Enter the IBM

After unveiling its latest jet (see above), the Air Force last week looked immediately to a future in which the Voodoo (not yet off the production line) would be outdated. In a speech at the National Press Club, Air Force Secretary Harold E. Talbott said:

"Remember this: the speed of the Germans' V-2 ballistic missile as it plunged down on its target was over 3,500 miles an hour. Can you imagine intercepting it? Two of us might as well stand at opposite ends of a hall and pitch needles at each other in the hope that the needles might collide."

Behind his words was the apparition nicknamed IBM (for intercontinental ballistic missile), which is hurled hundreds of miles into the stratosphere to fall on its target. An IBM could super-whoosh along at 4,000 to 5,000 miles an hour and cross the Atlantic in as little as 30 or 40 minutes. Automatic navigation on the stars should keep the error at target within eight miles, a near miss with an atomic warhead.

Ordered to ride herd on IBM development is Brigadier General Bernard Adolph Schriever (rhymes with beaver), whose mission is hidden behind an obscure title --Assistant to Commander, Air Research and Development Command, Western Development Division--at a West Coast address. Born in Bremen, Germany 44 years ago. Schriever became a U.S. citizen in 1923, graduated from Texas A. & M. in 1931, enlisted as an air cadet, left the service to become a Northwest Airlines pilot, returned in 1938 to be a test pilot, went to Stanford for mechanical engineer training. During the war he became top maintenance man of the Far East Air Forces.

U.S. military development experts hope to have an IBM in seven or eight years, but U.S. intelligence thinks the Russians might have one by 1959.

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