Scrapping the Missiles

As he stood before the House of Commons last week, Defense Minister Harold Watkinson wore the pained expression of a man treading on nettles. "In the light of our military advice," intoned Watkinson, "we have concluded . . . that we ought not to continue to develop, as a military weapon, a missile that can be launched only from a fixed site." After six years of work and an expenditure of $280 million, Britain was scrapping its most ambitious military rocket, the 2,500-mile Blue Streak IRBM. The big rocket might be salvaged as a satellite launcher in the space sweepstakes, said Watkinson. But for delivery of its future nuclear punch, Great Britain will rely on U.S. missiles, probably the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's air-launched Skybolt rocket.

In Pawn? The explosion in Commons could hardly have been louder. From the Labor benches came angry howls of "Resign . . . resign." Opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell, whose Laborites have long insisted that Blue Streak should not have been undertaken in the first place, was on his feet demanding an immediate investigation; when he was refused, he promised to force a vote of censure after the Easter recess. Tory backbenchers were shocked. It was, said Conservative F. W. Farey-Jones, a "calamitous" move, and one that would put Britain's proud science "in pawn to the U.S. for the next 25 to 50 years."

The Blue Streak project was born in pride and developed in obstinacy. Launched six years ago on the notion that whatever the U.S. could do, Britain could do better. Blue Streak was intended to maintain Britain's status as a fully accredited great power alongside Russia and the U.S., at the very least to impress lesser nations. But last week Harold Macmillan's government had to face the cold fact that Britain could not afford such empty displays of national pride. To put Blue Streak on the pads, fully operational and in real numbers, would cost something like $1.5 billion over the next five years. And by then, Blue Streak will be a sitting duck for Russian marksmen.

Schedules & Warheads. Designed around cumbersome liquid-fueled engines, Blue Streak can only be shot from complex fixed bases. As evidenced by this winter's 7,700-mile Pacific shoot, Russian rockets have proved accurate enough to knock them all out with a single barrage. What Britain needs is a highly mobile missile force that can retaliate from submarines or surface ships, railroad flatcars or truck trailers. And that is precisely what the U.S., but not Britain, can develop in time. The solid-fueled Polaris is well ahead of schedule, will be ready by 1961. Skybolt will take longer, is scheduled for 1965. But when it comes into the armory, any standard subsonic jet bomber, either British or U.S., becomes a 600-m.p.h. missile platform launching nuclear rockets at targets 1,000 miles away.

At Camp David, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan won U.S. assurances that Britain (and possibly other NATO nations) would get the new missiles. Faced with new demands to cut back military spending, he decided to take the jump. Though Britain will get the missiles from the U.S., the British will make their own nuclear warheads for the nose cones. Thus Britain will have complete control of any ship-launched Polaris, or Skybolt slung in the bay of an R.A.F. jet bomber--unlike the Britain-based Thor missiles, whose U.S. warheads can only be triggered with American approval.

Britain's government was not abandoning the centuries-old concept of independent striking power. But it was hard for Britain to admit that from now on, it will wear a Made-in-U.S. label.

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