ANTI-MISSILE MISSILE

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28440, 21 November 1957, Page 15

ANTI-MISSILE MISSILE

Development By U.S. Urged (Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, November 19. The United States Government is being urged by the Army to make an all-out effort to produce an operational anti-missile missile by 1961 at a three-year cost of between 6000 million dollars and 7000 million dollars, James Reston, the chief Washington correspondent of the “New York Times,” reported to-night. Reston said this proposal for a defence against the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile had been made to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Mr Neil McElroy, the Secretary of Defence, by the Army Chief of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor. Oh the basis of experiments with components of the Army missile, Nike Zeus, General Taylor was convinced that this weapon could be developed with nuclear and thermonuclear warheads to the point where it could track down and destroy the Soviet 1.C.8.M., the correspondent said. But for this development to be made within a three or four-year period, the general had said, the project must be given top priority in the Budget now under discussion at the Defence Department, the Bureau of the Budget and the White House. Reston said General Taylor’s contention was that the Soviet Union was making rapid progress in the development of ground to air missiles which, he feared, would steadily diminish the effectiveness of the United States Strategic Air Force. He was supporting larger new expenditures for United States offensive missiles in all ranges, but insisted that, to keep pace with the development of Soviet missiles capable of reaching the United States across the Polar regions of the north, the United States must immediately try for a major break-through in the antimissile field.

Reston said General Taylor’s recommendation confronts President Eisenhower with perhaps his most serious decision in the current Budget review, for approval of the anti-missile missile project would increase the military budget far beyond anything that had been mentioned in public so far.