National Affairs: 15 MINUTES TO BEAT THE BOMB

To SAC, the Klaxon Is a Call to Arms

If the 1960 defense debate has raised new uncertainties about the growth of Soviet missile power, it has underscored one certainty about present-day U.S. deterrent power: the U.S. deterrent is only as good as its reaction time. Today, the free world's one great deterrent is the Strategic Air Command's 24-hour-a-day, year-round ground alert system, a wonder of organizational achievement that keeps a rotating one-third of SAC bomber forces so sensitized that they can get off within 15 minutes' notice from any one of at...

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