Evening star., 1952-04-05
Soviet and American Air Power

In his recent testimony before the House
Appropriations Committee, General Vandenberg,
chief of the United States Air Force, revealed
nothing new about Soviet power in the skies.
At any rate, judging from the heavily censored
published record, he seems merely to have re-
affirmed what has been official dictum for many
months past-namey, that that power, which
includes a growing number Of tranSoceanic
atomic bombers and which at present is sup
ported by considerably greater plane output than
ours, adds up to "the most ominouS threat this
country has ever known"
There is no reason, however, for nervous
Nellie reaction to this assessment of the Situa-
tion Numerically, Russian aerial strength is we'll
ahead of ours at the moment, but if Congress
acts favorably on the military budget before it
If it appropriateS the funds that have been
advocated by General Vandenberg, Air Force
Secretary Finletter and our top naval authorities
the current Soviet lead will in due course be not
merely cut down but eliminated for all practical
purposes. The Kremlin has a lot of excellent
MIG-15 jet fighters right now, but despite that
fact and despite the fact that it is outproducing
us in a number of other plane categorieS, we
can be reasonably certain of our abity-given
adequate financing and drive-to achieve marked
supremacy, in both quantity and quality within
the next two years or so.
We need to remind ourselves occasionally of
what we are capable of doing. There has been
a widespread national tendency to underrate our
actual and potential American power, on land,
at sea and in the skies. But the Russians. we
can be sure, are not undertaking it, They know,
for example, that their MIGs-though very good
in many respects-have been taking bad COM
bat beating in Koreas skies, where our F-86
Sabre Jets have been outfghting and outkilling
them thus far, at ratio of more than to l.
Further than that the men OF the Kremlin are
well aware that our Navy and Air Force will
soon be acquiring, in ever-increasing volume,
several models of new fighter planes (not to
mention bombers) superior to the Sabres. Ger
tainly numbers in this grim business do not
mean great deal For today's MIG may be
terribly outdated tomorrow and If the Soviet
Union has frozen its aviation production to con-
form with fixed designs, then it has stuck itself
with something that it is welcome to-quantity
output that ignores quality improvement OF a
sort that is vital in a field of rapid change and
obsolescence
Above all, leaving aside this Nations incom
parable productive potential-a potential which,
If once harnessed for war would dwarf the
Soviet Union'S-the men of the kremlln must
reckon with the fact that they currently have
at their disposal nothing quite like our intercon-
tinental strategic bombing force. True enough,
as General Vandenberg has testified, they are
sparing no effort to build ur their arsenal OF
atomic weapons and three years from now they
"will begin to approach us in terms of the
number of big planes available to them for the
delivery of such weapons over great distances
meaning specifically their capacity to strike
massively against our American cities. But much
can happen between today and 1855 and II the
Russians are then able only to begin to
approach" our long-r range attacking power, they
probably will be less than eager to hit at US.
It would be foolhardy. of course. for any
American to be cemplacent General Vanden-
berg's warning is not mere verbiage for the
actual and potential air power of the atom
armed Soviet Union does, in fact constitute "the
most ominous threat this country has ever
known" That said, however a sense of perspec-
tive requires that4we keep in mind at the same
time that the Russians also face "the most oniin-