National Affairs: NATO’s New Gun

The Pentagon announced last week that within a month the 868th Field Artillery Battalion would be on its way to Europe, to be assigned to the NATO forces. Its armament: six of the Army’s new 85-ton, 280-mm. cannons, designed for firing atomic projectiles. Five more atomic battalions will follow within a year, giving General Alfred Gruenther and his SHAPE high command a weapon which might, if the circumstances were ideal, neutralize the huge numerical superiority of Russian ground forces.

Unlike the atom bomb, atomic artillery is not meant to be used against set targets known in advance. The enemy cannot disperse his cities, but he can disperse his troops. Against a normally dispersed advancing unit, atomic shells would not be especially effective. Atomic shells must be used on heavy concentrations of troops and munitions.

Meeting a Russian attack, NATO commanders, with atomic artillery on call, would also need some other means of making the enemy concentrate his forces. If they cannot find the means, e.g., a restricted road net, a strong defensive position, the Russians would not have to mass for a breakthrough. And if the defense formed around other weapons should not prove strong enough to protect them, the new atomic artillery pieces, outflanked and useless, might end up in the Red Army’s Historical Artillery Museum in Leningrad.