Word: gap
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...will be nuclear submarines armed with Polaris solid-fuel intermediate-range missiles, plus IRBMs deployed in Western Europe, plus U.S. fighter-bombers, with a mighty nuclear wallop, on alert at bases scattered around the perimeter of the Communist heartland. But what made the headlines was the missile gap, and the public confusion was greater than ever...
Into the '60s. Much of the confusion about the missile gap results from changes in the meaning of the term. It figures in debate in at least three different senses: 1) a gap in missile technology, 2) a gap in present missile capability, and 3) a gap in future capability. The answer to a question about the missile gap depends upon which meaning the questioner has in mind...
Urgent Tasks. So long as the U.S. can rely on SAC's destructive might, the ICBM gap of the early 1960s will not mean any gap in the U.S.'s retaliatory power. The missile gap, as Secretary McElroy argued, is no cause for alarm, much less panic...
...cause for complacency either, and there was a complacent undertone in McElroy's assurances. Complacent acceptance of a 3-to-1 ICBM gap runs the risk that the actual gap will prove to be very much larger: Soviet technological progress has been underestimated before, can be underestimated again. And the existence of even a 3-to-1 gap could, without a shot being fired, shake the morale and twist the policies not only of neutralist nations but even of U.S. allies...
...convincing, but if the U.S. is not going to match the U.S.S.R. "missile for missile" during the next few years, the Administration has two urgent tasks cut out for it. One is to convince the world-Communists, neutralists, allies and the U.S.'s own citizens -that the missile gap will not mean a defense gap. The other is to push Minuteman and Polaris as fast as funds and priorities can push them. If there must be a missile gap, however efficiently it is filled by SAC's bombers, the less time it lasts the better...