Ernest Graves
I was very much involved with the negotiation of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. After
his election in 1972 and the Watergate disclosure, President [Richard M.] Nixon was
working on things he could do with the Soviet Union--dramatic things to refocus
American attention. The proposal came up to have a treaty which would limit the size
of underground explosions.
Word of this came to us. My recollection is they were proposing a threshold of 50
kilotons as the largest test to be allowed. I got the laboratories to work looking at this,
and we concluded that would be a real problem for us in terms of its impact on
improving designs.
The argument in the nuclear program had always been along the following lines: if you
were going to have weapons like intercontinental ballistic missiles, you should allow
progress in nuclear weapons development, because the warhead was the payload. You
would pay many times over in the rest of the system if you were not allowed to
optimize the warhead.
For example, if the nuclear scientists were allowed to work on the design, they might
halve the weight of the warhead for a particular yield. If you knew the type of target
and the accuracy of the missile, you could decide on the yield needed to get the desired
level of damage. If you let the designers proceed and test, they might be able to give
you the desired yield for half the weight, and that would have tremendous implications
in terms of the size of the missile and its expense.
The warhead tended to be the driving factor, and we didn't want this treaty to restrict
the United States without any tangible benefit. As a result of our efforts, the threshold
was set at 150 kilotons, raised by a factor of three over what originally had been
proposed. I also saw the need for an accelerated test program of high-yield weapons
that were above this threshold, since once the treaty went into effect, you weren't going
to be allowed to do any more high-yield tests.
We insisted that we wanted 18 months to the effective date of the treaty, and we
wanted to use that 18 months to complete some programs that required high-yield tests.
We won approval and additional money to do this test program.
They had difficulty completing the program, but overall it was a success. I mention this
to explain my focus. I wasn't worrying about how the weapons were going to be
employed.
I left there and went over to OCE in 1975, and then I was involved in civil works. I
really started to take a harder look at these strategic issues when I went to the Office
of the Secretary of Defense in 1978. Then I got into political-military affairs. I was
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