Red Alert

For weeks last October, Air Force crews tried to test-fire their Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile at its silo in Grand Forks, N. Dak. On each of three attempts, its systems control light went red--meaning that the elaborate three-stage bird was unable or unsafe to fire. First it was a failure of a nozzle-control unit, then a glitch in a fail-safe arming circuit, then a guidance failure traced to a tiny capacitor.

Minuteman II has been flashing its red light with disconcerting frequency. The nation's most advanced operational ICBM, with a 7,500-mile range and a deadly megaton warhead, it has performed with 94.9% of maximum efficiency when test-fired under demonstration conditions at Cape Kennedy and other ranges. But when mounted in launching silos across the nation, sitting underground and waiting indefinitely for action, it develops minute but dangerously incapacitating problems.

Bugs in Components. Of the 1,000 Minutemen deployed in the U.S., 750 are the five-year-old shorter-range (6,300 miles) Minuteman I missiles. Thus, as the more effective Minuteman Us develop bugs in their intricate components, the nation's ICBM capability is seriously reduced. Minuteman II, when functioning perfectly, has range, flexibility and speed (about 30 min. to any target in Russia or China) unmatched by Minuteman I, the Navy's Polaris missiles (range: 2,875 miles) or, of course, intercontinental bombers. Currently, 40% of the Minuteman Us are not operational or not on alert because of malfunctions, leaving the nation comparatively naked to a Communist ICBM attack.

Many of the Minuteman II guidance systems, designed and built by North American Aviation's Autonetics Divi sion, have been returned to the factory for repair. Their ultra-subminiature integrated circuitry is still at best temperamental. Eventually, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown maintained last week, Minuteman II, only two years old and still evolving, will mature into a reliable vehicle. In the meantime, as the U.S. relies upon an overwhelming ICBM offensive to keep the Russians strategically in check, the failures of Minuteman II remain a dangerous flaw in the nation's armor.

Rather than mount an immensely expensive anti-ballistic missile system to defend the nation's cities against a possible attack by enemy missiles, the U.S. has relied to date on an offensive system whose devastating retaliatory capabilities would, presumably, deter the enemy from attacking in the first place. The present U.S. arsenal should indeed give any aggressor pause. It consists of the 1,000 Minuteman Is and IIs, 54 Titan IIs and 656 Polaris missiles, as well as 555 B-52 and 80 B58 intercontinental bombers armed to unload nuclear bombs on any enemy in the world--although some 60 B-52s are now based on Guam and in Thailand to fly conventional missions over North Viet Nam.

Shock from Nonchalance. Yet checking the Soviet's nuclear threat may eventually become a secondary problem. Last week Congress' Joint Committee on Atomic Energy issued a special report dealing with Red China's potential strategy of end game. The report was designed to shock the nation out of its nonchalance about Red China's nuclear intentions--a ho-hum attitude nourished in part by Defense Secretary McNamara's opinion that the Chinese would have no significant nuclear arsenal before "the mid-'70s."

The committee's verdict was that the Chinese, who last June exploded their sixth device, a hydrogen bomb in the megaton range, will continue to place a high priority on thermonuclear weapons development. "With continued testing," said the report, "we believe they will be able to develop a thormonuclear warhead in the ICBM weight class with a yield in the megaton range by about 1970 and can have an ICBM system ready for deployment in the early 1970s. A low order of magnitude attack could possibly be launched by the Chinese Communists against the U.S. by the early 1970s."

Any such strike by Peking would obviously draw devastating retaliation by the U.S. But the committee, in calling attention to the threat of a Chinese attack, wanted to keep alive consideration and discussion of an American anti-ballistic missile system.

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