''Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age'', commonly referred to as the Gaither report, is a report submitted in November 1957 to the

United States National Security Council The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Ex ...

and the U.S. president concerning strategy to prepare against the perceived threat of a

nuclear attack Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear ...

from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. It was prepared by a panel constituted as part of the Science Advisory Committee, at that time part of the

Office of Defense Mobilization The Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM) was an independent agency of the United States government whose function was to plan, coordinate, direct and control all wartime mobilization activities of the federal government, including manpower, economi ...

. The report's common name stems from the panel's first chairman

H. Rowan Gaither Horace Rowan Gaither Jr. (1909 – April 7, 1961), was a San Francisco attorney, investment banker, and a powerful administrator at the Ford Foundation. During World War II, he served as assistant director of the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T. ...

. He and the group were tasked by President Dwight D. Eisenhower with creating a strategy that would strengthen the US military defensive systems, and better prepare the US for a nuclear attack. The report was largely written by panel members

Paul Nitze Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 – October 19, 2004) was an American politician who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is best kn ...

and George Lincoln. It called for an urgent strengthening of US missile technology, along with offensive and defensive military capabilities. It also called for a fifty percent increase in US military spending and a redesign of the

US Defense Department The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

. The committee presented the Gaither Report to President Eisenhower on November 7, 1957. The report suggested that Eisenhower's military policy--reliance on cheap nuclear weapons instead of expensive Army divisions--was inadequate. He kept the document secret and generally ignored it, but its conclusions were leaked to the press. While the president had asked for an evaluation of

fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...

and

blast shelter A blast shelter is a place where people can go to protect themselves from blasts and explosions, like those from bombs, or in hazardous worksites, such as on oil and gas refineries or petrochemical facilities. It differs from a fallout shelter, ...

s, the opening page of the report stated that their purpose was to “form a broadbrush opinion of the relative value of various active and passive measures to protect the civilian populations in case of nuclear attack and its aftermath.” This look at active protective measures relegated shelters to a secondary position in a report now concentrated on

nuclear deterrence Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy ...

. The rationale for this can be found in their belief that the

, with its expedient development of military technology, had already exceeded the technical achievements made by the U.S. in

intercontinental ballistic missile An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapo ...

(ICBM) research. The authors relied upon grossly inaccurate

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

intelligence that estimated the number of Soviet ICBMs to be in the hundreds or as many as a thousand. In reality this was an enormous overestimate by some

orders of magnitude An order of magnitude is an approximation of the logarithm of a value relative to some contextually understood reference value, usually 10, interpreted as the base of the logarithm and the representative of values of magnitude one. Logarithmic dis ...

. Newly-developed

satellite photography Satellite images (also Earth observation imagery, spaceborne photography, or simply satellite photo) are images of Earth collected by imaging satellites operated by governments and businesses around the world. Satellite imaging companies sell im ...

would make this even clearer four years later. Even by 1961, the number of operational Soviet ICBMs was around four. Unlike its predecessor, the

Killian Report Killian or Kilian, as a given name, is an Anglicized version of the Irish name Cillian. The name Cillian was borne by several early Irish saints including missionaries to Artois and Franconia and the author of the life of St Brigid. The name is s ...

, the Gaither Report advocated the continuation of attempts to reach the agreement with Soviets "on the limitation of armaments".

References

Further reading