President Carter, in a 1980 report to Congress, speculated on how the Soviet Union might respond to the deployment of US weapons capable of destroying Soviet missiles in their silos:

“…adopting a launch-on-warning posture is perhaps the least expensive but the most potentially destabilizing and dangerous response option available to Soviet leaders.”

Topics
Ballistics, News and events
1.
Fiscal Year 1981 Arms Control Impact Statements, US Senate Committe on Foreign Relations and House Committee on Foreign Affairs (1980), pages 46, 50, 56, 338.
2.
R. Forsberg, Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race, American Friends Service Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. Available from Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, National Clearinghouse, St. Louis (1980).
3.
New York Times, 18 May 1982, page A1.
4.
The Military Balance, 1981–1982, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (1981), page 104.
5.
Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1980, US Department of Defense (January 1979), page 117.
6.
Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1982: Part 7, Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, Civil Defense, US Senate Armed Services Committee, (February‐March 1981), pages 3802, 3880, 3924.
7.
R. DeLauer, Astronautics and Aeronautics, May 1982, page 39.
8.
The New York Times, 29 May 1982, page A1.
9.
J. D. Steinbruner, Foreign Policy, Winter 1981–82, page 16.
10.
S. Glasstone, P. J. Dolan, eds., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., US Departments of Defense and Energy, (1977), pages 111, 115.
11.
See, for example, Analyses of Effects of Limited Nuclear War, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Organizations and Security Agreements, Committee Print (1975), page 51;
and S. D. Drell, F. von Hippel, Scientific American, November 1976, page 27.
12.
MX Missile Basing, US Office of Technology Assessment (1981), page 106;
and The Effects of Nuclear War, US Office of Technology Assessment (1979), page 91.
13.
A. A. Tinajero, US/USSR Strategic Offensive Weapons: Projected Inventories Based on Carter Policies, US Congressional Research Service, Report No. 81‐238F (1981).
14.
Hearings on Strategic Force Modernization Programs, US Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic and Theatre Nuclear Forces, October–November 1981, pages 43, 168, 179, 187, 203, 254, 405.
15.
B. Bennet, J. Foster in Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy. Politics, R. K. Betts, ed., The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1981), page 152.
16.
World Armaments and Disarmament, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (1980), pages XLII, XLIII, 182.
17.
P. H. Nitze in the Congressional Record, 20 July 1979, page S10077.
18.
D. F. Ustinov in Pravda, 12 July 1982;
quoted in The New York Times, 13 July 1982, page A3.
19.
H. York, Race to Oblivion, Simon and Schuster, New York (1970), page 232.
20.
See, for example, R. Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, The New York Times, 7 September 1982, page A23.
21.
McG. Bundy, Foreign Affairs, October 1969, page 1.
22.
G. L. Smith, Double Talk: The Story of the First Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. (1980).
23.
See, for example, J. Primack, F. von Hippel, Advice and Dissent, Scientists in the Political Arena, Basic Books, New York (1974),
New American Library, New York (1975).
24.
J. Allen, ed., March 4, Scientists and Society, MIT, Cambridge, Mass., (1970), page 142.
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© 1983 American Institute of Physics.
1983
American Institute of Physics
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