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In this new kind of wild blue yonder, Tommy White must constantly remind his officers and himself of the operational and the now. "When a weapon has been proved," he says, "it will be incorporated into the arsenal of the Air Force and trusted with our security, but only then." He also presses the need for the kind of defense organization that the leap into the future will need. "If those trends continue," he says, "the day would come when all three services would have the same capabilities and limitations—and all attempting to do the same jobs. If that happens, we certainly would find it advisable to standardize uniforms and streamline the organization."
The Special Quality. The Air Force has a unique flexibility derived from its transition, in 50 years, from a corps of box-kite aviators and balloonists peering out of wicker baskets, to greying-haired crewcuts in G-suits boning up on targets as a matter of ethics, arming city-killing bombs as a matter of routine ("We know what they can do," says one airman, "so we're peace lovers"), mastering planes experimental one day, obsolescent the next.
The Air Force has a unique built-in enthusiasm derived, perhaps, out of what its jet pilots see, hear and feel as they sweep silently between the curvature of the earth and the glistening stars. "All the gunk is below you," is the way one supersonic fighter pilot puts it.
"The history of America," Teddy Roosevelt once said, "is now the central feature of the history of the world; the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow-citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but ... of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind." Says the Air Force's precise General White: "We must hold ready, night and day, for every night and day of every year . . . Deterrence is essentially a state of mind."
* Who escaped from his Pentagon office last week long enough to make record hops in a KC-135 jet tanker from the U.S. to Buenos Aires and return. First record: Westover Air Force Base, Mass, to Buenos Aires over a long-distance 6,350-mile course without refueling. Second record: from Buenos Aires to Washington in the record time of 11 hr. 5 min. 8/10 sec.