Word: irbms
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...intelligence gathering designed to prepare against any kind of military attack-for instance, a North Korean strike at South Korea. It also helps to keep the U.S. from getting caught in the kind of nuclear-blackmail situation that would have resulted had photo reconnaissance not turned up the Soviet IRBM installations in Cuba in 1962. Sophisticated electronic satellites have made some of the monitoring flights redundant, but the lumbering EC-121 is still more versatile and reliable, if more vulnerable to attack than a satellite orbiting in space...
...Schriever, the first few years seemed to hold nothing but pressure and frustration. Unknown to the public, U.S. radar snooping from Turkey and U-2 aircraft flying over Russia confirmed the fact that the U.S.S.R. was developing both IRBMs and ICBMs. Says Schriever: "They were well ahead of us with the IRBM, at least a year ahead in their ICBM program. A missile gap did exist." After the Sputnik launching in 1957, the thrust superiority of Soviet rocketry was obvious...
Unequal Equation. The U.S.'s Jupiter IRBM bases in Turkey were constructed in 1960-61, not clandestinely but only after a publicly announced agreement between the U.S. and Turkey. The purpose of the U.S. bases was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense...
...forced the U-2 far below its maximum working altitude of above 80,000 ft., enabling the Chinese to shoot it down. The Russian denied that it was shot down by Soviet-supplied ground-to-air missiles, though Formosa's U-2s reportedly fly over an IRBM range on the mainland...
...concluded . . . that we ought not to continue to develop, as a military weapon, a missile that can be launched only from a fixed site." After six years of work and an expenditure of $280 million, Britain was scrapping its most ambitious military rocket, the 2,500-mile Blue Streak IRBM. The big rocket might be salvaged as a satellite launcher in the space sweepstakes, said Watkinson. But for delivery of its future nuclear punch, Great Britain will rely on U.S. missiles, probably the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's air-launched Skybolt rocket...