Push-Button War

In peacetime, alert soldiers are always busy trying to figure out what the next war will be like. In the June and July issues of the Marine Corps Gazette, Lieut. Colonel Keith McCutcheon tells marines about guided missiles, the weapons most military men believe will dominate World War III, if the war is staved off long enough.

Every war, says Colonel McCutcheon, produces at least one new weapon, which usually appears too late to get in its full effect. The airplane, used in World War I, dominated World War II. The most promising new weapons of World War II were the German V-1 and V2. (The atom bomb, in the military man's book, is not a complete weapon at all, but only a super-explosive, to be lugged to the target by aircraft and perhaps, later, by directed missiles.)

The V-weapons, though they did enormous damage, did not win the war. They were incomplete, says McCutcheon, in one vital respect: "Suitable guidance and control of the missiles after launching. In the strict sense of the word, they were not true guided missiles but artillery projectiles with extended range."

The Driver's Seat. Military scientists in every major country are working to correct this defect. "Practically all natural physical laws," says Colonel McCutcheon, "are being investigated to determine their suitability for guidance systems. Television, heat, light and sound all offer possibilities; magnetic, electric and gravitational fields are also being considered. . . . The first nation which arrives at a workable and practical solution to the problem will be in the driver's seat."

Power supply is no problem. Colonel McCutcheon describes the various reaction engines which will power guided missiles, at least until atomic propulsion is perfected. Best known is the familiar turbojet. A compressor draws air through the engine's nose. Burning fuel heats and expands it. The hot blast roars out the tail at over 1,000 miles an hour, giving a mighty push. Before the gases reach the open, they spin a turbine, which powers the compressor.

A simpler type, promising for the future, is the ram jet or "flying stovepipe," which has no moving parts at all. But both turbojets and ram jets need oxygen, and so cannot operate outside the lower atmosphere. For really high altitude work, an effective guided missile must have its own rocket motor, as the V25 did, and must carry its own oxygen.

Equipped with either jets or rocket engine motors (or a combination), World War Ill's guided missiles will have power to drive them at thousands of miles an hour. No engineer doubts this. The problem of how to guide them is more difficult. Colonel McCutcheon outlines various possibilities.

The Guide Problem. Simplest missiles are not guided at all; they are "preset" on a calculated course toward the target, as the V-weapons were. "Command" missiles follow orders (radio signals) from the ground, a ship, or a piloted aircraft. "Along-the-way" missiles carry equipment which detects deviations from an established course through space. "Homing" missiles are attracted, like moths to a street light, by the target itself. If the target gives off sound waves, light, heat, or electrical influences, the missile picks up the trail and follows it to the kill.

Only a few primitive guided missiles (such as the Navy's "Bat" and "Loon") have passed the blueprint stage. But Colonel McCutcheon can already outline how their successors will be used in war. Some will have enormous ranges, striking at enemy cities and blasting them to rubble with atomic warheads. These will not need pinpoint accuracy.

With enough accuracy, atomic warheads would not be necessary for all purposes. A fair charge of ordinary explosive is enough to destroy, for instance, an aerial target, e.g., an enemy bomber. When launching methods are perfected, the missiles may take off in flocks, rising like falcons from the deck of a giant submarine which has crept toward an enemy coast.

Like most military men, Colonel McCutcheon believes that offense is the best defense, but he recognizes the fact that the U.S. does not plot "Pearl Harbors." Therefore, he says, the U.S. must have missiles that can rise at a moment's notice and intercept enemy missiles before they strike the nation's vitals.

"Of all the elements of air defense," says Colonel McCutcheon, "the one that will require the most improvement... is the warning system. . . . Every minute lost in readying active air defense measures will bring [a 3,000-m.p.h.] missile 50 miles closer. . . . Defense may have to remain 100% active every minute of every hour of the day."

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