Word: mcnamara
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...Good Hot Rumpus. Next day Carl Vinson rose on the House floor, determined to make the best of things. He read the letter from Kennedy, which declared: "Your devotion to our continued military effectiveness is admired and appreciated." He read the letter from McNamara. which promised a restudy of the RS-70 in light of the Congressman's views. Vinson insisted that his strategy all along had been merely to raise a fuss over the RS-70 that would force the Administration to pay closer heed to congressional advice on military affairs. "We had to raise a good...
...build up a fleet of 150 by 1970, at a total cost of some $10 billion. Secretary of Defense Robert Mc-Namara wants to spend $171 million next year on a throttled-back program aimed merely at developing three prototype RS-70s. The argument between the Air Force and McNamara stems from basically different concepts of national defense. Both sides claim that the other is absolutely wrong; in fact, neither side is totally right...
...Case Against. Defense Secretary McNamara trusts his charts, tables and economic projections just as much as General LeMay trusts his own experiences and intuition. McNamara's figures indicate that the money that would have to go into the RS-70 could be better spent elsewhere. For the $10 billion the Air Force wants to spend on RS-70s by 1970, McNamara says the U.S. could buy 2,000 Minuteman missiles, install them with all their equipment in concrete silos buried deep in the ground. What is more, it would cost $3 billion to maintain the RS-70 fleet...
...McNamara also argues that the RS-70 would be useless unless equipped with target-spotting radar and target-obliterating nuclear missiles that have not yet been designed-and might never be. The proposed radar would have to scan 100,000 sq. mi. an hour while the plane was traveling at 2,000 m.p.h. at 70,000 ft. To separate two points at that height, McNamara argued, would require a radar screen 15 ft. wide and 15 ft. high. By the late '60s, McNamara feels that the job of reconnaissance could be done by advanced versions of the Samos...
Despite these points, McNamara admits that changing circumstances might make the RS-70 necessary in the future. He now plans to spend an additional $52 million next fiscal year to see if the highly sophisticated equipment required for the RS-70 can be built. What is more, McNamara promised Vinson that he would spend at least some of the extra money voted by Congress on the aircraft "if technological developments advance more rapidly than we anticipated...