Word: 52s
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...ways away," despite very real concern in the White House. Doty recalls that "half the people at lower levels of government were packing their station wagons to leave with their families for their homes in Vermont." He was also aware of disturbing logistical details: for example, that the B-52s constantly landing and taking off at Logan Airport during the week after Kennedy's first speech were crammed full of nuclear bombs...
Some American B-52s presumably could scramble into the air during a Soviet attack and heap destruction on the U.S.S.R. Nuclear planners until now have generally concluded that the two nations are in rough parity-meaning, essentially, that each could destroy the other. As the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff put it in a "military posture" statement for the current fiscal year: "A major attack on the United States or its allies would result unquestionably in catastrophic retaliatory damage to the Soviet Union...
...continue research and development toward an advanced technology bomber--"Stealth." B-52Gs and B-52Hs (and eventually B-1s) will carry more than 3000 cruise missiles beginning 1982. Existing KC-135 aerial tankers will receive new engines. I thoroughly support the deployment of 3000 cruise missiles on the B-52s, but believe that since the B-52s launch their cruise missiles from outside Soviet airspace, only the missiles have to penetrate Soviet air defenses, diminishing the need for a penetrating strategic bomber. Unless the Stealth program were so successful as to provide a cheaper, more effective alternative...
European allies. One Western European ambassador in Washington described the plan as encapsulating "all that is wrong with American foreign policy" and described as a "caricature" the notion of sending out B-52s to bomb the sands near the Libyan-Egyptian border. Another Western diplomat said flatly: "The means employed by this Administration are completely disproportionate to the intended effect. They nullify it." In Bonn, officials privately called the approach heavy handed, fearing that it would attract attention to U.S. interests in Egypt, fan further Islamic unrest and lend substance to Soviet charges that the Egyptian government is an American...
...plane is scheduled to start rolling off Rockwell International assembly lines by 1986, and is designed to replace the aging B-52s until the "Stealth" bomber can be completed, which Weinberger says will be by 1989. But critics contend that the price tag is too high for a plane that will be obsolete by the late 1980s, when the Soviets may well have improved their air defense systems to foil the B-1s. Said Democratic Senator Gary Hart of Colorado: "We cannot afford both bombers, and the Stealth is the more formidable...