Word: skybolts
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...specific dispute between Kennedy and Macmillan was the all-but-final U.S. decision to scrap the Skybolt missile project (TIME, Dec. 21). The U.S. had promised to supply Britain with at least 100 Skybolts, and the British, with no long-range missile capability of their own, had built many of their defense plans around the bomber-launched weapon...
High-Flying Pad. Skybolt's defenders insist that the five test failures are virtually meaningless; almost all missiles have failed in their early tests, including Polaris. The Skybolt enthusiasts say that their bird, along with Polaris and Minuteman, would give the U.S. greater missile flexibility-an aim long pursued by the Kennedy Administration. Minuteman's fixed bases can presumably be pinpointed and destroyed by an enemy, and Polaris' submarines move into position at only 30 knots, but Skybolt's bombers can fly at more than 600 m.p.h...
...Robert McNamara remains unimpressed; to him, Skybolt seems worth neither the cost nor the effort. Groans an Air Force strategist: ''They threw our Skybolt into a cost-effectiveness computer. and it came up 'tilt.' " If Skybolt's advocates insist on comparing their bird with Minuteman and Polaris, claim its critics, they are on shaky ground. Skybolt is more elusive than a land missile only when it is airborne. But the cost of keeping a B-52 fleet aloft is immense -and a SAC base is a much softer target than a hardened silo. A nuclear...
...President Kennedy has backed McNamara. At his news conference, Kennedy placed the cost of the Skybolt system at $2.5 billion, a figure that Skybolt contractors feel is much too high. Kennedy also seemed to express doubt that Skybolt will ever work at all. Said he in a strangely defeatist statement: ''It has been really, in a sense, the kind of engineering that's been beyond...
...seeking to soothe the British, the U.S. made it clear that Britain is free to go ahead with Skybolt-at its own expense. But this would require an increase of about 30% in Britain's income tax-a prospect hardly palatable to any government, much less Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's hard-pressed Tories. The U.S. will also offer to help Britain adapt its nuclear submarines to carry Polaris missiles; this would be better, but still not enough to satisfy the British. And Macmillan will certainly express that dissatisfaction in his Nassau meeting with Kennedy this week...