DOUBTS ABOUT WEST’S TECHNOLOGICAL LEAD

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27395, 7 July 1954, Page 11

DOUBTS ABOUT WEST’S TECHNOLOGICAL LEAD

THE NEW WEAPONS

[By JOSEPH C. HARSCH in tM Boston “Chrirtlen Science Monitor") (■Reprinted bv Arrangement)

Washington, June 24.—Since the socalled cold war began there has been a comfortable and pleasant assumption in the Western world, particularly in the United States, that regardless of what else might happen, the West would always retain a lead over the Soviet Union in the development of new weapons. Upon this assumption rested a belief that, if worst came to worst, the West, with its always superior weapons, could win a final trial of strength with the Soviet Union. This concept was built deep into the whole fabric of the so-called military “new look” and the doctrine of “massive, mobile retaliation” because the ability to retaliate massively can be presumed only if one presumes superiority in the weapons of massive retaliation. , . „ The military experts m Washington have not yet conceded to the Soviet Union their belief in the existence of an American lead in technological development of new weapons, but they have let us know that the “lead” no longer seems to be as long or necessarily as permanent as had been earlier presumed.

Official Admissions Whether the Soviet Union has been narrowing a gap or we have merely discovered the narrowness of the gap is a matter of controversy. At the Quantico defence conference Mr Donald A. Quarles, Assistant-Secretary of Defence for Research and Development, said our “technological position vis-a-vis the Soviet is less favourable than it was a year ago.” The Secretary of Defence, Mr Charles E. Wilson, preferred to say that "we have a better understanding of what the gap is." Whichever way you choose to take it, either that the Soviet Union has narrowed the gap or that it was never as wide as we presumed, the warning is clear in what Messrs Quarles and Wilson said: the United States does not possess as wide and as permanent a lead in technological development as generally has been assumed in most United States thinking about the military balance of power. The known facts are in themselves rather startling. Here are some of them: less than nine months ago the United. States sent its first atomic cannon to Europe. The Soviet Union is reported to nave equipped its forces in Germany with atomic cannon this spring. The United States hydrogen bomb was supposed to regain the lead in atomic weapons lost when Moscow obtained the atom bomb. On the known record the United States H-bomb preceded the Soviet H-bomb, but the

(■Soviet claims It actually had it firtt, which could be true. Certainly it had it very soon after the West did. There is no reason to believe that the Soviet Union is lagging appreciably in the jet fighters. The new MIG-17 does not appear to be inferior to the latest Western models. IndeChina disclosed a startling development of Soviet-produced radar-con-trolled anti-aircraft guns. The Soviet Union is producing multi-engined intercontinental bombqfs. The United States is only now producing heavy tanks which are in a class with’Soviet World War II tanks. The Kremlin claims to be well on the way to intercontinental rockets. The Soviet Union probably has at least as good, and perhaps even a better, antiaircraft defence system. Wishful Thinking Until recently Soviet claims about weapons were heavily discounted on the ground that the men of Moscow love to indulge in day-dreaming about their inventiveness. Some of their current claims may be propaganda, but it is no longer safe to make that assumption. We have been fooled too often by wishful thinking about Soviet technological inferiority. This kind of wishful thinking has done disservice in the past as anyone knows who remembers 1938, when Ger. many’s war effort was bound to collapse because, we were told, there was not enough oil to grease the railroad bearings; or when we watched the rise of Japanese military power with complacency because the Japanese, we were also told, could only imitate Western machinery.

Russian Research What has been overlooked is that while Moscow never has devoted much technological energy to machinery for civilian use. and while the peasant lags behind the Westerner hi ability to maintain and handle machinery, the Soviet Union has never stinted its weapons research and development programme. The implication of all of this is something which Washington has been reluctant to recognise. But Messrs Quarles and Wilson have only said officially and publicly things which have been circulating in informed quarters in Washington for many months.’ The difference is that it is now official that the Western lead in weapons development is a narrow one indeed and that there is little reason to rely complacently on an assumption, just because American industry is broader and more productive than Soviet industry, that it necessarily provides an assured and permanent lead. The trend in Washington is toward a probable conclusion that more money and effort must be devoted to weapons research and development