiority to the largest and most powerful economy in the world.
It just doesn't make sense.  And the figures above show that not only doesn't
it make sense, it simply isn't true.  But Mr. Ward speaks for himself on this:

 >It has been claimed that a lie repeated often enough will be believed.


Mike Kelly