May 30 1967
From The Space Library
House Committee on Appropriations' Subcommittee on Dept. of Defense Appropriations released testimony on US. missile strategy by DOD officials at closed hearing March 20. Dr. Charles M. Herzfeld, who resigned as Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) May 26, testified that advanced missile systems based in space rather than on land were being studied. He recalled that DOD had studied, until 1964, the Bambi" system designed to use satellites to locate and destroy enemy missiles shortly after they had been launched. Work had been stopped because it was "much too costly," but "we think the time is getting ripe again to look at the whole question because the costs of putting things in orbit have gone down dramatically, the reliability of space engineering has gone up dramatically so that the overall cost of the system ought to come down significantly." Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., Director of Defense Research and Engineering, revealed that repairs had had to be made on all Minuteman ICBMS because of missile's failure to fire in three tests during October 1966. He emphasized, however, that all missiles were operational at the time of his testimony and said overall readiness of the Minuteman and Polaris missile forces was "excellent." (Beecher, NYT, 5/31/67, 1, 28; W Star, 5/31/67, A6)
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