Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-01-15

SenotoE JockSon
He had q nightmare.
military application OF its 1900
mile missile. If it had it. Instead.
he says, the Communists would
probably count on the weapons
psychological effect to wean Amer
ica's allies away.
Devastating Effect
"The political effect of such a
breakthrough would be so devastat-
ing" Senator jackson believes,
that Western Europe's public
opinion would force its leaders. no
matter what their own inclinations,
to withdraw at least into neutrality.
if not out-and-out collaboration
with communism.
The psychological grand prize.
says the Senator, will be the shat
tering of world confidence in the
United States industrial techno-
logical superiority. Up to now this
has been Americas trump military
card" Once we lose 1t. the Senator
fears, the Kremlin would very
likely take over Europe without
firing a shot.
Rome has been warned. 1t will
be recalled, that a mere half dozen
H-bombs could put Italy out Of
commission.
In the light of Senator Jackson's
thinking, of course, the recent De-
Tense Department decision to allo-
cate more money to guided missile
research takes on new impor-
lance. The Army-Navy effort to-
develop a medium-range ballistic
missile from the relatively short
range RedStone rocket may be q
belated American attempt to catch
up. or at least to preserve enough
world respect for our Industrial
chronological capability to forestall
q grand steal such as Senator jack
son worries about.
Pentoeon Reaction
It Is significant that after SEN
ator Jackson made his public state
Inent on the imminence Of Soviet
development Of O / ,500-mile missile,
Army Chief Of Staff Gen. Maxwell
D. Taylor emphasized last week
that the United States is pressing
for the same weapon.
The Soviet chronological chal-
lenge viii not end. of course, with
the race for the intermediate range
ballistic missile. There are other
races In progress or in the offing--
for the so-called ultimate weapon"
known as the intercontinental bal
listic missile ICBM): for the first
small satellite to reach outer space;
for the first manned satellite; for
the first space platform. and so
forth, to the outermost fringes Of
the science frontier.
The Reds are rapidly overtaking
us In the science race, mainly be-
cause we. the richest country in
the world. do not have the resolu-
ton to exert the effort to stay
ahead. BY 1860. our National Sc
curity Council estimates. the So
Wet Union will have so many more
scientists and engineers than we
that they will command a tech
biological superiority comparable to
ours in the first postwar decade.
New Kind Of War
We can't spot the enemy q head
start in the next war, as we did in
the last. The basic problem, Of
course, is that the nuclear age has
fundamentally changed the char
acter Of war The next one is like
ly to happen so fast that there will
be no time to get ready after an
atomic Pearl Harbor. The war will
have been lost
The United States needs COM
plete striking force in being at the
instant war breaks out. As tech
biological progress carries both sides
to ever higher and higher plateaus
in the arms race. this country
ought to stage a series of crash
programs on the heels of each new
scientific breakthrough. That looks
like the only way to stay ahead Of
the fast moving Reds. (This as
sumes, of course, that we somehow
will escape the loss of all our al
lies and the overseas air bases and
launching sites they provide u.s.
In the rosy, peacetime atmos-
phere that Americans insist on
when the guns aren't booming.
however, crash programs have be-
come increasingly hard to develop.
The last was the campaign to make
the thermometer bomb.
ICBM Delay?
There may be similar drive on
now for the ICBM. The President
is known to have decided that the
United States must get this "ulti-
mate weapon" first.
But there are panied outcries
from dedicated men in Congress
and the executive that the ICBM
program is still only half-hearted.
Perhaps the main difficulty is
that the project has been kept
secret. The program has been de-
prived of the wide popular support
that seems necessary in democ-
racy in peacetime. In wartime the
Manhattan project secrecy was not
Gripping because big spending was
possible. The urgency was ap-
parent to key congressman hold
ing the purse strings. In peacetime
this big spending is difficult II not
impossible without public support.
Which brings us to the next sub
ject: The problem Of democratic
peoples need to know about its
own defense. It will be discussed
next Sunday in the second article
In this series.