Word: wiesner
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...entire scenario, of course, is theoretical. Dr. Jerome Wiesner of M.I.T., who was John Kennedy's science adviser, notes that Sentinel is "untestable" under anything approaching simulated combat conditions. The warheads have been detonated in underground explosions, to be sure, and the missiles that carry them have been launched, but the 1963 nuclear Test-Ban Treaty prohibits nuclear explosions in space. Even without this veto, it would be fantastically difficult to stage a realistic war game featuring...
...lack vital data about the attacking missiles and about ABM performance," says Wiesner, who calls Sentinel "that Edsel of ABM's." "So we just pick some numbers that seem rational and we use them to make whatever point serves our purpose." Ted Kennedy quotes the Budget Bureau's Richard Stubbing, who evaluated $40 billion worth of aircraft and missile projects initiated since 1955 and concluded that "less than 40% of the effort produced systems with acceptable electronic performance." The implication, of course, is that if technology cannot perfect relatively simple devices, it seems highly improbable that the infinitely complex...
...perhaps millions of Americans in the event of nuclear war, plus an additional deterrent to enemy attack. Opponents of Sentinel, including Senator Edward Kennedy, answer that the Sentinel represents "false security" because it would only accelerate nuclear-arms competition. Some distinguished scientists, notably Hans Bethe, Ralph Lapp and Jerome Wiesner, argue that the system would not live up to its advance advertising. Previous attempts to develop ABMs have faltered on the theory that they would be obsolete by the time they were installed...
...Silence. One of the hardest to convince was Wernher von Braun. But when he was finally converted to the lunar-orbit-rendezvous technique, he became a formidable advocate. During a visit to Huntsville, President Kennedy stood in embarrassed silence while Von Braun argued heatedly with Presidential Science Adviser Jerome Wiesner, the last important holdout against LOR. Pressed for a final decision, Kennedy overruled Wiesner in October 1962 and gave NASA permission to proceed with the design and construction of a lunar module...
...official rationale for a thin system--defense against China--is highly contestable. China now possesses no intercontinental missiles capable of attacking the United States. Yet the military proposes to build a system that Jerome Wiesner, John Kennedy's Science Advisor, believes would be almost immediately obsolete, and which can never be realistically tested because of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. ABM proponents further assume that China might use her first long-range missiles even before developing simple decoy devices, already known to the American military, that can render Sentinels almost useless. As a response China could only expect obliteration...