The Increasing Threat of Ballistic Missiles

Abstract

THE speech of Senator Jackson (Dem., Wash.) which is reprinted below is a most outspoken and eloquent expression of alarm felt over the Soviet progress in the development of missiles by those concerned with American military planning. The report of a committee, headed by Dr. Killian, president of M.I.T. (not released in full, but referred to in the press on December 10 by Hanson Baldwin) seems to have stirred Washington into acute realization of the necessity of speeding up American progress in this field. On February 1, Defense Secretary Wilson let it be known that he is going to appoint a civilian head to coordinate and spur the missile developments, at present split between a number of independent groups under the several branches of the military. The budget for next fiscal year, presented to Congress, provides $1,276,000,000 for missile development.At this writing, no action has followed Secretary Wilsons announcement, and the alarm call has been carried on to the public by Senator Symington in a “Meet the Press” television interview on February 5, and by Senator Jackson in his Senate speech on February 1.The American scientists, and the Bulletin in particular, have never underestimated (especially in the field of ballistics) the competence of Russian scientists.1 This competence, combined with the never slackening Soviet effort to increase its military power, makes it certain that without a most intensive and sustained effort on our side, the Soviet Union will pass the U.S. in military rocketry as well as in other new weapon developments. Since any demonstration of Soviet superiority in modern weapon technology would be psychologically detrimental to American influence in the world, we hope that an economy-bent administration (and a smug and comfort-seeking public) will not allow this to happen. However, it would be almost equally smug to believe—as many seem to believe—that keeping abreast or ahead of the Soviet Union in the race for every type of new weapon can provide objective security to U.S. and its world-wide politico-military alliance system. The main danger of medium-range ballistic missiles, such as the Soviet Union is said to have successfully tested now (range, about 1,500 miles) is the jeopardy into which such missiles, equipped with atomic warheads, will place American and allied bases in Asia, Africa, and Europe. One does not immediately see how this threat could be significantly alleviated by our own possession of missiles of this type, since the Soviet Union does not depend on similar outposts close to our country.The situation is not symmetrical because the Soviet Unions military power depends entirely on a geographically contiguous and politically integrated land mass, while we are concerned with the protection of a number of geographically widely separated and politically independent areas. To prevent the medium-range Soviet ballistic missile from tilting dangerously the balance of power in the world what matters is American capacity to sustain the threat of atomic destruction—on which the peace of the world is so precariously based now—over the heads of the Soviet rulers, if needs be even without the overseas bases threatened by the medium-range missiles. In other words, the objectively important countermeasure to the Soviet development of medium-range missiles seems to lie not so much in matching this particular Soviet advance as in the production of an adequate number of long-range bombers (and, ultimately, in the development of the true transoceanic missile). Hesitant approach to these last developments could become truly decisive in the arms race.