ARMED FORCES: Something for a Scabbard

ARMED FORCES Something for a Scabbard The U.S. Army, grimly aware that its historic role and mission will be obsolete in the missile age, last week publicly wigwagged its hope of latching on to both a new weapon and way of life. To New York Timesman James Reston the Army passed the word that it had presented to Defense Secretary Neil McElroy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff a plan to produce an operational anti-missile missile* by 1961. Cost: between $6 billion and $7 billion. Name of the proposed missile system : the Army's Nike-Zeus.

Importuned by newsmen as he left a Capitol Hill hearing, McElroy hustled to the Pentagon, checked his records, jogged his memory, heated his temper and summoned the Joint Chiefs. Had they received any such proposal? The official, collective answer: negative. But Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor explained that he had given Reston "background information," might well have oversimplified in trying to get his point across. McElroy glared, suggested that Taylor had been less than candid with Newsman Reston, announced that the incident was closed.

But the debate was not. Another round —however misfused—had been fired in the looming interservice battle of offensive v. defensive doctrine. The arguments:

Army: Russian progress in intercontinental missiles will gradually make obsolete the Air Force's Strategic Air Command. To defend U.S. cities in the foreseeable future, major allocations must be committed now for an effective ICBM counterweapon. The current Army Nike system—both physically and technically —can be used for the more complex Nike-Zeus anti-missile system.

Air Force: The surest guarantee of protection is offensive—not defensive—power. The tremendous cost of a defensive missile program would seriously compete with the evolving knockout strike force. Moreover, to stop an ICBM effectively—once its course is determined—an anti-ICBM must be launched into the trajectory from the target vicinity, and ICBM targets in the U.S. will be strike-force bases, not cities; therefore, even Nike sites are already wasted.

So far, neither the Army (with Nike-Zeus) nor the Air Force (with its Wizard anti-missile project) has yet drawn complete plans or even formulated solid concepts for countering ballistic missiles. Far more demanding than the anti-missile itself is development of the fully integrated and highly automatic system required—in the limited time available —to detect an ICBM on its way. track it, predict its trajectory and, at the proper instant, launch an intercept missile with nuclear or thermonuclear warhead. And what is the proper instant? When the missile is still in outer space? Or after it has slowed within the atmosphere? How will the system operate if a Hydra-headed missile rains down multiple charges or decoys? Or takes aerodynamic evasive action? Or orbits before plunging (see SCIENCE) ?

Neither the Nike-Zeus nor the Wizard system can yet handle these problems, even on paper. But the Army, desperate for a shining new missile to fit its honored scabbard, is willing to try to handle them —in the papers.