National Affairs: Backyard Atomics

Defensively speaking, the atom is potentially no farther away than the air space over a neighbor's backyard, the U.S. learned last week. "The Department of Defense," announced Secretary Charles Wilson, "has begun deployment of nuclear weapons within the United States for air-defense purposes." In plain words, the Continental Air Defense Command now has added the sinew of the nuclear warhead. Atom-armed air-to-air rockets and surface-to-air missiles deployed in strategic places in the U.S. can, if need be, thunder into the path of any known enemy bomber.

Warheads on air-to-air rockets, which can be carried by such interceptors as the null null and F-102, can be set to give a predetermined yield of bomber-killing heat, radiation and shock effect; a single burst can make an area of two-to-five cubic miles uninhabitable by an enemy bomber. Moreover, an atomic rocket can down a low-flying enemy bomber while causing only minimum radioactive contamination of the ground area below, since new warheads have been designed with a low fallout yield.

"As stored and carried," said Wilson, anticipating the next question, "these weapons emit no harmful radiation and present no radiation hazard to persons living near or passing by locations [e.g., Nike-Hercules' launching stations] where they are deployed. Many personnel already work in the vicinity of nuclear weapons daily."