Word: pentagons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...right track." Defense Secretary Robert McNamara seemed intent on demonstrating that Barry Goldwater's status as a major general in the Air Force Reserve does not qualify him as a final authority on military matters. McNamara reported that he had inherited a chaotic situation at the Pentagon in 1961. "Each military service made its own independent plans," he said. The Army relied "on airlift, which the Air Force was unable to provide," stockpiled for a two-year war while the Air Force was set for only a few days of combat. "Funds were allocated not on the basis...
...renewed his claim that the U.S. is planning to reduce its deliverable nuclear capacity by 90% in the next decade (though the Pentagon quickly replied that its plans through 1972 call for "a bomber-deliverable megatonnage, which is highly classified but substantially greater than the Senator's statement implies"). He repeated his charge that "one good American life was lost" and another "delivered into Communist captivity" because President Johnson needlessly tipped off the enemy when he announced on television that U.S. planes were en route to targets during the Tonkin Gulf crisis. (The Administration argued that the President...
Fire One. At a national meeting of county officials in Washington, Goldwater touched off a Pentagon flap by charging that a weapons gap looms ahead. Said he: "Under our present defense leadership, with its utter disregard for new weapons, our deliverable nuclear capacity may be cut down by 90% in the next decade." The Pentagon promptly labeled that statement "totally false...
...first-line bombers can carry 24-mega-ton bombs, or, 25,920 megatons of destructive power. He places total megaton capability of U.S. missiles at 2,650. Goldwater assumes that all but about 50 of the SAC planes will have been phased out by the mid-'70s. From Pentagon announcements, furthermore, Goldwater researchers place the mid-'70s missile force at 1,000 Minuteman and 656 Polaris missiles, each capable of delivering a one-megaton payload. Deliverable capacity then would be 1,656 megatons from missiles, plus 1,200 megatons from the aging bombers-a reduction from...
...point, however, is that the Pentagon considers total megatonnage less crucial than the capacity to deliver a sufficient number of warheads to do the required job. The current strategy says bombers are less likely to penetrate enemy defenses than missiles are. Furthermore, says the Pentagon, the U.S. will be flying considerably more than 50 SAC bombers ten years hence, and that by that time the retaliatory forces will have been beefed up by 5,000 TFX fighter-bombers, as well as the Polaris and Minuteman missiles...