Word: sacs
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Power's recommendations: immediate funds to get SAC's B-52 bombers ready for a round-the-clock airborne alert, large-scale procurement of the B70 Mach 3 bomber, and a big military space program -"control of space may well mean control of the globe in a future war." Power was seconded on the space argument by Major General John B. Medaris, chief of the Army Ordnance Missile Command. In an interview with Missiles and Rockets, on the eve of his retirement, Medaris blasted as "utter nonsense" the Administration's dividing the space program into civilian...
...deterrent gap." In 1963, explains Defense Secretary Thomas Gates, the U.S. will not be relying solely or even mainly on ICBMs for its main deterrent power. The big punch will still be the H-bombs in the bays of the Strategic Air Command's manned bombers. Backing up SAC's bombers will be a growing force of missiles, but SAC alone will provide an abundance of what the Pentagon calls "overkill." The H-bombs carried by a single B-52 bomber add up to 20 megatons of blast power-the equivalent of 1,000 A-bombs...
There is no real argument about the power of SAC, backed up by the nuclear-armed fighters of the Tactical Air Command in Europe, to deter a Soviet attack on the U.S. this year. But earnest and patriotic men are haunted by doubts as to whether the U.S. can complacently rely on SAC to bridge the missile gap as it widens in 1961 and beyond, and whether the President's $41 billion defense budget for fiscal 1961 is an adequate response to the challenge of that gap. The critics do not argue that the 1961 budget fails to provide...
...most insistent worry is that sometime in the early 1960s the U.S.S.R. might be tempted by its edge in missiles to try to knock out U.S. retaliatory power with a surprise attack on U.S. bomber and missile bases. The warning by SAC's commander, General Thomas S. Power, that with a mere 300 ballistic missiles the U.S.S.R. could "wipe out our entire nuclear strike capability within a span of 30 minutes," is much to the point. General Power's answer to the threat-an "airborne alert" that would keep 25% of SAC...
...second widespread worry, inside and outside the Pentagon, is the possibility that Soviet advances in air defense might largely cancel out SAC's bombers before the U.S. gets around to closing the missile gap. To assure that SAC keeps ahead of Soviet air defense progress, SAC's Power and the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Thomas D. White, want to start placing orders for North American Aviation Inc.'s B70 bomber, designed to fly at three times the speed of sound. In its money requests for fiscal 1961, the Air Force asked for $464 million...