ABSTRACT
W h i l e there are many implicit and even a few explicit suggestions on policy in the preceding lectures, I have tried on the whole to avoid making recommendations. The purpose of these lectures has been to expose prob lems and to pose relevant questions sharply and precisely. I will now make some specific suggestions. In doing so I will avoid the subject of weapons systems, partly because the rationale, justification, and caveats for specific suggestions involving numbers cannot be made without get ting into classified data. The reason for this is that the evaluation of any specific course of action depends on having access to estimates of such secret data as the costs and performance of both the enemy’s systems and our own. For example, if the enemy can increase the accuracy of his first strike missiles, we may wish to switch from a system operating on hard, fixed, and known bases to one which uses mobile or hidden bases; if the enemy builds stronger shelters to protect his forces or people against our ICBM’s, we could consider going the other way-reallocating some re sources from a mobile system to a fixed system, but one that would be more accurate and could carry larger warheads.
