Word: skybolts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...said the Conservative Government has been unwilling to do this, and "the Nassau Agreement, following the Skybolt decision, merely highlighted this fact...
President Donald Douglas Jr. is clearly gambling that the DC-9 will help reverse his company's decline. The loss of the Skybolt contract last January cut Douglas' orders backlog to $806 million (v. $2.2 billion in 1956). Sales during the past six years have slipped 30%, to $750 million in 1962, and the work force is only half what it was six years ago. Canny James McDonnell, chairman of St. Louis' thriving McDonnell Aircraft, has bought an estimated 200,000 Douglas shares and wants to take over. Though Douglas directors rebuffed his bid last month, they...
...Europe would not forever accept total U.S. control of nuclear weapons, the U.S. offered more than two years ago to give them a voice in their disposition and use-but left it to Europe to devise a formula. It was not until the Kennedy Administration canceled the bug-ridden Skybolt missile project last December that the U.S. was forced to take the initiative. In place of Skybolt, the Administration reluctantly offered at Nassau to supply Polaris missiles for an independent British submarine force...
...approach turns on the rather hopeless assumption that no one in the State Department was aware of McNamara's moves throughout the time leading up to his announcement. As early as November 19th, however, Aviation News and Space Technology reported that the Department of Defense was planning to cancel Skybolt. Agents of the State Department sit in the Pentagon for the express purpose of relaying news of projects in the Defense Department in order to study their effect on foreign policy. Besides, we must assume that McNamara is an extraordinarily naive man to formulate and execute such an important decision...
...plausible motive heretofore skirted is that of Kennedy's domestic political objectives. The Administration's private struggle with Congress and the Pentagon probably shaped its strategy as much, if not more, than any other factor. McNamara planned Skybolt's demise while still smarting from the attacks launched at him last spring when he had tried to stop development of the B-70, a Mach 2 superbomber. Primarily on the strength of the testimony of the Air Force's General Curtis Le May, Congress reprimanded McNamara's action and threatened to "direct" him to reverse himself. He eventually had to concede...