Cost And Effectiveness: Preliminary Insights On Soviet Views,
Abstract
Since the announcement of the SDI program, several criteria have been proposed for assessing the desirability of deploying SDS. Of these, the criterion of cost-effectiveness at the margin has received considerable prominence. Eventually, the criterion achieved legal status when Congress mandated that the President must certify the SDS: ...is cost effective at the margin to the extent that the system is able to maintain its effectiveness against the offensive at less cost than it would take to develop offensive countermeasures to overcome it. Originally, the Nitze criterion was put forward as a way of judging SDS solely from the U.S. perspective. Recently, however, there has been considerable interest in using the results from such analyses as a way of estimating the likelihood of potential Soviet responses. In responding to Congressional requirements and in building tools for our own countermeasures analysis, great care must be taken to ensure that U.S. values and views are not ascribed to the Soviets. This means examining: (1) how the Soviets define cost and effectiveness and (2) how they employ these concepts as a decision-making criteria.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 03, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA337750
Entities
People
- Andrew W. Hull
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses