The Air Force We Need

"There are no experts on the Soviet Union," said Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining one day last week, "just people with varying degrees of ignorance." For a man just back from a carefully shepherded, eight-day inspection of Soviet aviation, it was a prudent remark. But as a press conference quickly established, Twining's visit to Moscow had led him to some firm conclusions about Russia. The most important: the U.S. is out in front of Soviet airpower and should be able to stay there.

Talking to newsmen at Gettysburg, where he went to report to President Eisenhower, Twining slightly modified the stand he took in February (when he told a Senate committee that the Russians "have overtaken us in quantity" and "are closing the quality gap" upon which the U.S. depends for its lead in the airpower race). Last week Twining said that while the Russians probably have more jet aircraft than the U.S., "it's not numbers now [but] the mission of what they are going to do. That is the distinction."

Did that mean, asked a reporter, that the U.S. is still in the lead? "Qualitatively, we are out in front," Twining replied. "No question about that." Is there any question about the U.S.'s staying there over the next four years? Emphatically, Twining answered, "Not that I see. No. Just keep working." But the U.S. must not "go to sleep."

In differing with respected colleagues such as SAC Chief Curtis LeMay, who last spring warned that by 1960 the Soviet air force would be the world's mightiest, Twining was taking into account information that had not been available to LeMay: what he and his aides had seen, heard and sensed in Russia (TIME, July 9).

His official evaluation was given only to the President, the Pentagon's top brass, and members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which heard him in secret session later in the week.

But for the rest of the nation, Twining offered some comforting, professionally cautious optimism: regardless of Russian advances, the U.S. has "the Air Force we should have, at this time, today."

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