U.S. DEFENCE PLANS BASED ON BOMBERS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28840, 10 March 1959, Page 13

U.S. DEFENCE PLANS BASED ON BOMBERS

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, March 7. A defence system that would permit at least 600 bombers to be ready for take-off in 15 minutes was expected to be in operation in about a year, the “New York Times” reported today. The newspaper said this would be about one-third of the Strategic Air Command’s striking force.

Quoting “authoritative sources” in Washington for its information, the “Times” said the “alert plan” was adopted as a goal more than a year ago, in response to Soviet missile achievements. Demands had grown in Washington for a system under which a certain number of nucleararmed bombers would be always in the air as a precaution against surprise attack, it said.

The Eisenhower Administration had rejected the air-borne alert proposal, as it had rejected demands that the United States match the Soviet Union in production of inter-continental missiles. The “Times” said officials in Washington conceded that some confusion had developed in the Administration’s portrayal of the actual status of the air command’s readiness. The Secretary of Defence (Mr N. McElroy) had said

about one-third of the force was on “ground alert” now. Officials said, however, that Mr McElroy was mistaken in his belief, because the “one-third goal” depended on a base dispersal building programme that would not be completed for another year. The “Times’’ said the present 15minute alert capability of the command was a secret, but it was understood to include 400 aircraft —one-third of the present command force was 600 planes. The 15-minute warning time had been adopted as a standard, the newspaper said, on the premise that that would be all the warning the United States could expect should the Soviet Union launch a surprise attack with missiles.