Word: mcnamara
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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During the Kennedy years and the first Johnson Administration, the White House and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resisted pressure from the military and Congress to set up some version of ABM. Meanwhile, the research effort led to Nike-X, an expanded and refined system that employs two types of missiles and electronically operated radars that can handle numerous targets simultaneously (see box next page). Theoretically, at least, the Nike-X proj ect ? which is still receiving $175 million a year in development funds ? thus overcame some of the main technical problems posed by Zeus...
...Even so, McNamara, along with many prominent scientists both in and out of the Government, remained highly skeptical of the ABM's efficacy against a large-scale Soviet attack. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and particularly the Army ? which has jurisdiction over land-based ABMs ? continued to press for its installation on the grounds that some protection was better than none. Army General Earle Wheeler, J.C.S. chairman, has argued that a full-fledged ABM might save between 50 million and 80 million American lives...
...McNamara finally presented two alternative schemes, one involving an investment of $12.2 billion and an other costing $21.7 billion. The less ex pensive approach might reduce the death toll to 40 million (from an estimated high of 120 million). The second sys tem might lower fatalities to 30 million. Yet these calculations were essentially academic numbers games based on constantly changing realities. They presumed a static Russian defensive capability as it existed in 1967. McNamara himself pointed out the big drawback: "We can be certain that the Soviets will react to offset the advantage we would hope to gain...
...Like McNamara and others, Bethe has long doubted that any defense system can effectively discriminate between real warheads and a variety of decoys and "penetration aids" that the offense is likely to use. Spartan, operating in space, faces a handicap in this area because it is only after the real birds
...away in talks with the Russians? These are points that have never been satisfactorily answered, even by those who first promoted the Sentinel's anti-Chinese system. McNamara led with his chin when he acknowledged in 1967 that only "marginal grounds" supported the decision to authorize an ABM. That speech has been an arsenal of criticism for ABM opponents ever since...