Defense: The Missing Card

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Defense Secretary Robert S. Mc-Namara's announcement that the U.S. will build a "thin" anti-ballistic-missile shield against a possible Chinese attack (TIME, Sept. 22) came under attack itself last week as proposing both far too little and much too much.

The Administration had had the option to build no ABM system at all, or to construct either the thin shield, aimed at blunting a strike from Peking, or a "thick" shield, designed to cope with an all-out onslaught from Moscow. As usual, Lyndon Johnson staked out the middle ground, and, as usual, he and McNamara came under crossfire from both flanks.

McNamara had long been a precise and persistent opponent of any ABM system, chiefly on the ground that in the lethal game of nuclear deterrence, the best defense is a powerful offense. But when the Russians started deploying an ABM network—however thin—around Moscow and other cities, the Administration came under heavy pressure to follow suit. The reason for the U.S. decision, McNamara told 500 United Press International editors in San Fran cisco's Fairmont Hotel, was the threat that Red China would probably be able to strike the U.S. with nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles by the mid-1970s. "It would be insane and suicidal for her to do so, but one can conceive conditions under which China might miscalculate," he said. For that reason, construction of the minimal ABM shield will begin before the end of the year.

Spartan System. The project will involve more than 1,000 contractors and will take five or six years to complete, at a cost of $1 billion a year. The Army, which will have operational responsibility for the system, makes no apologies for the amount of time involved. "Some of the people on the Hill think that all you have to do with a missile site is plug in for water and electricity as you do at a trailer park," said one officer. The fact is, said another, that "the ABM requires a more complicated system than that needed to land a man on the moon."

Indeed it does. The forward line of defense will consist of five or six "perimeter acquisition radar sites" (PARS) along the northern U.S. border to identify and track incoming ICBMs. The radar sites will send information back to missile-site radar (MSR) equipment at 14 or so areas where long-range Spartan missiles will be poised to intercept enemy vehicles as much as 400 miles from their targets. Each Spartan battery will protect an elliptical area of the nation—in Pentagonese, a "footprint." Present plans call for batteries in each of the overlapping footprints, others in Alaska and Hawaii.

Each site will also have batteries of short-range Sprint missiles, designed to intercept, at ranges of up to 25 miles, any ICBMs that escape the clouds of X rays and neutrons laid down by the Spartans. In addition, five or six independent Sprint batteries will be deployed to protect the long-range radar sites and Minutemen in the U.S. Northwest. Though the number has not yet been determined, each Spartan site may have as many as 50 missiles.