Red Alert

"The calmer the American people take this, the better," declared the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Omar Bradley. "We have anticipated it for four years and it calls for no change in our basic defense plans." That was true. But there was an enormous difference between "tomorrow" and "now" and the armed forces were the first who would have to readjust their timing. Minutes after the news flash whipped through the Pentagon's interlaced corridors, officers were hastily pulling papers from confidential files, and translating future strategy into plans for the present.

There were some immediate and obvious revisions to make. The Air Force, which had been budgeted at 48 groups, had a powerful new reason for going onto a 70-group schedule as soon as Congress provided the money. The Air Force, heavily accenting bomber construction, would also have to emphasize another kind of plan: it would need more interceptors than it has contracted for. It would also have to speed work on construction of a 24-hour radar net across the Arctic frontier from Alaska to Greenland.

These were obvious moves and they were all based on the assumption that an atomic attack on the U.S. would come from the air. But military men would also have to face up to another possibility: a sneak attack could come even more devastatingly by sea. Defensive plans would have to be devised to cope with the possibility of atomic explosions set off from foreign ships riding at anchor in U.S. harbors.

U.S. offensive tactics would undergo no basic alterations. No responsible strategist had ever believed that atomic bombs alone could win a war. But with atom bombs and bombers in the hands of an enemy, the Army & Navy, as well as the Air Force, took on new and immediate importance. If the U.S. wanted security, it would have to buy the full, costly package.

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