Word: sacs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Ryan lacks the bulldozer force of SAC Predecessor Curtis LeMay, soon to retire as Air Force Chief of Staff, and he does not pretend to Power's burning brilliance. But he was a favorite of both LeMay and Power, and he knows SAC as perhaps no other...
...World War II bomber pilot. Ryan flew 58 combat missions in Europe, on the final one lost his left index finger to flak; in SAC circles he is fondly, but not to his face, known as "Three-Finger Jack." In 1946 he helped plan U.S. atomic tests at Bikini atoll, then joined SAC, which was just being formed. With the exception of a year's tour as Air Force inspector general, he has been a SAC man ever since, most recently serving as Power's deputy commander. He knows all the tools of his trade, is an expert...
Ryan takes command at a time of SAC transition, with 100 Atlas and 54 Titan I missiles being phased out, along with 400 B-47s, six airfields and 14 missile sites. But he will still have plenty left: 600 B-52s, 80 B-58s, 600 KC-135 jet tanker planes, 200 KC-97s, 54 Titan II missiles and 650 Minutemen (he will eventually have 1,000 Minutemen), all comprising 90% of the free world's explosive power...
Fail Safe first appeared as the Domesday Book of 1962, a propagandistic piece of fantascience in which Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler warned the world that at any moment a SAC computer might go crazy and cause a nuclear holocaust. Sold to a Hollywood operator for $500,000, the novel has now been made into a sensational scareshow that for the first hour or so will seem credible to civilians and keep their teeth chattering like Geiger counters. But as a work of art and an effort of polemic, Fail Safe labors under a special difficulty: Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick...
...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...