The Origins of Nuclear Air Defense Arms

Abstract

To those who considered such things in the late 1940s, destroying an aircraft in flight seemed a daunting task. It was also one that was sure to get even more challenging. Owing to technological improvements honed in World War II, airplanes flew higher and faster than their predecessors. In the years following the war’s end, for example, average bomber speeds nearly doubled and cruising altitudes increased from 35,000 to 40,000 feet. “[N]o equipment has been devised which is satisfactory against jet-propelled aircraft,” lamented an Army general to a congressional committee in 1949, “[t]hree hundred and fifty m.p.h. seems to be the point at which we cease being fully effective.”¹ Steadily improving performance meant that planes could outmaneuver or outclimb antiaircraft projectiles, or they could avoid being within lethal range of ground guns altogether. Similarly, aerial engagement of modern bombers required high-performance interceptor aircraft that could locate a target, fly sufficiently high and fast to overtake it, and then sustain an extended fight against a heavily armed opposite prepared to counter, evade, or withstand the attack.²