Harold Brown (September 19, 1927 – January 4, 2019) was an American nuclear physicist who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981, under President Jimmy Carter. Previously, in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, he held the posts of Director of Defense Research and Engineering (1961–1965) and United States Secretary of the Air Force (1965–1969).

A child prodigy, Brown graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at age 15, and earned a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University at age 21.Edward C. Keefer, Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977–1981, 2017, Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense As Secretary of Defense, he set the groundwork for the Camp David Accords, took part in strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union, and supported, unsuccessfully, ratification of the SALT II treaty.

Early life and career Brown was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Abraham, a lawyer who had fought in World War I, and Gertrude (Cohen) Brown, a diamond merchant's bookkeeper. His parents were secular Jews and strong supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From a very young age Brown was drawn to mathematics and physics; he enrolled as a student at the Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated at age 15 with a grade average of 99.5. He then immediately entered Columbia University, earning an A.B. summa cum laude at 17 years of age, as well as the Green Memorial Prize for the best academic record. He continued as a graduate student at Columbia, and was awarded a Ph.D. in physics in 1949 when he was 21.

After a short period of teaching and postdoctoral research, Brown became a research scientist at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he played a role in the construction of the Polaris missile and the development of plutonium. In 1952, he joined the staff of the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore and became its director in 1960, succeeding Edward Teller, of whom he was a protégé. At Livermore, Brown led a team of six other physicists, all older than he was, who used some of the first computers, along with mathematics and engineering, to reduce the size of thermonuclear warheads for strategic military use. Brown and his team helped make Livermore's reputation by designing nuclear warheads small and light enough to be placed on the Navy's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). During the 1950s he served as a member of, or consultant to, several federal scientific bodies and as senior science adviser at the 1958-1959 Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Tests.

Brown worked under United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as Director of Defense Research and Engineering from 1961 to 1965, and then as United States Secretary of the Air Force from October 1965 to February 1969, first under McNamara and then under Clark Clifford.

From 1969 to 1977, he was President of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

U.S. Secretary of Defense Appointment and initial agenda

Although Brown had accumulated almost eight years of prior service in the Pentagon, he was the first natural scientist to become secretary of defense. He involved himself in practically all areas of departmental activity. Consistent with the Carter administration's objective to reorganize the federal government, Brown launched a comprehensive review of defense organization that eventually brought significant change. But he understood the limits to effective reform. In one of his first speeches after leaving office, "'Managing' the Defense Department-Why It Can't Be Done," at the University of Michigan in March 1981, he observed:With regard to strategic planning, Brown shared much the same concerns as his Republican predecessors—the need to upgrade U.S. military forces and improve collective security arrangements—but with a stronger commitment to arms control. Brown adhered to the principle of "essential equivalence" in the nuclear competition with the Soviet Union. This meant that "Soviet strategic nuclear forces do not become usable instruments of political leverage, diplomatic coercion, or military advantage; nuclear stability, especially in a crisis, is maintained; any advantages in force characteristics enjoyed by the Soviets are offset by U.S. advantages in other characteristics; and the U.S. posture is not in fact, and is not seen as, inferior in performance to the strategic nuclear forces of the Soviet Union."

His later writings in his 2012 memoir, Star-Spangled Security, reinforced this agenda:When I became secretary of defense in 1977, the military services, most of all the army, were disrupted badly by the Vietnam War. There was general agreement that the Soviet Union outclassed the West in conventional military capability, especially in ground forces in Europe.According to The New York Times, experts say in retrospect that contrary to a popular narrative which asserts that President Ronald Reagan increased defense spending to ramp up competition with (and ultimately bankrupting) the Soviet Union, it was Carter and Brown who began "maintaining the strategic balance, countering Soviet aircraft and ballistic innovations by improving land-based ICBMs, by upgrading B-52 strategic bombers with low-flying cruise missiles and by deploying far more submarine-launched missiles tipped with MIRVs, or multiple warheads that split into independent trajectories to hit many targets".

Nuclear missiles Brown considered it essential to maintain the triad of ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers; some of the administration's most important decisions on weapon systems reflected this commitment. Although he decided not to produce the B-1 bomber, he did recommend upgrading existing B-52s and equipping them with air-launched cruise missiles, and gave the go-ahead for development of a "stealth" technology, fostered by William J. Perry, under-secretary of defense for research and engineering, that would make it possible to produce planes (bombers as well as other aircraft) with very low radar profiles, presumably able to elude enemy defenses and deliver weapons on targets. The administration backed development of the MX missile, intended to replace in the 1980s the increasingly vulnerable Minuteman and Titan intercontinental missiles. To insure MX survivability, Brown recommended deploying the missiles in "multiple protective shelters"; 200 MX missiles would be placed in Utah and Nevada, with each missile to be shuttled among 23 different shelters of its own located along roadways-meaning a total of 4,600 such shelters. Although this plan was expensive and environmentally controversial, Brown argued that it was the most viable scheme to protect the missiles from enemy attack. For the sea leg of the triad, Brown accelerated development of the larger Trident nuclear submarine and carried forward the conversion of Poseidon submarines to a fully MIRVed missile capability.

By early 1979, Brown and his staff had developed a "countervailing strategy", an approach to nuclear targeting that past secretaries of defense Robert McNamara and James R. Schlesinger had both earlier found attractive, but never formally codified. As Brown put it, "we must have forces and plans for the use of our strategic nuclear forces such that in considering aggression against our interests, our adversary would recognize that no plausible outcome would represent a success-on any rational definition of success. The prospect of such a failure would then deter an adversary's attack on the United States or our vital interests." Although Brown did not rule out the assured destruction approach, which stressed attacks on urban and industrial targets, he believed that "such destruction must not be automatic, our only choice, or independent of any enemy's attack. Indeed, it is at least conceivable that the mission of assured destruction would not have to be executed at all in the event that deterrence failed."

Official adoption of the countervailing strategy came with President Carter's approval of Presidential Directive 59 (PD 59) on July 25, 1980. In explaining PD 59 Brown argued that it was not a new strategic doctrine, but rather a refinement, a codification of previous explanations of our strategic policy. The heart of PD 59, as Brown described it, was as follows:

Because the almost simultaneous disclosures of PD 59 and the stealth technology came in the midst of the 1980 United States presidential election campaign; some critics asserted that the Carter administration leaked them to counter charges of weakness and boost its re-election chances. Others charged that PD 59 made it more likely that the United States would initiate a nuclear conflict, based on the assumption that a nuclear war could somehow be limited. Brown insisted that the countervailing strategy was not a first strike strategy. As he put it, "Nothing in the policy contemplates that nuclear war can be a deliberate instrument of achieving our national security goals. ... But we cannot afford the risk that the Soviet leadership might entertain the illusion that nuclear war could be an option – or its threat a means of coercion – for them."

NATO

Brown regarded the strengthening of NATO as a key national security objective and worked hard to invigorate the alliance. With the assistance of Robert W. Komer, at first his special adviser on NATO affairs and subsequently under-secretary of defense for policy, Brown launched a series of NATO initiatives shortly after taking office. In May 1978 the NATO heads of government endorsed a long term defense program which included 10 priority categories: enhanced readiness; rapid reinforcement; stronger European reserve forces; improvements in maritime capabilities; integrated air defenses; effective command, control, and communications; electronic warfare; rationalized procedures for armaments collaboration; logistics co-ordination and increased war reserves; and theater nuclear modernization. To implement the last item, NATO defense and foreign ministers decided in December 1979, to respond to the Soviet deployment of new theater nuclear weapons—the SS-20 missile and the Backfire bomber—by placing 108 Pershing II missiles and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) in several Western European countries beginning in December 1983. The NATO leaders indicated that the new missile deployment would be scaled down if satisfactory progress occurred in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.

At Brown's urging, NATO members pledged in 1977 to increase their individual defense spending three percent per year in real terms for the 1979-86 period. The objective, Brown explained, was to ensure that alliance resources and capabilities-both conventional and nuclear-would balance those of the Soviet bloc. Although some NATO members hesitated to confirm the agreement to accept new missiles and did not always attain the three percent target, Brown was pleased with NATO's progress. Midway in his term he told an interviewer that he thought his most important achievement thus far had been the revitalization of NATO.