The New York Times

August 26, 1981

The Neutron Bomb Makes Politics, Not War

By Herbert Scoville Jr.

DURANGO, Colo.-- The recent debate on the neutron bomb, sparked b y President Reagan's decision to procure the weapon, is founded on a total misconception of its military value.

It is being promoted as the United States answer to an attack in Western Europe by the Soviet Union with its greater number of tanks. Yet the neutron warheads are actually less satisfactory for coping with Soviet tanks on the battlefield than the standard fission weapons they are to replace. This fundamental fact has been lost in the public clamor in the West over the neutron weapons and the Soviet propaganda campaign against them. To understand why the neutron bombs are less effective, one need only compare the effects of a fission warhead typical of those now deployed, which has a 10 kiloton yield equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT, with the effects of a standard neutron one-kiloton warhead, such as those now authorized by President Reagan. The nuclear radiation from both these warheads incapacitate tank crews at the same range, about one half mile from the point of burst. So the neutron bomb provides no gain when it comes to killing tank crews.

But killing tank crews with nuclear radiation is not a very satisfactory way of neutralizing a Soviet tank on the battlefield. Radiation kills slowly. An individual who receives just a lethal dose might not suffer ill effects for a day or so and could continue to fight with his tank. Even if he was exposed to five times a lethal dose, he might suffer temporary incapacitation, then recover and be able to fight for several hours as a kamikaze. How is the NATO field commander to know whether he has really put a tank out of action when he sees an undamaged tank on the battlefield? Attacking the tank crews with radiation is most unsatisfactory from his point of view.

Only when the tank is visibly damaged by the blast from an atomic weapon can the commander be confident of having repulsed a tank attack. But the standard neutron warhead will damage tanks only up to 200 yards. The currently available fission warheads, however, damage tanks at 600 yards, three times the range of the replacement neutron warhead. There is no question that the neutron warheads are inferior antitank weapons from the point of view of the field commander.

Why, then, do political leaders still want neutron bombs? They want them because the lower-yield neutron weapon has less blast than the current fission weapon and will cause less collateral damage to structures. Existing warheads damage buildings more than two miles away, while the neutron bomb has a damage radius of less than a mile. Thus it might be easier to decide to use neutron weapons.

With either of these types of weapons, however, the people in a 3-square-mile area around the blast will suffer long-term radiation effects. Since 1,000 to 10,000 such weapons might be used in a European conflict, the population of 3 to 30,000 square miles might be effected. These casualties would be more extensive in the case of neutron bombs because the neutrons they radiate are more prone to produce delayed radiation damage than are the gamma rays of normal fission warheads. Neutron bombs are not designed to make nuclear war pleasant for civilians.

Finally it is naive to hope that the neutron bomb will spare European cities from destruction. Once any nuclear weapons are used, the Soviet Union will certainly respond with its higher-yield fission bombs. It will certainly not spare the cities and industrial areas of Western Europe. There is no way to make nuclear war more acceptable. The neutron bomb is designed to make it a little more credible that Western leaders would initiate the use of nuclear weapons. In reality, it will also make it more likely that Europe, and probably the United States and the Soviet Union as well, will be destroyed in a nuclear catastrophe.

Herbert Scoville Jr., formerly technical director of the Defense Department's Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, is author most recently of ''MX, Prescription for Disaster.''