War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986

Item Information

Title:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Gerry Miller, 1986
Description:
Admiral Gerry Miller was a Strategic Planner for the U.S. Navy beginning in the 1950s. He starts the interview by discussing the push within the military services to acquire a nuclear weapons delivery capability because "that's where all the dollars were going." The competition over the Polaris missile was particularly intense between the Navy and the Strategic Air Command (SAC), he recalls, and he provides colorful recollections of Admiral Arleigh Burke's reactions after losing the fight to the Air Force, as well as of his (Adm. Miller's) subsequent transfer to Omaha as a Navy liaison officer to SAC. He discusses SAC's role in generating a highly overblown Soviet threat estimate at the beginning of the 1960s, including running a war game that assumed "an astronomical threat." Other commentary relates to the complex task of nuclear planning, an area subject to a great deal of individual interpretation, especially with respect to the overall guidance provided to the planners from higher authorities. Related topics covered in the interview are the level of destructive capacity sought in U.S. plans, the penchant for building up numbers of weapons, and the relative effectiveness of those weapons. He states unequivocally that the U.S. could have managed strategically with far fewer weapons in the 1950s, and he hints that President Eisenhower could have done more to impose limits had he wanted to do so. Speaking in more detail about the planning process, he illuminates some of the core concepts of targeting and why planners believe so many weapons are needed in certain circumstances. Contrary to some critics, he insists that even the early SIOPs contained options beyond massive strikes.
Interviewee:
Miller, Gerry
Date:
March 25, 1986
Format:
Film/Video
Location:
WGBH
Collection (local):
American Archive of Public Broadcasting Collection
Series:
WGBH > War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Subjects:
Global Affairs
Military Forces and Armaments
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009
Norstad, Lauris, 1907-1988
Enthoven, Alain C., 1930-
Schlesinger, James R.
Rathjens, George W.
Kistiakowsky, George B. (George Bogdan), 1900-1982
Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006
United States. Navy
China
United States. Air Force
United States. Air Force. Strategic Air Command
United States. Army
United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff
United States. Dept. of Defense
United States. Marine Corps
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear warfare
Polaris (Missile)
Intercontinental ballistic missiles
Targeting (Nuclear strategy)
Photographic reconnaissance systems
Photographic interpretation
U-2 (Reconnaissance aircraft)
United States
Soviet Union
Korea (North)
Counterforce (Nuclear strategy)
Massive retaliation (Nuclear strategy)
Mutual assured destruction
Burke, Arleigh A., 1901-1996
Power, Thomas S. (Thomas Sarsfield), 1905-1970
Kent, Glenn A., 1915-
Extent:
00:50:55
Link to Item:
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-rn3028ps1v
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Publisher:
WGBH Educational Foundation