Word: skybolt
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Part of the U.S.-British deal was a U.S. offer to develop and sell to Britain at discount prices a nuclear-armed, 1,000-mile, air-launched missile named Skybolt. But late last year Skybolt was churned through McNamara's cost-performance computers and found wanting: as a weapon, McNamara decided, Skybolt was simply not worth the money and effort. His decision made, McNamara flew off to London to tell British Defense Minister Peter Thorneycroft the bad news. McNamara had not reckoned on the reaction. Harold Macmillan's Tory government was already on shaky political ground; its Labor...
...concentrating on missiles and aerospace, the airframe companies have become increasingly dependent on the Government, which accounts for 83% of Lockheed's sales and 77% of Douglas'. Despite the dangers of such heavy reliance-as Douglas recently discovered when it lost its $1,000,000,000 Skybolt contract-the planemakers clearly prefer dependence on Washington to again risking financial ruin with commercial jets...
...became patently clear that there was a wide-open, undefended path through Canada for Soviet bombers, Canadian defense officials began secret nuclear negotiations with the U.S. Diefenbaker still hedged. Returning from a Nassau meeting with British Prime Minister Macmillan and President Kennedy, during which Britain agreed to scrap Skybolt bomber-carried missiles in return for Polaris-armed submarines, Diefenbaker told Parliament that bombers had been ruled obsolete. Therefore, he said, there was no need for Canadian nuclear de fense against a transpolar Russian strike...
Gutty, impulsive, often explosively gauche, Brown has had little formal education or top-level administrative experience, but is a knowledgeable defense expert who criticized Britain's commitment to the Skybolt missile as far back as 1960. His most impressive endorsement came last week from the prestigious Economist, which argued that criticisms of his quick temper and impatience with technical detail "could also have been levied against Winston Churchill." Unlike Gaitskell, whose political philosophy was based on an essentially out-of-date view of an "insular and downtrodden England," argued the weekly, Brown's socialism is that...
...Their feeling of shock today is all the greater because it has been so long delayed. As if by some malevolent design, a whole series of frustrations and failures has beset Britannia in a few short months, deepening the nation's angst. The abrupt U.S. cancellation of the Skybolt missile rudely exposed the fact that Britain's "independent" nuclear deterrent is in fact almost wholly dependent on Washington. There was a time when U.S. Presidents sought Britain's counsel-and even approval-before taking any major initiative in world affairs; in the Cuban crisis, the most perilous...