The Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP), the mid-range plan, would apply to the four-year period beginning 1 July three years after approval by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition to providing strategic guidance for the mid-range period, this plan would provide specific guidance for the pre-D-day development of the forces needed to support it and for the preparation of Service budget requests for the fiscal year beginning two years after the plan was approved. It would also provide guidance for mobilization planning by the Services and the Munitions Board. The plan would have three sections. The first would provide guidance for the preparation of the part of the annual budget dealing with the development of the US and allied military forces needed during peacetime and in military conflict short of total war. The second would guide preparation of the part of the annual budget devoted to supporting the US and allied forces necessary to conduct combat operations during the initial phase of general war. The third would guide preparation of the part of the annual budget addressed to developing the additional forces and resources needed prior to D-day for the mobilization base and to meeting mobilization requirements during 48 months of general war. To assure the orderly implementation, the JSOP was to be ready for JCS consideration by 1 May each year, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to give their final approval by 30 June.

The Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), the short-range plan, assumed that D-day would occur on 1 July following JCS approval. It would guide the employment of available US and allied military forces under conditions of peace, in limited military conflict, and during the initial phase of general war. It would also guide the expansion of US and allied forces during the first 48 months of general war. The JSCP would be submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by 1 November each year; they would complete action on it by 31 December.2

From the first, this planning system failed to operate as anticipated. Under the schedule established by Policy Memorandum 84, the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have completed the following plans by the end of 1954: two Joint Long-Range Strategic Estimates, covering the period from 1 July 1958 through 30 June 1964; two Joint Strategic Objectives Plans, for D-days of 1 July 1956 and 1 July 1957; and three Joint Strategic Capabilities Plans for fiscal years 1954, 1955, and 1956. But the planning tasks had proved more exacting and the problems of coordination more extensive than expected, and progress had been hindered even more by the fundamental disagreements among the Services over strategic concepts that the effort revealed. As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had completed only one plan, the JSCP for FY 1955, and this was finished more than three months behind schedule. Two plans were in progress at the end of 1954: the next JSCP, for FY 1956, and a Joint Mid-Range War Plan (JMRWP) for a D-day of 1 July 1957. No JLRSE existed even in draft form and none was in sight within the near future. To complete the two plans under preparation became the first order of business for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the field of strategic planning during the period covered by this volume.

The Joint Mid-Range War Plan

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had directed preparation of the JMRWP as a substitute

for JSOP-57, whose preparation had been suspended because of disagreements among the Services over strategy. A plan of somewhat lesser scope than the JSOP, the JMRWP dealt primarily with a general war that might begin on 1 July 1957. It was being prepared to provide the guidance for mobilization and other planning for a general war situation that otherwise would have flowed from the JSOP.

Again, disagreements delayed completion of the plan. In the draft JMRWP it was assumed that general war would probably start with a Soviet atomic onslaught with little or no warning and that the hostilities would fall into two phases: a comparatively short initial phase and a subsequent phase of indeterminate length. This broad conception was accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but they were divided concerning the size and nature of the forces to be mobilized for operations under it. Consideration of these aspects received further impetus from a report in which the Joint Logistics Plans Committee (JLPC) concluded that the force levels in the draft could not be fully supported logistically.3

In the ensuing discussion, the Air Force maintained that the increasing quantity and destructiveness of the nuclear weapons available to both sides made the initial atomic phase of a future war "the primary consideration in all military planning." Air Force spokesmen accepted that there would be a subsequent phase of indeterminate length, but they thought it "unlikely that large-scale military operations in the general pattern of World War II could follow the initial atomic phase of a future war." Accordingly they held that the mobilization base should be designed primarily to sustain the peacetime combat-ready forces-inbeing, without contemplating a further major force buildup similar to that accomplished in World War II.

The Army-Navy-Marine Corps view was that the mobilization base should be designed to support a buildup of forces at the maximum rate possible after Dday. This course would afford the United States the flexibility to implement whatever strategy the post-D-day situation might dictate, even to meet the force requirements of the worst conceivable circumstances under the plan.

In views submitted separately, Admiral Radford took a position close to that of the Air Force, though he did accept the possibility that extensive military operations, ultimately employing substantial forces, might be required in the stage subsequent to the initial nuclear exchange. The Chairman's argument turned essentially on the current unpredictability of the outcome of the opening atomic assaults. That stage of the hostilities might be very violent but of short duration, followed by a period of indefinite length during which forces of the Western powers were projected to establish control over the Soviet Union. On the other hand, "each may be so devastated and stunned by an initial exchange of atomic blows as to be incapable of immediate operations to extend control over the other, and the first side to recover would be the ultimate victor."

Certainly a great premium in any event must be placed upon the readiness of our forces in being and those that can quickly be brought to effectiveness by the mobilization of our reserve components. It is essential to the security interests of the United States that adequate measures be taken for the sustained operations of these ready forces regardless of what may be the developments and requirements of combat operations as the war unfolds."

Believing that emphasis should be placed on the forces best suited to ensure survival and subsequent recuperation, the Chairman recommended that the mobilization base "be predicated upon those forces which the individual Services state... they can generate within six months after M-day" (or D-day, the two being recognized as identical in the JMRWP). Larger forces might ultimately be required, but those existing or made ready during the first six months were the forces needed "to absorb the initial shock, to deliver our own atomic offensive, and to form the nucleus for such expanded offensives as may be then plainly necessary.”

Submitting a full exposition of the divergencies that were delaying completion of the JMRWP, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested guidance from the Secretary of Defense. On 1 November 1954 Mr. Wilson handed down a decision in substantial agreement with the recommendations of the Chairman. The Joint Strategic Plans Committee (JSPC) resumed work on the plan.

Completion of the JMRWP was held up further while awaiting final determination of the overall Service personnel strengths and force levels for FY 1957, on which the force tabulations in the plan must be based. President Eisenhower approved the overall strength figures in early January, and the JSPC submitted the finished plan to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of March. On 15 April 1955, the Joint Mid-Range War Plan for 1 July 1957 received formal JCS approval.5

During the initial phase of hostilities, according to the plan, each side would rain nuclear blows on the other. At the same time, Soviet forces would probably try to overrun the strategically important land areas of Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, and Southeast Asia. The United States and its allies would oppose these attacks by conducting strategic defensives while preparing to take the strategic offensive.

The subsequent phase would consist of a period of readjustment and followup leading to a conclusion of the war. The duration and nature would depend upon "the relative strategic advantage achieved in the initial phase and our ability to continue to supply our forces overseas." During this phase, the United States and its allies would conduct operations necessary to establish and maintain control of vital areas in the Soviet-communist bloc by launching offensives in Europe while maintaining a strategic defense in other parts of the world.

The estimate of the forces required to carry out the strategy in the plan, to be mobilized over a period of 36 months, was as follows:

The Services anticipated that their D-day strengths would be as follows: Army, 19 divisions; Navy, 634 combatant ships; Air Force, 137 wings; and Marine Corps, three divisions and three air wings. To meet the strategic requirements of the plan, 66 Army divisions, 2,111 Navy combatant ships, 11 Air Force wings, and one Marine division would have to be mobilized. In accordance with the instructions by the Secretary of Defense implementing his decision of 2 November 1954, the Services, in their peacetime mobilization preparations, could use only the forces listed in the plan through D+6 months as the basis for appropriations requests. The remaining force mobilization shown in the plan would be the basis for mobilization production planning and for raw materials and stockpiling requirements."

The JMRWP, as originally submitted and approved, contained an estimate of "the type and number of units which nations allied with the United States might be expected to deploy in areas vital to the prosecution of general war in 1957," but the plan did not explain the extent to which the strategy in it depended upon these allied forces. Tabulations of the numbers of allied troops necessary to support the plan would be supplied later."

The fundamental Service disagreements came to the surface once again when the JSPC attempted to supply these tabulations. The Air Force member repeated the arguments of his Service for placing emphasis on ready forces and forces that could become effective by immediate mobilization. He recommended allied force tabs that were considered to be sufficient to "withstand the initial Soviet attacks, deliver the atomic offensive, and form the basis for any additional offensive that might be necessary to achieve U.S. objectives."

The Army and Navy members argued that it was US policy to place maximum reliance on the indigenous forces of allies, particularly ground forces, in any war in which the United States became involved in the near future. Hence they recommended an allied force buildup roughly paralleling that of US forces. Both these force buildups, said the Army and Navy members, were necessary to carry out operations in such strategic areas as Central Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East in light of the Soviet capabilities and expected courses of action. As a result, the JSPC submitted a split recommendation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on allied ground force buildup in numbers of divisions, as follows: 8

Early in the JCS consideration of this report, Admiral Radford moved to resolve the split. He suggested to his colleagues on 1 September that the disagreement arose from a misunderstanding of what the Joint Chiefs of Staff expected the JMRWP to accomplish. This misunderstanding was evident, it seemed to him, in an unfortunate statement in the JMRWP to the effect that a list of allied forces necessary to attain US military objectives would be furnished as a basis for computing foreign allied aid. The Chairman believed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had not intended the JMRWP to serve as a force requirements or

force objectives plan. They had intended, rather, that it “estimate realistically the allied forces which might be in existence on D-day together with the estimated build-up of those forces through an appropriate period for subsequent computation of requirements for foreign allied aid." In determining the basis for this computation, the forces to be supported should be consistent with, and complementary to, US forces as depicted in the JMRWP. The computation, however, should be kept within reasonable bounds and not permitted to result in astronomical requirements which would tend to discourage the entire effort.

Admiral Radford recommended a solution that paralleled the one he had offered in the fall of 1954 to resolve a similar disagreement over the levels of US forces: the forces to be mobilized by D+6 and to be sustained at that level through D+36 should be used by the Services in computing the requirements for foreign military aid; the further buildup through D+36 should be used in mobilization planning and for determining raw material stockpile requirements. The differing Service recommendations on D+6 force levels should be resolved in favor of the Army and Navy, whose figures, except for Yugoslavia, were generally consistent with the JCS-approved Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) force objectives for the end of calendar years 1956 and 1957. The approved force level for Yugoslavia should be substituted for the Army-Navy figure."

On 7 September 1955 the Joint Chiefs of Staff accepted Admiral Radford's view that allied force tabs in the JMRWP should reflect available rather than necessary forces. They also accepted his conception of how these force tabs should be used but approved a different method of recomputing them. Rather than adopt the ArmyNavy D+6 figures, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that figures then being developed by the Ad Hoc Committee for Reappraisal of World-Wide MDAP, when approved, would be used for D-day forces. Based on these forces, reasonable and realistic D+1 through D+36 forces would be determined. The Joint Chiefs of Staff returned the report to the JSPC for revision in accordance with these instructions.10

On 31 January 1956 the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the revised tabs containing estimates of the allied forces to be available as possible supplements to US forces in implementing the JMRWP strategy. On the D-day of 1 July 1957 the allied nations would have about 200 divisions of ground troops, 525 squadrons of aircraft, and 2,200 naval vessels. By D+6, these countries were expected to increase their ground forces to about 245 divisions and their sea forces to around 2,685 ships, without enlarging their air forces. By D+36, there would be a further increase in ground strength to approximately 275 divisions. Except at D+36, the approved figures for ground forces were larger than those originally recommended by the Army and Navy members of JSPC.11

The Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan for FY 1956

ccording to the schedule set by Policy Memorandum 84, the Joint Chiefs of

have approved for the period 1 July June

by 31 December 1954. At that date, however, the plan was still in preparation,