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TECHNOLOGY GAP. In the early 1950s, , the U.S. confronted a serious gap in ballistic-missile technology. The Russians had started in on ballistic missile research right after World War 11, while the U.S., convinced that long-range ballistic missiles could never feasibly carry the bulky atomic warhead, was concentrating on slower air-breathing missiles such as the Air Force's Navaho and Snark. Only Convair, largely with its own funds, plugged along on the Atlas ICBM. Then in 1953 U.S. nuclear scientists found the combination that put a nuclear warhead in a small package. Since then U.S. ballistic missile progress has sped along so fast that the technology gap has just about been closed. The Russians are still ahead in rocket-engine thrust, which gives them a big advantage in space exploration. But for their strictly military task, carrying a warhead to an earthly target, U.S. missile engines are powerful enough.
PRESENT CAPABILITY GAP. When Defense Secretary McElroy denied fortnight ago that there was any missile gap at all, he was talking about operational ICBMs, here and now. The U.S. has no ICBMs that are operational in the sense that they are in place and ready to be fired at an enemy. The nation's first operational ICBM — a 6000-mile Air Force Atlas — is scheduled for deployment on a launching pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base next July. The U.S.S.R., as far as U.S. intelligence knows, does not have any operational ICBMs either.
FUTURE GAP. During the next few years, said Secretary McElroy last week, the U.S. will not even try to match the U.S.S.R. "missile for missile" in operational" ICBMs. If the Russians use all their estimated ICBM production capacity, and presumably they will, they will have a lot more ICBMs ready on launching pads during the early 1960s than the U.S. will. This is the missile gap.
Price of Progress. Paradoxically,, the gap will result from the swift pace of U.S. missile progress rather than from any technological lag. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles have come along so fast that they have already made their liquid-fuel forebears obsolescent. As compared to liquid-fuel missiles, solid-fuel models are more compact and incomparably simpler in plumbing, require less elaborate launching rituals and far less countdown time, and will be much cheaper, to manufacture in quantities.