Word: sentinel
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...momentum" of the nuclear-arms race, as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara once described it, lost a bit of velocity last week-after a vertiginous go-around between the world's two superpowers. First, the U.S. Senate voted to begin work on the nation's projected Sentinel anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, designed to provide a "thin" defense screen against enemy rockets. Barely 72 hours later, the Soviet Union called for talks on slowing down the debilitating pace of the missile race...
...system around Moscow and Leningrad two years ago, it was inevitable that the U.S. would follow suit. Washington did so, however, in a roundabout manner. Last September, after years of opposition to an ABM network, McNamara reversed field and announced that the U.S. intended to begin building Sentinel -to defend the country against the Chinese, not the Russians...
...Sentinel's system of radar tracking stations, long-range Spartan missiles and short-range Sprint rockets could indeed be of some avail against Chinese intercontinental missiles, although Peking has fallen a year behind schedule and is not expected to pose any threat until the mid-1970s . Against the real and present peril of 780 land-based Soviet missiles already pointed at U.S. targets, however, Sentinel will afford virtually no protection. Even a "thick" ABM shield, costing $40 billion instead of the projected $5.5 billion for the thin screen, would be hopelessly porous. Missile experts are quicker to devise...
...fact is that Sentinel was intended less as a truly effective defense system than as an expensive propaganda gesture for Soviet consumption. McNamara admitted that the Administration's original decision to go ahead with Sentinel was prompted by "marginal" factors. Some cynics speculated that another Johnson objective was to prevent the G.O.P. from making an election issue out of the "antimissile...
Circular Line. Thus, when Clark Clifford, McNamara's successor as Defense Secretary. went to Capitol Hill to request $227 million as a first installment on Sentinel, he ran into a skeptical Congress. In the Senate, Sentinel was opposed by a potent bipartisan coalition that included such normally defense-minded figures as Stuart Symington, a former Air Force Secretary, and Maine's Margaret Chase Smith. Their arguments: Sentinel is worthless and would merely prompt both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to build more offensive missiles. Eugene McCarthy interrupted his presidential campaign to denounce the ABM system on the Senate...