Defense: The $25 Billion Question

"It is one of the biggest decisions a Secretary of Defense ever had to make," says a Pentagon officer, and he may well be right. For the question that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara must eventually answer is whether to order production and deployment of the Army's Nike-X anti-missile missile system. If McNamara says yes, it will cost the U.S. about $25 billion. And if, as the Army claims, Nike-X would offer the U.S. effective protection against ICBM attack, it would be cheap at the price. What McNamara must decide is whether the...