The Press SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1956. U.S. Vote For Air Power

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28020, 14 July 1956, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1956. U.S. Vote For Air Power

The usual response of United States Congressmen in an election year to legislation calling for heavy expenditure is to reduce sharply the sums asked for by the Administration—to prove to the voters that members of Congress do not believe jin wasting the money collected from • the taxpayers. This procedure, followed with some regularity in recent months on the provision of United States foreign aid, has been reversed in the vote on the Air Force estimates. Against the wishes of the Administration the Senate voted an increase of nearly 1,000,000,000 dollars on the sum originally sought. The vote was the outcome of a fierce controversy among the three fighting services. Spokesmen for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force have all publicly put their case (a separate and conflicting case for each service) for particular roles and weapons to suit their plans for expansion; and each case has appeared to rest on the needs of national defence. Now that the Air Force has won a handsome victory, the Democrats in Congress are demanding that the extra money should be spent on building the intercontinental 8.52 bomber, the proposed replacement for the 8.36 bomber now used by the Strategic Air Command. This desire is based on the belief that the Russians are gaining a huge lead in the production of bombers of intercontinental range, which would expose America to the risk of devastating attack. The chief spokesman for this claim has been the head of the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay, who minced no words in predicting Russian superiority by 1960 in long-range bombers. The contention of the Air Force was countered by the Navy and the Army, which each claimed pre-eminent roles in the new strategy of nuclear warfare. Their arguments particularly concerned the use of guided missiles (which, it is claimed, may make bombers obsolete) and about who should control them. The controversy has been a close pre-occupation of public relations men from each of the three services. It has led to a public inter-service wrangle which, ironically, would be impossible in the Soviet Union, America’s only military rival and potential enemy. Many in the British Commonwealth will find it hard to believe that the heads of the three armed services should be permitted, and even encouraged, by Congress to air such a dispute in public. The tradition of free speech—even for service departmental heads; even at the risk of undermining public confidence in national defence policy—is so deeply rooted that the embarrassed Administration could do little to stop the flow of propaganda from each of the three services. There is, at last, talk of a Unification Bill which, by placing the three services under one firm control, would stop such a public airing of rivalries. The argument has proved that the United States has not yet firmly shaped its defence policy to the demands and the opportunities of the new nuclear weapons. Many Congressmen and some of the defence leaders insist that nuclear warfare, while bringing its own new problems, provides no insurance against new “ little wars ” on the Korea pattern, which call for orthodox land, sea and air forces as well as the much more expensive atomic and hydrogen bomb warheads. Walter Lippmann, writing in the “ New York Herald Tribune ” on what he call the “ rivalry and “ turmoil ” within the services, has said on this subject of policy: “It “ would clear the air a good deal if “ the Administration would admit “ that policy is in the making but “ is not made, and that the military “ art is developing faster than our “ strategical understanding of its “ consequences While this policy is being hammered out, many friends of the United States will hope that Congress will not sacrifice the foreign aid programme to the demands of a vastly increased air strength. “ The Times ”, in a long review of the Congressional vote, commented: “A policy of more “ money for bombers and less for “ foreign aid is contradictory because “ it is on foreign aid and its effects “ that the Strategic Air Command “ depends for possession of its over- “ sea bases, without which it could “ not operate ”.