Word: mcnamaras
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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...
BARELY three years ago Congress attempted to force Robert McNamara's Defense Department to go beyond the research and development stage of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) by voting $168 million for initial hardware. The skeptical McNamara, backed by the White House, refused to spend the extra funds. The very next year, in the face of domestic political pressure and continued weaponry development by the Chinese and Russians, the Johnson Administration reluctantly reversed itself. Now the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Melvin Laird seems eager to press ahead at full speed with an ABM system called the Sentinel-despite hesitance...
...September 1967 speech to Congress, Laird's predecessor, Robert McNamara, described Sentinel as a "thin" system intended to meet the threat of a missile attack from China through 1975. No system, McNamara said, could be adequately effective against Russia's sophisticated arsenal, and he opposed any attempt to develop one. Russia would respond only by developing its offensive missiles until they can out-number or elude our anti-missiles, launching the crazy spiral of an arms race...
...good reason to hid its motives from Congressional critics. The United States and Russia are on the verge of opening talks on curtailing he weapons race, and open-ended development of ABM's would upset the delicate balance of terror necessary for stability between the two nations. What Secretary McNamara most feared might very well happen: the ABM system could compel the Russians to respond...