190. Memorandum of Conference with the President1
OTHERS PRESENT
- Dr. Kistiakowsky
- Major Eisenhower
The President opened by asking Dr. Kistiakowsky if he had seen the memorandum from Secretary Gates to General Goodpaster, dated July 27th, on the subject of military department contracts for space activities. The President is primarily afraid of the development of “squatters’ rights” by the individual services. He has asked Mr. McElroy to take a look at this subject, and also told Mr. McElroy that if Dr. York is not available to advise him, he should contact Dr. Kistiakowsky. He said that even $500,000 is a lot of money. Dr. Kistiakowsky agreed, and said that the situation is not quite so bad as it looks, since the total funds allowed would be some $3.5 million, of which $2.5 million would go to “systems planning” and only $1.0 [Typeset Page 808] million in new research. He mentioned that he received a memorandum from General Goodpaster on this subject and was putting together his own comments on the individual programs for submission to the President.
* * *
Dr. Kistiakowsky then gave his briefing, which is appended hereto.
The President had the following comments to make with regard to this briefing:
- a.
- He approved the idea of a single global military communications system, as recommended by Dr. Baker. He took note of Dr. Kistiakowsky’s statement that close coordination with Dr. York will suffice to convince the Secretary of Defense of the necessity to develop only one new ambitious system of this type.
- b.
- With regard to ICBM bases, the President agreed with Dr. Kistiakowsky that it is possible that our philosophy of high reliability [Facsimile Page 2] of missiles is not right. He felt it would perhaps be better to produce cheaper missiles and cheaper dispersed and hidden bases with a much lower level of reliability than we now demand. Conceivably, one group could handle one missile; and each missile could have its target predetermined. In this connection, Dr. Kistiakowsky pointed out that the inspection conducted by General Betts will probably not save much money on the ATLAS and TITAN programs since the 15 squadrons of these are already programmed for long lead-time items. He feels, however, that his inspection of MINUTEMAN would save a lot of gold plating in that vast program. If the MINUTEMAN becomes as complicated as the ATLAS and TITAN systems, its value is lost.
- c.
- With regard to test talks at Geneva, the President recognized that our problems are getting more complex all the time.
- d.
- As a general comment, the President cautioned against a situation whereby we tend to take the sum total of everybody’s optimum requirements and thereby break ourselves. He hopes that the studies on targeting which are being conducted will be helpful in this regard. He also expressed satisfaction at Dr. Kistiakowsky’s ferreting out of these trouble areas.
- Source: Service involvement in space activities; need for single, global military communications system; ICBM basing. Secret. 2 pp. Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries.↩