Word: radars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first Talos we fired at White Sands," Holmes remembers with pleasure, "knocked the target drone so flat they couldn't find the engines.") He had bossed the design and construction of BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System), the Air Force's gigantic, $1.3 billion northern radar system, and made it a personal triumph. With BMEWS, he proved that he could handle touchy and cost-conscious subcontractors, that he knew how to keep materials moving, that he dared to talk up to superiors at home while keeping subordinates happy on the job. Easygoing engineers in search of placid lives...
Noon Alarm. On one famous occasion they worked too well. One October night in 1960, as the powerful pulses from Thule's radar swept rhythmically over the icecap, back came strong reflections that showed as targets on the radar screens. This was just what BMEWS was built for. Warning of possible missile attack flashed across ice and tundra to the North American Air Defense Command at Colorado Springs; a frantic flap spread over the continent. Airbases waited for red alerts, their bombers poised on the runways. Roused out of bed at home in Moorestown, Holmes listened carefully...
Angels. Misleading radar signals usually caused by birds, or bugs in the circuitry...
...Defense. The Army proposed locating 120 Nike-Zeus batteries around major U.S. targets, each with 50 missiles and with radar capable of tracking three warheads at once. But the cost would have been a stratospheric $10 billion to $14 billion-and McNamara decided that it was not worth it. What would happen, he asked, in a saturation attack? The Army conceded that many missiles would get through, but argued that the expense was justified even if only a few were stopped. Unconvinced, McNamara last March ruled out production of the Nike-Zeus system until its problems were solved...
...time being, the shots at Kwajalein will continue, eventually with decoys and radar-jamming techniques to test Nike-Zeus's versatility. "We know of no better solution to the problem,'" said McNamara, but he clearly was unsatisfied with the current state of U.S. anti-missile defenses. "At the present time," said Mc-Narnara when he put the brakes to the program last March, "it appears to us that no amount of money can make possible an absolute defense of this country against the ICBM.'" Despite last week's success, he has not changed his mind...