the overwhelming issue of our time against which all other issues must be judged engaged is the issue of what I think we could call the human Prospect the question of the survival of Life on this planet the issue of whether the Earth will be Can increasingly habitable place or an in comprehensible hell? Every rational person fears nuclear war but every nuclear Nation increases its Arsenal and every nation seeks to become a nuclear Nation. So goes the the foul skinlogic the more nuclear weapons, we build a less secure we become and dust the more nuclear weapons, we build and the treasury of the great nations are invested in instruments of final destruction while racial and economic and social injustice Prevail in the world. And which might Seems to inspire people more than right. GK Chesterton once said that nothing is real until it becomes local. The threat of the nuclear arms race is not simply a political issue for me. It is immediate and real to my daily existence. I'm the father of two children whom I deeply loved and for whom I would give my own life. Try as I might I cannot separate the nuclear arms race from those two lives or indeed from the lives of countless other young people like them. There is no future in the nuclear arms race or for the world. It's a new nuclear arms race continues. If this madness is not stopped thermonuclear catastrophe either by Design or by accident will be increasingly difficult to avoid. I'm not content and I'm sure you are not either to pass on to our children the world in which their future and their very survival is indeed in Daily question. I'm not content to bequeath my children World in which the probability of survival is steadily diminishing. With an aroused citizenry in this country here and in Europe, I think we have the opportunity for the first time in a long time to begin to act. I think we can act by building on this citizen nuclear freeze movement to create a comprehensive Arms Control agenda that will not only freeze the number of nuclear weapons, but reduce the likelihood that those weapons are ever used 1983 is a critical year. It's the year to make progress on arms control for if we haven't made substantial progress before 1984 were again be caught up in national elections in both the United States and the Soviet Union will then go into another hold to see what the events of the election a year from November will hold. Nuclear danger we face doesn't allow us the luxury of waiting until 1985 to begin all over the search for a safer and more secure world. So faced with the growing threat of nuclear weapons, it will take a supreme effort of national and international will to carry us safely to the 21st century. And if we are to make the Supreme effort, I think we first have to eliminate about five myths. The first methods that seeking the control nuclear weapons amount to being soft on defense. Verifiable arms limitations agreements reduce the threat of nuclear war they make us stronger and not weaker. A cold practical military terms. We are more secure but we know what nuclear forces the Soviets have where they are deployed and how many will be deployed 5 years from now. We are more secure if we can control the number of nuclear warheads on each Soviet missile by treaty. We are more secure if there are fewer Nations that can launch a nuclear weapon against us. We are more secure if our defense resources are devoted to meeting the more likely military challenge namely conventional aggression and not spent on an endless nuclear arms race that it is within our power to avoid II MEF Is it negotiated Arms Control means trusting the Russians? Now anyone who's participated in arms negotiations even second-hand as I have on various occasions in Geneva. Knows that in dealing with the Soviet Union trust is non-existent in these meetings. And that's why our military leaders here in this country have always been involved every step of the way from deciding what are bargaining position ought to be the sitting down at the very negotiating table itself with their Soviet counterparts. And we have the course as well spent tens of billions of dollars assembling the most sophisticated intelligence system in the world the monitor Soviet forces particularly those subject to Arms agreements with these systems were able to know for example, when a Soviet ss-19 intercontinental ballistic missile is deployed where it is deployed the power of its engines and how many nuclear warheads it can carry. Third meth is that unilateral disarmament holds our best hope for averting nuclear war my view such a course could very well lead to the war that we must prevent for it would encourage dangerous miscalculations on the part of our adversaries. Phyllis Smith, is it the United States and the Soviet Union can increase their nuclear forces Beyond any rational level and still expect other nations to forego these weapons themselves. Coupled with this is also dangerously naive to think that we can promote the spread of nuclear materials around the globe and not see the 5th Horseman of nuclear terrorism one day ride down upon some American city. final methods that we can afford to wait the nuclear war simply will not happen, but other problems come first. But no myth is less worthy of Our Generation or more negligent. For today arm cannot be piled on nuclear arms without consequence not on the globe where once this turn enemies are today's neighbors or the nuclear weapons. We have today will be the nuclear weapons. Others have tomorrow. regrettably, there is no magic formula to ending the nuclear arms race and preventing the use of nuclear weapons, but there are some common sense steps that we must take Steps that can put us on a steady course towards peace. First I think it's essential that we attend to Old business even as we move forward on a new Arms Control agenda. What is that old business? I think the most important task in this regard is to immediately ratify. The salt II Treaty that treaty was signed in 1979 after almost seven years of bipartisan negotiation by three American Presidents two of them Republicans. The salt II Treaty has not yet been ratified. But it is still before the United States Senate and neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has done anything to violate its Provisions the provisions of that draft treaty. But until it's ratified this treaty does not have the full force of law or can we expect it to last forever through the ups and downs of us Soviet relations? The links with ratification of salt to should be a series of companion actions. The first would be a strong reaffirmation of a 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. Which is provided an arms race and highly expensive and almost certainly unworkable defensive missile systems his treaties up for review and it must not be modified tampered with or ended. Second I think we should resume negotiations with the Soviets to ban entirely the testing and deployment of anti-satellite weapons are fast developing weapons that could disrupt command and control and communication systems and intelligence capabilities vital to preventing a nuclear crisis from escalating to nuclear war. We should also resume negotiations for a ban on all nuclear testing for all time and we should ratify the 1974 threshold Test Ban Treaty and its 1976 companion the peaceful nuclear explosions treaty both of which contain unprecedented Soviet concessions regarding on-site inspection. These two treaties signed more than 6 years ago still have not been ratified by the United States Senate. I think these measures are vital steps, but I regard them as only a prelude for even if we were to do all of them. We would have only regain lost ground. We must do more than regain lost ground for time and certainly not on our side. I think we must carefully developed a new Arms Control agenda appropriate for the 1980s and 90s. Last February I introduced a senate resolution making the focus of strategic negotiations the prevention of the use of nuclear weapons. This may sound somewhat strange but up till now the focus of our negotiations has been over all limits on the number of weapons and launchers and Warheads with very little attention being given the steps to prevent those weapons from being used in the use of nuclear weapons. I think must be the central organizing principle for future Arms Control talks. It's the clearest definition of the problem that we face and it's consistent with requirements for a strong National Defense. I think talk directed towards preventing the use of nuclear weapons should have for objectives. First I think we must devise new measures to prevent the possibility of a nuclear exchange through accident or miscalculation. in 1979 and 1980 at the behest of the Senate armed services committee on which we both Serve Center Goldwater and I not particularly likely pair Conducted in the best vacation into the adequacy of of our so-called strategic warning system and the continuing serious problems that that system has encountered. That system as I mentioned before as a product of tens of billions of dollars of investment contains overhead satellites of the most incredible sophistication. Computers down links relays displays and whole host of very very technical equipment. We discovered that during an 18-month period 1978 and 79 that system malfunctioned in one degree or another / 150. * this is the American strategic warning system. All those mornings Apple half-dozen were serious enough to put our forces on higher degrees of Readiness and alert. and one of those mistaken warnings lasted a rather long. Of time long enough for strategic missiles to a breach these Shores if fired from the ocean. And it was found out after a review of that accident if you will. The cause of the breakdown in the system the most serious one in that year and a half. Was a dollar 79 computer chip in a computer and Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. I think one step we should take two is to establish a joint. Soviet American crisis control facility to handle exactly these kinds of incidents in which senior civilian and military personnel from both countries with monitor nuclear weapons related activities, including the test launch of missiles and the deployment of new systems. Let's posole could also I think prove useful in preventing a wider War should a nuclear terrorist ever threatened either of our countries increasingly as we move into the late 1980s and 1990s the problem of malfunction Warning Systems and miscalculation and error will become an increasing throughout this country security. I think a second aspect of this new agenda must concentrate our negotiating efforts on reducing those nuclear forces that either side might use to attempt a pre-emptive first-strike. Highly accurate land-based missiles with multiple Warheads are beginning to present this very danger providing increasing incentives for one side or the other to strike first. Example of Soviet ss-18 heavy missile is one such threatening weapon. The new United States MX. Missile is another Reagan administration originally planned to place is highly accurate new system the MX in pick silos that the Soviets might be able to destroy by striking first. We better course have the worst of all world. We would have met have a missile. So threatening to the Soviets. They would need to destroy it and that missile would be located in silos that the Soviets might believe they could destroy these first strike muscles both ours and theirs should be priority weapons to eliminate in any short-term and long-term Arms Control negotiations the third I think we have to see across-the-board reductions substantially it all categories of nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms reduction should eventually mean to cut the superpowers nuclear arsenals by at least 50% Americans as diverse as our former ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan and our former commander and chief in the Pacific Admiral Noel guyler have proposed exactly the step but we shouldn't be under any illusion about achieving this outcome for attempting to reduce to enormous hostel military machines Each of which is the product of different technological Styles and different geographies different political beliefs in different military requirements. We should also not be rigid but the transition to a new Soviet leadership that makes no sense for us to have only a single string and arbo whether we're talkin about strategic systems or the intermediate-range nuclear force discussions presently going on in Geneva take-it-or-leave-it plans to limit arms. I'm out to nothing more than unilateral diplomatic disarmament and a convenient excuse for doing nothing. We're serious about establishing barriers against nuclear catastrophe. We have to be willing to search down many roads and seeking the one that promises real progress. The world where several days ago, the president United States proposed turning America's technological genius for to a massive Star Wars like defensive effort. That wouldn't his words free the world from the threat of nuclear war. No matter how well-intentioned the president was what he is suggesting. Would almost automatically violate the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. It would quite probably not work. It would be enormously expensive and most important it would be highly destabilising space-based weapons, whether offensive or defensive would represent a fundamental change in the arms race that throw the whole concept of deterrence. Into a cocked Hat by injecting large uncertainties and each nation's land-based forces and that's triggering a massive effort to overcome them. President's proposal of outer space weapons is inimical to our aim of slowing down the arms race and regulating it to avoid imbalances and uncertainties. Stop this radical change in the arms race before it begins. Even this would be a precedent-setting step toward continued and Lasting. Peace. Being that step last month along with Senators Hatfield and song. This is reduce the resolution end of the Senate and Aberdeen. The very thing the president is proposing an arms race in space that resolution directs the president to negotiate a verifiable ban on weapons in space and on weapons to be used against space targets. Or we could succeed at every objective I've listed so far in the business of preventing nuclear war would still be only half done. But today we Face an additional grave danger and that's the spread of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons. Prevent that spread we must persuade new countries to sign the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty by which a hundred and thirteen Nations have already Forsworn nuclear weapons. We must with the Soviet Union set an example by restraining our own nuclear weapons programs. But most of all we must be willing to stop the international trade of nuclear materials and Technology. Today nuclear reactors around the world and produced about 140 tons of plutonium enough to build more than 20,000 Nagasaki size bombed. We should make this plutonium as difficult to obtain and it's uneconomic to use as possible and that will require an international plutonium freeze a whole to the reproduction of separated plutonium for both military and civilian purposes. That kind of a freeze would limit the availability of separated plutonium for weapons purposes, but would not harm legitimate nuclear power program, which require only low rent in Rich uranium. I like to close these thoughts today with a short quotation from a speech about nuclear war. Was made it exactly 25 years ago in November 1957 by the late General Omar Bradley. He said If I'm sometimes discouraged it is not by the magnitude of the problem. But why are colossal indifference to it? Today, I think we've begun to alter this colossal indifference to the nuclear threat and what does beginning we move towards a somewhat safer world. For if we are forced to think about nuclear war to contemplate its likelihood and its consequences. Then we are Families Our communities and our nation must be compelled to act and individually and collectively will make a contribution by acting to our and our children's future. Individually, we each have our vision our own idea of what we want this great nation to stand for in to accomplish. But I believe these personal Visions share at least one element in common and that the that is that the purpose of America is peace a secure and Lasting. Peace. Without this purpose we will fail but with this purpose a generation can make its place in history and in such purpose there is hope. Thank you very much. Thank you Senator heart for a very thoughtful discussion on arms control. The senator has agreed to answer questions about the acceptance is your Point of you receiving am I near the Senators that you're serving within the representatives are serving within Washington? Well, I think the results of the elections of and 70 of 78 and 80 in terms of the prospects for Meaningful arms control and and Senate support for arms control. We're not particularly bright. I think for a whole lot of reasons we need and go in to hear that other issues tend to dominate the public debate for tickly economic issues. And I think of the result of that was as a consequence the election of a senate less inclined towards bipartisan nonpartisan balance verifiable Mutual Arms Control agreements in particular support for the salt II Treaty. But since the last 6 or 12 months in the growth of the citizen arms control movement, which frankly wasn't around when we were debating. The salt II Treaty in the late 70s. I've seen on an appreciable ship on the part of a lot of my colleagues in both political parties who might not have been so interested in the subject of arms control as soon as they now are and there's nothing as we say in politics to the focus one's attention, like seeing the The Gallows being built outside your your cell and I think is people demand of their elected officials that they address this question and direct and the dress it seriously and directly and positively and not just engage in rhetoric about the Soviet threat not just pursue them. I think I'm fortunate course the president took the other night of of seeking to expand the arms race rather than negotiate limitations on it. Then I think I think in the next few elections members of the Congress and the Senate particularly will be facing an increasingly hostile electric. I think the message is getting across. I don't think the American people are moving towards unilateralism. I don't think they're moving towards the song. I don't think they're becoming soft on defense. I just think they're exercising a great deal of Common Sense and good judgment, which is what Thomas Jefferson said would say the country after all. What's your position on the nomination of Kenneth Adelman? And what do you think the Senate is going to do? I am opposed to mr. Adelman on two grounds one has experience in the field and the other is a commitment to the goal the stratum when it's done some brushing up on the whole issue of arms control and the technology of it the weapon systems and its history and if U Willets theology since his first appearance before the Senate, but at that time he was only marginally equipped to handle the office and since that time during those hearings and since that time a whole variety of things have occurred. I saw his own statements both currently in and previously others internal memoranda and documents to call into question whether he is in fact philosophically committed towards negotiation of control agreement certainly on any kind of accelerated basis. It's on both those counts. I personally cannot support him. I think his nomination is in some serious trouble. If for no other reason that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted the domination out with disapproval and that was a bipartisan vote. Let me say first I'm delighted to hear you support the salt to having worked many years myself and watching it on that many who agree with you on the need for very major reductions in nuclear arms. Also believe that we should if we do that increased conventional arms, I would you care to comment on that. Well, it's important question. Then I think it was the focus on that was most dramatically brought by the article that Miss Macnamara in and a two or three other co-authors publishing. Foreign Affairs, I guess some months ago and it was the so-called no first use Doctrine in Europe that we would not we would adopt a policy of not using nuclear weapons first, but that in the in the minds of the authors and I think correctly so meant that we would have to substantially increase our commitment to tomato and I think that's a correct assessment. What concerns me about If you will a conventional arms build-up as it now a nine-year member of the Senate armed services committee is the way in which increased money for the conventional forces is being spent and the doctrine that it's being used to to pursue. I give you this two two examples. The Soviets have made the greatest breakthroughs or buildup in all of their arms. Procurement in the maritime or navel area and if there's a startling increasing Soviet capability in the last 15 to 20 years. It's been in Maritime power. The president is fond of showing the bar charts that show the number of Soviet ships in the number of American ships to suggest that somehow the government of the United States has not been doing in the past what it ought to be doing in terms of building ships. The reason we haven't is because we're going the wrong kinds of ships. We will never catch up with the Soviets in terms of numbers of ships unless we build different kinds of ships. The two nuclear aircraft carriers will bring our total Navy for all practical purposes from a Navy of 13 ships to anavia 15 ship's the ships being carriers. I am not against carriers. Although I'm opposed to these two. I am for no time for aircraft carriers. I am for more of them and the only way we'll be able to afford more as to build smaller conventionally powered carriers affordable in greater numbers second, even if we bought the right kind of weapon systems What does a prophetess in terms of Defense to deploy those forces wrongly today? The principal area of Confrontation in Europe is the central front in Europe essentially the German border with East Germany and other nations along that border. The NATO forces have deployed most of their forces on a 12-mile court. If that sounds familiar to you, it should it roughly approximates. What's the French French didn't the late 30s. The reason we're doing that is not because of defense or military Doctrine but because of political Doctrine the Germans want to believe that if they confrontation occurs, it can be contained in that 12 mile quarter any serious, dude in the military history of Soviet capability knows that that quarter can be penetrated very very quickly and the Soviets would then have a fairly clear shot to the English Channel. So the question is not so much how much we spend the money. But but how what kind of weapon systems were building where they are survivable and an affordable and maintainable in combat and second how they're being being deployed and we have a long way to go in that area and this Administration is not addressing that yet the senator heart. The president has cast up the discussion over disarmament in almost absolute terms of Good and Evil and to a large degree. This is the case with respect to General American foreign policy with respect to Latin America and other countries isn't that really at the heart of this problem of disarmament and other foreign relations and if that's true, if you agree with that that's part of the problem the ideological component of this then how will your campaign address that is you run for the presidency? I think it is at the very center of our failure to make progress on arms control in the past 2 years. And I think it's at the center of a lot of what's wrong with our foreign policy. Generally essentially what the president has done not only in that last speech but I think throughout his two years in office is perhaps as well as his 20 or 30 years in public life. his to draw a kind of pipe kind of black and white World in which there are only forces of Good and Evil. We are the forces of good the Soviets are the forces of evil and there is nothing in between. It was the mentality that fueled the cold war in the 1950s that brought us to pursue policies of Confrontation and conflict and instead of seeking areas of agreement and reduce tensions. Alec history must show that the shifting that policy began under Democratic administrations, but was pursued with equal Vigor under Republican administrations as well. That was a Nixon and Ford. So what we're talking about here is not partisan. It is in fact ideological and there is a difference. The the fundamental mainstream Centrist moderate foreign policy of this nation since World War II has by and large men to seek areas of agreement and reduce tensions particular focusing on the reduction of of the nuclear arms race. I think with the election of 1980 we reverse that Trend we have now moved to an ideological extreme and extreme which conditions its policies not only in arms control but almost all of its foreign policy on confrontation and conflict and on a world which is in fact seen in blacks and whites. I fundamentally do not agree with that. I accept fully President Kennedy statement that this nation now 20 some years later almost 25 years later the still engaged in the Twilight Struggle with the Soviets in with forces of Communism. I am not simplistic about Soviet intentions or about Soviet expansionism. But on the other hand, I think their ways to counter it that don't involve bankrupting the treasury of this country or depriving the disabled The Young and the elderly have what their basic needs might be or for that matter depriving our conventional forces of what they need to do the job that we call upon them to do. So what my campaign stands for what my Administration will stand for is resumption of of the best of the policies of the past namely update. What was In shorthand terms called a cunt I think was a lot more complex than that. But certainly the resumption of as I've indicated my remarks a central premise of East-West relations the reduce reduction of tensions generally and the elimination of the nuclear arms race and a leadership role for this nation in in bringing the world back from the nuclear Abyss. We are the nation after all whether we like it or not that introduced nuclear power to the face of the Earth and I think we have a political and moral obligation to take the lead and reducing that threaten eliminating that threat. Has Senator you stated earlier that and your judgment the Soviet Union has not violated the conditions of salt to I'd like to know how you are so certain of that and how you are so certain that they would not violate such conditions in the future when all that I have been led to believe what I hear and and see is that they've done nothing but violate those conditions all the way along the line. Well, there is disagreement here and I clearly Represent one point of view but that point of view has some substance in Smith or t to it. When the salt II Treaty was first. submitted to the senate for ratification We heard testimony in the armed services and Foreign Relations Committee is at Great length at Great length from our military and intelligence leadership that is to say director of Central Intelligence and other officials of the intelligence Community The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Senior military commanders that every aspect of the salt II Treaty was verifiable. And it was on that basis that those military and intelligence leaders testified on behalf of that treaty and they testified quite clearly that they would not support the treaty unless they believe we had what the tree language calls National Technical means a verification which is a diplomatic euphemism for overhead satellites ground stations and a whole variety of other capabilities. The president himself or at least his administration. I think he is. the next Authority I would appeal to in terms of what has happened since that treaty was submitted but not ratified when he said I think sometime middle or late last year that the policy of his at his administration would be to continue to comply with the terms of the salt II Treaty so long as the Soviets had and at least implicit in what he said was that they had complied now, I think the dispute arises on two levels or in two phases one is the question of did the Soviets live up to the Salt 1 treaty and there I thinks former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others have written and spoken that they did not I will tell you what I know about that and that also has been the subject of great dispute and and debate the salt 1 treaty created a committee which the salt II Treaty would have perpetuated did perpetuate the committee call the standing consultative commission and that commission is composed of technical experts from both sides Soviet Union and the United States and the treaty provide salt 1 and salt 2 if either side feels at 8 a term of the Treaty of being violated by the other the standing consultant commission is Cole together. And the the offense is reported and the other side is tasked with with. rebutting the charge and essentially what happened under several years of salt 1 Was it there were about six or eight? I think it's fair to say reasonably serious charges on both sides. We're particularly. I think it almost every case what happened was one side or the other would cover up literally put a cover over a deployment site where silos are being built or submarines were leaving manufacturing capabilities or for that matter one of the manufacturing capabilities himself without going into too much detail here. What happens is when you have a limit on the overall numbers of weapons. The other side is obligated to guarantee that you can count. You count the land BAE Systems by the silos and you count the sea base systems by watching the submarines come out of their factories and watch them out in the open be outfitted. You count the tubes count the launchers in the submarine now on a handful of their response on sometimes was these were bitter winter Northern bases and we had to protect our workers. We said that's too bad. We need to count the tubes in that submarine that you're outfitting and the cover was taken away and my understanding is and I can't totally Absolutely verify this with my understanding is that in each instance on both sides. Keep mind. They had about as many complaints against things. We were doing covering up of deployment or whatever. Those changes were made that left. The other side's cameras take their pictures. So the bulk of authority in terms of the compliance with salt one. That was that there were step taking on both sides that caused concern and dispute and in each case those were changed and my understanding is so far over the past three years under the end of the Carter Administration first two years of the Reagan Administration. No significant or appreciable violation of the salt II Treaty has occurred. And I is one Senator would never vote for support a tree Norwood eyes present the United States submit a treaty to the Senate of the United States for ratification that I was not assured by my military commanders and intelligence officials could not be verified by our own independent means verification or opposition to unilateral disarmament and have also stated that you think that we should take the lead in eliminating this threat. You see some specific steps and we could take unilaterally that might move toward Mutual disarmament. Yes. I do one instance. I would cite. Is one that I proposed myself to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, I guess now about a year ago, which has been proposed even earlier than that by Congressman Al Gore of Tennessee and received the endorsement of no less than former. Secretary Henry Kissinger in Time Magazine. I think two or three weeks ago and that is the abandonment of the MX missile the new heavy land-based ICBM with multiple warheads and in its place the production of a single Warhead land base system that is mobile and maneuverable. Primarily on existing Military Reservation, which is already been at least an outline form designed by the military. It's size and weight would be roughly 1/3 or 1/4 of the AMX proposed muscle which is the largest missile anyone ever thought of and its Warhead configuration was as good as I say be one rather than 10 or more and it would be mobile and therefore not a threatening first-strike weapon. We could then invite the Soviets to respond and and see what they did. In any case it makes sense for us to do it. Even if they don't and if they are is threatened by our High degree of accuracy and targeting as we are by theirs and ours is better than their then this is something they ought to be interested in as well. I think there is some other steps. I think not building the B-1 bomber going forward with the air launched cruise missile program, which is also not a first-strike weapon and a variety of other steps like that. The goal of all this isn't to win the race. The goal is not to have the most weapons. The goal is not to have the most accurate Warheads. The goal is something called stability. What we ought to be doing is convicted configuring our own nuclear forces to achieve that goal of stability almost regardless of what the Soviets are doing. We don't want an unstable world. President Reagan in his speech last week. I gave one account has a balance of forces between the US and the Soviet Union and I know that and reading a number of Publications are quite the number of quite widely different accounts. I wonder if you could comment on your view as you see it from the Senate and how that might affect a nuclear nuclear freeze the position you've taken Also an important question in all discussions of of the military or defense or national security or whatever you want to call it. It's imperative that we always distinguish between what a cold conventional forces and strategic nuclear forces, too often that is not done in too often even by the president himself. That's not done and I frankly gets very confusing to people because Ordinary taxpaying citizens tend to think of defense is all one thing. Two separate quite distinct problems or sets of problems conventional forces are clearly are Air Force or army or Marine Corps in our Navy strategic or nuclear. Forces are the B-52's the icbms. The Polaris Poseidon's trident ones trading tools increasingly the cruise missiles in the rest. Calories from blurring there in that the same Services operate the Strategic systems, but by and large people who deal in defense issues can can make the distinction along the lines of the kind of Warhead that the weapon contains. Hi, there's a there's a simple question that those of us who were Layman. Relate people try to penetrate the fog with in hearings when the armed service when the military commanders come to testify and the question. We asked the secretary of the chief of the army chief chief of Naval operations is would you today trade your service whole thing the people equipment everything else for your Soviet counterpart? Every year they say no, but every year they say we're behind. I've never quite been able to figure that out. I guess they think they are, you know, if your chief of Naval operations, you think the we're behind in the army or something, but in any case Over and over and over again what they say is our ships are more capable. Our Radars are better. Our weapons are better. Our men are better trained or people are better trained. I wouldn't trade an American sailor for a Soviet sailor on turn on lawn, but they do say is they got more than we have and what I indicated earlier in terms of of the 600 chip Navy or the naval comparison and the bar charts that the president and others of his persuasion are always want to use is that they don't reflect quality and they certainly don't respect the fact that we are spending per unit a lot more on our weapons than they are. We can't have it both ways. We cannot be buying 3.6 billion dollar nuclear aircraft carriers and a billion and a half dollars of aircraft on them and 12 or 15 billion more dollars for very elaborate protective escorts for those ships. To a nuclear aircraft carrier task group of 25 or 30 billions of dollars and then say we don't have as many as the Soviets on the Strategic side. I think the answer is essentially the same the question is can you deter the other strike side from striking first and the answer is yes, and but that does not mean that certain steps must not be taken periodically to modernize that force or for that matter to change it we can in fact make ourselves more secure. Bikes by the kind of if you will unilateral steps that I was outlining before we have a thousand icbm's in silos and the Soviets can Target those silos. Maybe we're better off with two or three hundred single Warhead smaller mobile missiles that cannot be knocked out by a first strike and then maybe we don't need the Thousand icbm's. Who knows? One more question. Yes, sir, Senator a most people I think support a balance mutually verifiable and equal nuclear arms limitation treaty and I think some people ever say that we cannot stop the stop the arms race until a treaty has reached which even by the most optimistic expectations would be many years from now. The fear is that if we allow the Soviets in the meantime to gain a significant advantage over the US of balance in equal treaty will be nearly impossible. Can you tell us as president whether you would continue the arms build-up until a treaty was signed? No, I wouldn't continue the arms build-up. I would continue necessary force modernization that Overcame Soviet capabilities such as first strike capabilities and that made our deterrent survivable and stable and if that meant building different kinds of Weapons Systems, I've already Illustrated to the air launched cruise missile system. I would continue because it is not destabilizing. It would be hours after nuclear war started before those Crews muscle showed up. So they can't be accused of creating an unbalanced environment and I would pursue in place of fixed Silo based icbm's the possibility of a smaller non First Strike Atlanta BAE Systems, and I would continue that until there were three there were a treaty preventing or prohibiting even that from being necessary, but frankly, I think the future of Arms Control negotiations, why isn't doing both things I think they it lies in treaties that in effect Force both sides to build different kinds of systems. If we have a lot of eggs in the in the ICBM or land base systems basket the Soviets have even more you could say right now that they're in worse shape than we are because they've got 70% of their nuclear capability in silos and the silos are the most vulnerable weapon systems. They are much more vulnerable than submarines at sea or for that matter bombers or other delayed Survival Systems. And so the big problem we face today are they are The land-based Silo based First Strike multiple Warhead weapons. And those are the ones we are to focus on both through negotiations and through the restructuring of our own forces at the same time. Let me thank all of you for your hospitality has enjoyed being affected.