Word: minuteman
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...flocks of B-52s and B-58s are still a valuable part of the nation's nuclear delivery force), the decision has been to discontinue further development of manned bombers, such as the controversial RS-70. Instead, enormous amounts of money are being spent to beef up the Minuteman batteries and nuclear submarine-launched missiles, among them Poseidon, which will double the megatonnage of Polaris. In Omaha, the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff coordinates the targets at which missiles, landlocked and at sea, are aimed. Mostly they are pointed at critical bull's-eyes in Red China...
...billion will be spent on these and other research and development projects next year. But the Defense Department can present a slightly lower overall bill because of Secretary Robert McNamara's cost reduction program, which is saving $2.5 billion annually, and because the huge initial expenditures of deploying Minuteman, Titan and Atlas ICBMs are now past (such costs have dropped from $3.5 billion in fiscal '64 to $1.8 billion scheduled for '66). Moreover, McNamara is being cautious about the investments in really new weapons. Despite longstanding congressional demands, the defense message called for no urgent program...
...qualification, Ohio State demanded B.A.s acquired with B-minus or better averages from accredited schools, and the Air Force picked only men who passed muster. One professor finds the students "a shade above those I've had on the main campus." The dropout rate at Minuteman U. is 19% a year, compared with a 40% attrition rate among all Ohio State graduate students, even though the men must juggle the time for homework and classes with family demands and additional Air Force requirements such as technical training, military tests, and logging enough flying time to maintain their pilot status...
Successful Model. Minuteman U. was proposed by the Strategic Air Command to help attract highly intelligent officers for missile control crews, and to enrich their long hours of tedious, isolated duty. Several universities turned down the idea, but Ohio State, which since 1955 has operated the School of Systems and Logistics at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, agreed to open a branch campus at Ellsworth under a $500,000 contract with the Air Force Institute of Technology. Now rounding out its first year of full-scale operation, the school has been "phenomenally successful," says Major James...
Based on the record of Minuteman U., the Air Force Institute signed the Universities of North Dakota, Missouri and Wyoming to open similar schools at other missile sites. Unluckily, the Institute's own school to give M.A.s in aerospace technology at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana has lately faltered because of a high dropout rate, leaving the Institute leary of the whole principle. But Ellsworth and the other Minuteman schools have three contracted years to run, and Hastings and Woodruff feel confident that by then there will be no doubting the value of underground education...