Word: icbms
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Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. has an operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), nor will either have one for two to three years. To date, the Russians are known to have test-fired as many as five ICBMs, have scored at least one hit on a target at a 3,400-mile range; the U.S. has test-fired four models of the Air Force's Convair ICBM Atlas, has scored two hits at a programed initial 500-to 600-mile range. Atlas, U.S. missilery's prime weapon (cost: about $4,000,000 apiece) is fueled with a mixture...
...Force has a "backup," or reserve ICBM, the Martin Titan, currently running twelve to 14 months behind Atlas. Titan is a two-stage, liquid-fuel missile with an Atlas-type nose cone and an Atlas-sized engine thrust that can power a hydrogen warhead more than 5,500 miles. Another advantage: Titan can be broken down into two parts for easier ground or air-cargo transportation. Titan has undergone static tests of its component parts, has not yet been tested as a complete weapons system, is not expected to reach test-flight status until fall...
...growth of the corporation's civilian lines. Vital defense projects are bound to grow rather than shrink in the next few years. Convair and RCA have already submitted to the Defense Department plans for an anti-missile missile, the Wizard II, which could search out an incoming enemy ICBM and explode it high in the atmosphere. The Wizard could conceivably be put into production by 1965 (at a cost of up to $5 billion) if the Defense Department gives an immediate go-ahead for a crash program...
...time when the U.S. must have the power of instant retaliation, the weakness of the U.S.'s growing family of liquid oxygen ("lox") -and-kerosene-fueled missiles is that they cannot retaliate instantly. Time needed to fuel the Air Force's test-ICBM Atlas: a minimum 15 minutes after an hour-long countdown. Time needed to fuel the Air Force's test IRBM Thor, even using a promising but not fully tested method of "force-feeding": eight minutes. The U.S.'s lox missiles could conceivably be knocked out by the enemy before they could be fueled...
Since 1946, missile spending has skyrocketed from $70 million to $3 billion annually. But in actual fact, the U.S. intermediate (IRBM) and intercontinental (ICBM) missile programs are still in the experimental stages. Intermediate missiles alone may cost the U.S. $7 billion; the bigger, 5,000-mile Atlas ICBM will cost $8 billion to $10 billion in the next decade or so before it is superseded by something better. And missile programs themselves will get bigger and more expensive...