Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson could hardly have had a more opportune week to start his Senate Preparedness Subcommittee on a full-dress investigation of the state of the nation's defenses. In Moscow Nikita Khrushchev, in his latest ploy of missile oneupmanship, boasted that the U.S.S.R. now had assembly-line production of intercontinental ballistic missiles with pinpoint accuracy "to any part of the globe." In Washington President Eisenhower scoffed politely, said that U.S. missile progress was "remarkable" and "going forward as rapidly as possible. I think it is a matter for pride on the part of America, and not a constant—well, hangdog attitude of humiliation."
Star witness before Democrat Johnson's committee was Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, who brought along a signed statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prove that they "consider" the Defense Department's $40.9 billion 1960 budget "adequate to provide for the essential programs," although they have doubts whether the budget provides enough money for all the programs included in it. One by one, the service chiefs—Air Force's General Thomas White. Navy's Admiral Arleigh Burke. Army's General Maxwell Taylor and Marine Corps' General Randolph Pate—backed up the statement on general points, expressed budget regrets that were relatively mild; the Air Force would have liked more money to replace obsolescent B-47s faster, the Navy more for ship replacement, the Army would have liked to modernize its weapons faster, the Marines regretted a manpower cut from 189,000 to 175,000.
Diversified Arsenal. But it was Chief Witness McElroy who dropped the week's bombshell. Only days after insisting that there was no missile gap, he told the Senators that in the early 1960s the U.S.S.R. will be ahead of the U.S. in operational ICBMs by a substantial margin, perhaps 3 to 1.
McElroy took pains to stress that the ICBM gap will be temporary, and that while it lasts it will not mean a real defense gap. The U.S.. he pointed out, has and will have a "diversified" arsenal, with various means of delivering nuclear retaliatory power.
The bombers of the Strategic Air Command will still pack the U.S.'s main nuclear punch in the early 1960s. Backing up SAC 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.