'334 Scientific Advisory Board" Folder This folder contains the correspondence to the LASL members of the Air Force AB during a period of interest. Perhaps the only part of the SAB on which the ASL personnel served was the nuclear panel. _ . | dD The first pertinent letter is from Agnew to the Secretariat of Nuclear Panel of he SAB on 31 July 58 which provides comments to ‘a draft report entitled "Improving ir Force Capabilities y aDr. E. Plesset. under a Test Moritorium." The comments have been requested The comments are fairly brief and Agnew points out that he s not eéverse to supplementing this stockpile with untested weapons during a oritorium "but would never reconmend stockpiling a "improved" but untested weapon f the sucesssuccesc4 operation of the device was of paramount importance to our ffensive or defensive strength." Of interest is his mention of the size of the war- eadrequired versus the accuracy as to the effect on the enemy that we wish to produce. e states “although gains have been made on a yield per pound basis, they have not been asy and they are really quite trivial compared to the gains which could accrue by ecreasing CEP. Remember the damage goes something like the cube root of the yield ivided by the variance(Sigma squared). It takes an awful lot of increase in yield - ? be equivalant to a small decrease in CEP. We should never allow ourselves to anction high yields as a substitute for improved CEP." He also highlights the area f weapons effects on which he feels we are quite ignorant as to vat constitutes the 2chanisms to kill a weapon and that we are just beginning to assess this area and sam what is done to typical weapon components by the explosion of a nuclear weapon "This type of infonnation is of paramount importance in designing »th defensive and offensive weapons and the environment cannot be mocked up very well 1 the Laboratory.” er eer es 1 the vicinity.