DEFENSE: Yellow Light for the Neutron Bomb

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Recent Push. Under development since 1959 and first tested underground in Nevada in 1963, the neutron bomb received its most recent push in 1975 from then Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. He concluded that the threat to use NATO's tactical nukes was losing its credibility and therefore its deterrent power. Schlesinger reasoned that neu tron bombs would constitute a credible deterrent. President Ford approved production funds for two new warheads in the fiscal 1978 budget that is now making its way through Congress. The cost is classified but is estimated to be between $10 million and $20 million. It went almost unnoticed—and unpublicized—until debate began on the appropriation for the Energy Research and Development Administration, which handles development and production of all nuclear weapons. In the bill, the neutron bombs were only labeled as "enhanced radiation weapons." leaving some legislators in the dark as to their precise nature. The House quickly approved the item, but the Senate went into a rare closed session—only five such sessions have been held in the past 20 years—and later, by only one vote, defeated a proposal to delete funds for the weapon.

In the Senate, the fight against the bomb was led by Oregon's Republican Senator Mark Hatfield, whose chief worry was that the very precision of the weapon invites its use and would encourage escalation of conventional conflict into nuclear holocaust. Agreed Iowa Democrat Dick Clark: "I find the concept of a limited nuclear exchange extremely dubious. It is vitally important to retain the distinction between conventional and nuclear war."

That point was underlined by Herbert Scoville Jr., a former Pentagon special weapons project chief and former deputy CIA director. Scoville, whose objections apply not only to the neutron bomb but to all tactical nukes, wrote in the New York Times: "Our security depends on strengthening, not breaking, the barrier between nuclear and conventional conflicts. The neutron bomb should be put back on the shelf, and we should instead concentrate on developing ways of deterring aggression by conventional means."

As Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn sees it, Hatfield's argument requires the West to practice "self-deterrence." Said Nunn: "I remind my colleagues that the purpose of deterrence is to deter Soviet aggression, not to deter ourselves from responding to that aggression."

Senate backers of the neuts were strongly supported by the military. One Pentagon official said, "NATO is a defense alliance. It won't attack. Any attack will be conducted on friendly territory. We want to deter attack and defend territory without destroying what we want to save." In Belgium, NATO Commander General Alexander Haig Jr. said that America's allies had given the bomb their "enthusiastic support."