Word: icbm
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Army: Russian progress in intercontinental missiles will gradually make obsolete the Air Force's Strategic Air Command. To defend U.S. cities in the foreseeable future, major allocations must be committed now for an effective ICBM counterweapon. The current Army Nike system-both physically and technically -can be used for the more complex Nike-Zeus anti-missile system...
...Force: The surest guarantee of protection is offensive-not defensive-power. The tremendous cost of a defensive missile program would seriously compete with the evolving knockout strike force. Moreover, to stop an ICBM effectively-once its course is determined-an anti-ICBM must be launched into the trajectory from the target vicinity, and ICBM targets in the U.S. will be strike-force bases, not cities; therefore, even Nike sites are already wasted...
...presuming a long-term Soviet lead in 5,000-mile intercontinental ballistic missiles. His presumption ignored one fact: if launched from a NATO base on the European continent, a U.S. 1,500-mile intermediate-range ballistic missile has, so far as Russia is concerned, all the bang of an ICBM. Last week, in a major policy decision, the Administration decided to push toward allowing NATO that big bang, even if it means changing the McMahon...
...whole new problem confronts the system. The cold fact: it cannot detect missiles. Warns Air Force General Earle E. Partridge, Commander in Chief of NORAD (North American Air Defense): "If the aggressor's weapon is the ICBM, the continent stands today almost as naked as it did in 1946, for I have no radar to detect missiles and no defense against them...
...Russians did not mean the problem of bringing the warhead of a long-range missile down through the atmosphere. To recover a living animal that has been riding in a satellite is in some ways harder, in other ways easier. A satellite has to move faster than an ICBM and therefore must dissipate more energy before it can enter dense low-altitude air without burning up. But it has the advantage of skimming the thin top of the atmosphere instead of plunging into it at a steep angle. Theoretically, it can be made to approach the atmosphere gradually...