Word: laird
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...growing at a rate that increasingly alarms the Kremlin. Moscow's treaty with Bonn provides the political basis for an influx of German capital and technical and managerial know-how on which Russia rests its hopes of bridging its technological gap with the West. U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird may be able to pressure Henry Ford out of building a truck factory in the Soviet Union; but a European consortium headed by the German firm of Daimler-Benz is a highly acceptable alternative...
...support to Cambodian troops. But near the embattled town of Skoun last week, an Associated Press reporter watched a Cambodian officer request-and get-an air strike by American F-100s, whose bombs landed a scant 300 yds. from the Cambodian positions. In Washington, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird parried the inevitable inquiries about the U.S. air support with an exercise in semantics. The U.S. pilots were not providing "air support" to the Cambodians, Laird said. They were only "interdicting" supplies headed for South Viet Nam. But in a private conversation, an Air Force officer was more direct. "Hell," he said...
...first went into combat in Viet Nam in 1965, the U.S. Army has been desperate for that most expendable commodity of ground warfare: second lieutenants. Until mid-May, the Army was processing aspiring officers through its Officers Candidate Schools like widgets. Now the press is off. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird has cut down total Army strength by 200,000 men since last year. More cuts are in prospect, so now the Army is trying as hard to discourage O.C.S. applicants as it was working to encourage them earlier. Most applicants are three-year enlistees. To stop them coming, the Army...
...there was a good deal more to this apparent U.S. shortfall. The Soviet missiles are designed for totally different purposes than ours. Defense Secretary Laird has said repeatedly that the logical reason for Soviet development of their huge weapon is to strike first at the U.S., and to strike at our Minuteman silos below the ground. Hardened silos require a huge weight of explosives for their destruction...
...countermeasure to the Soviet ABM. By multiplying the number of warheads, the reasoning went, the U.S. would be able to penetrate Russian defenses. In addition, MIRV was regarded as a hedge against the huge Soviet SS-9s, which have the punch to destroy Minutemen even in their hardened silos. Laird's critics make the persuasive point that if the Soviets are willing to limit their ABM defenses to Moscow, which seems likely, and to cease S59 deployments, the U.S. should be willing to phase out its MIRVs. Since the Russians have test-fired only one rudimentary MRV, a moratorium...