The Second Generation

In the new, fast-changing world of missilery, the Air Force last week got go-ahead orders on the wildest blue-yonder project in its history. Name of project: Minuteman. Nature of Minuteman: a whole new weapons system of 3,000 to 4,000 solid-fuel "second-generation" missiles of variable 500-mile to 5,500-mile range, each to be kept in a state of pushbutton readiness, warheaded, target-aimed, in concealed and dispersed underground launching slots.

Minuteman is the latest major weapons system to grow from the big breakthrough in the development of solid-fueled missiles. Almost as soon as scientists found solutions to solid-fuel problems, the relatively inexpensive, highly mobile, easily handled solid-fuel missiles opened up whole new prospects of operation. And at the same time they doomed to swift obsolescence the cumbersome, complex, costly, "first-generation" liquid-fuel missiles, with their big, liquid-oxygen plants, their long fueling time before launching and their intricate plumbing.

Already, the Navy is at work on a weapons system that mates the solid-fuel intermediate-range Polaris to the nuclear submarine (TIME, March 3). Now, with his decision to move ahead into the research and development phase of Minuteman, Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, only 20 weeks in office, is driving for a second-generation ring around the U.S.S.R. designed to deter war and to support U.S. diplomacy through the mid-and late-1960s. Target date for the first 50 to 60 Minuteman missiles on the defense line: July 1962.

The Capabilities. The new Minuteman ICBM is a three-stage rocket, 57 ft. long, weighing 65,000 lbs., with predicted 5,500-mile range. It is designed to pack a thermonuclear warhead smaller than that of the liquid-fueled ICBM Atlas, but big enough to take out major targets. Its major components can be broken down to make shorter-range missiles; by itself the missile's third stage could make a useful tactical ballistic missile (TBM) with 500-to 1,000-mile range; its second and third stages would combine to make a 1,500-mile IRBM for use from such close-in bases as those in Europe and Formosa. But the big new dividend of solid fuel is that Minuteman missiles can be fired from Soft, deep, concrete-lined and steel-capped underground cylindrical chambers --"inverted silos."

Present planning is that Minuteman will be grouped in batteries of 50 missiles, controlled from one command post, and with individual missiles dispersed to the point that an enemy five-megaton hit on the installation would theoretically take out no more than one Minuteman missile. Each missile will be countdown-ready at all times, will be hooked up electronically to the underground battery command post so that any defect can be spotted. If a red sensing-light flashes trouble, the sick missiles will be removed, replaced at once and repaired at a specially built factory not more than 500 miles away.

When the Air Force sets out to place its missiles in position, it will seek great open areas, e.g., the Southwestern U.S., will rent missile sites from farmers and ranchers. In peacetime, the missile sites will stand unmanned, surrounded by electric fences, and patrolled from the air and on the ground. But in the event of war, nothing more than the press of a thumb on a Minuteman red switch would be needed to flip back the steel caps, fire the missiles in their tubes and shoot them out on 800-to 1,000-mile-high trajectories to preplanned targets. Still another new Minuteman paper asset: a secret new high speed to enable the missile to race to target faster than enemy contramissiles can counterstrike.

The Breakthroughs. Plans for this formidable new weapons system have been developed during the past few years under the eye of the Air Force's Missile Boss--and Minuteman Boss--Major General Bernard A. Schriever (TIME, April 1). The concept was developed and presented by a brilliant colonel, Edward N. Hall, 43, a day-after-tomorrow kind of officer with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Caltech and a twelve-year background in ballistic-missile science.

The Air Force had long been concerned about the mounting costs and complexities of the U.S.'s liquid-fueled missiles--the ICBMs Atlas and Titan, the IRBMs Thor and Jupiter--and had also been aware that long-countdown liquid-fuel missiles were not weapons of true instant retaliation. Barred by the Defense Department temporarily from solid-fuel development, the Air Force was impressed by the rapid progress and strategic potential of the Navy's solid-fuel Polaris. Months ago Schriever's men got down to work adapting the Polaris' developments to Air Force concepts.

There were three critical solid-fuel rocketry breakthroughs: 1) development at Caltech and Aerojet-General Corp. of a new type of solid fuel that will last a year or more inside underground launching cylinders without cracking; 2) development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology of a new-type guidance gyro that can be kept running continuously inside the underground slots for as long as two to three years; 3) successful testing by Thiokol Chemical Corp. of the biggest solid-fuel rocket engine ever built, with more than enough thrust to meet ICBM requirements.

The Costs. One day last month Air Force Secretary James Douglas signaled the new Minuteman breakthrough when he hustled in to see McElroy, his arms loaded with papers and charts. Douglas asked McElroy for $26 million this year, $230 million next year, to get Minuteman development under way right now and the system itself operational by July 1962. Flash estimate cost of 4,000 Minuteman missiles: $3 1/2 billion. McElroy's decision, taken after consultation with his advisory panel, was to order the Air Force to go ahead--and to brace himself for the ruling that may ultimately have to be made between the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's Minuteman.

One thing was made clear in the Minuteman announcement: the Air Force knows that the days are numbered for its vast, multibillion-dollar liquid-fuel ICBM program, which is in its test stages. What will be done with these missiles when, in the mid-1960s, they are obsolete?

The answer is nothing less than a definition of the dizzy pace of U.S. defense ever since World War II. Atlas and Titan, now invaluable for testing and improving guidance systems, nose cones, etc., would be fine, said the Air Force, for astronautical vehicles, space-satellite launchers, even manned spaceships. Thus they will play a role in the coming buildup for the "third-generation" mission to deter war by getting machines and men into outer space.

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