ARMED FORCES: Charlie's Hurricane

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The new thinking places principal responsibilities for today's peace on the Air Force, both with its long-range B-52s and B-36s at home, and its B-47s deployed overseas. The Navy and its carriers, mobile bases already cruising within Navy bomber reach of enemy targets (TIME, May 21), play an important auxiliary role. For the Army, there is clearly less and less to do even today. Faced by these staggering facts, the Army struck out for its own place under the nuclear sun of tomorrow, planning and arguing strenuously in these areas:

STRATEGIC BOMBING. Under the mission assigned it by the Key West agreement of 1948,*the Air Force has exclusive rights to the intercontinental (5,000 miles) ballistics missile, is pushing its Atlas ICBM development program. But the Army argues that the ballistics missile is actually a sort of artillery shell, points to its own service mission of destroying enemy ground forces wherever they may be found—presumably including a Soviet garrison. On that basis the Army won authorization to work on Redstone, a 200-mile range missile, and with the Navy on Jupiter, an intermediate-range (1,500 miles) ballistics missile. The Army hopes that Jupiter, the IRBM, or Redstone can eventually be extended to ICBM range—a fact that the Air Force realizes and resents.

CONTINENTAL DEFENSE. Key West gave the air defense of the U.S. to the Air Force, limited the Army to an antiaircraft role. But, using "antiaircraft" as its entering wedge, the Army developed the radar-controlled, ground-to-air Nike (rhymes with psyche), which it now touts as the backbone of U.S. air defense.*Nike has several glaring deficiencies: it is not a homing missile and must be guided electronically from the ground; its range is less than 60 miles, even in an improved model; it does not fit into the Air Force SAGE system of early radar warning against attack (the Army has its own "Missile Master" warning system). But Nike has one great virtue: it is the best now available in operational quantities to the U.S. The Air Force is adopting the Navy-developed Talos, still undergoing tests, with which it hopes to drive Nike—and the Army—out of the air defense business.

Army Air Power. At the time of the Key West agreement, the Army had about 200 aircraft, used mostly for liaison and artillery spotting. Today it has about 4,000 (helicopters, light planes, transports) and is grasping avidly for more, which it says it needs to provide airlift and close support for its divisions. Lieut. General James Gavin, farseeing chief of Army Research and Development, says that "20,000 planes for the Army might not be enough." Last week the Army officially demanded long-range, high-speed aircraft to track its missiles. The Army grab for air power is seen by the Air Force as a clear threat to its independent existence.