James good evening. I hope you will excuse all of this, but i have been taking time off from my job to look into something important to all of us that seems to be confused. What i mean is missiles, highperformance airplanes. Why do we have so many . Why do we need both . Where are we going with all of this . A fellow asked me that question in london not so long ago. It is not a simple question, and i couldnt get him a simple answer. That is the reason for all this homework. It seems to me that weve got to understand just what we are building, how each of these missiles and airplanes add to our deterrence strengths, and why we have developed them and what they do. I would like to tell you what i wish i had been able to tell that fellow in london not very long ago. Some of you may remember i was a bomber pilot in world war ii. That was back when the air force inventory was a relatively simple one. There were longrange heavy bombers like this one. I flew one of these, a b24. This is some of my handiwork as a model builder. The kids make them out of plastic now days, this is the oldfashioned wood type. Blackas my tell mark, a background and a horizontal white stripe. They called us truck drivers, the Fighter Pilots did. These were the trucks that delivered the payload back in those days when the air force concept of Strategic Bombing was first being applied. And it worked pretty well. Of course, we needed fighter support in order to get through. These fighters were sort of like traffic cops who cleared the way for us to berlin, hamburg, cologne. Sometimes it took some clearing. But whether these fighters fought aggressive actions or defensively as interceptors shooting the other fellow down before they could strike at us, the role was clear, they were fighters, and they fought. There were other airplanes, too. Medium bombers like this b25, carrying smaller loads. There were tactical aircraft used in support of ground operations, used as artillery by the infantry. But no matter how many aircraft types and models we had then, it was easy to understand what each was for, how all of them worked together to knock the enemy out of the air and pound them out of the war. But now it doesnt seem that simple anymore. Years have passed, times have changed quite a bit. Now we have missiles, and yet we still have airplanes. New aircraft, highperformance jets. You are tempted to think that one or the other might be able to do the job alone. Airplanes without missiles or missiles without airplanes. Hundreds and hundreds of words have been written about deterrence and air defense and Nuclear Weapons and the Ballistic Missile versus the bomber. But unless you are a very careful reader and have time to think things through, the only real clear idea you are liable to get is just that you are confused because there are just too many names. Matador, quayle, f100, thor, snark,or atlas, titan, jupiter, air to air missiles, air to ground, ground to air, ground to ground. Why so much . What is it all for . How do these weapons all Work Together to defend the United States and deter an enemy attack . I will try to tell you. Lets begin with the heavy bomber because i am a little familiar with these. This b52 is essentially what the longrange heavy bomber was in world war ii. Only more so. It is faster, goes a lot farther, carries a heavier payload with more destructive power in one b52 then you could haul in all that we had in 1944 because times have changed. The bombers speed and altitude have been greatly increased. This b58 flies faster than any bomber we ever had, it has to. Theyve also increased the speed and range and outdo capability of the counter weapons that can knock the heavy bomber down, weapons comparable to our own f104, or any ground to air rockets the other side might have. In fact, that is what war is all about. It is always the same old story of action and counteraction of a new weapon designed to catch the enemy offguard and a second weapon to counteract the first. Every aircraft and every missile we have today has been developed within this pattern to prepare or meet some new unexpected weapon. Look at the b52 again. Fast as she is and high as she flies, she is conceivably vulnerable to interception or ground to air weapons defending a target area. Therefore, some bombers are armed with weapons that both extend their range and increase their capability of selfdefense by enabling them to avoid these heavily defended targets. Launched from altitude these missiles can carry a Nuclear Warhead many hundreds of miles, impacting with accuracy. That means hitting the target right on the nose from relative safety several hundred miles away. And you know what that means to the men on these bomber crews. That means a good percentage of them will stand a good chance of getting home. You want to remember how important these crew men are to us. Consider this, though. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles are built to do exactly what longrange bombers are built to do, to carry a heavy payload to a target hundreds or thousands of miles away. So why use the bomber . Why risk any of these men . Why not use the missile . A long range or intercontinental Ballistic Missile has one big advantage over manned aircraft, you can get it up in a matter of minutes and racing towards the target as long as you are sure you want it to go where it is going and do what it has to do, but you cant call it back, and you cant change its course. The commander can closely direct the flight of every single manned bomber in the air night and day around the clock. Sac headquarters knows where every one of its bombers is. Once launched, the whole attack can be diverted or called off. That is what the pilot adds to your defense, that priceless flexibility and to get ability of seeking out targets that arent precisely known or can be pinpointed on a map. With his added ability to observe and make a decision based on all the evidence he has, the pilot is your best guarantee there wont be any mistakes, but if the chips are down, he and his crew are there to deliver the load. And yet the missiles are there to back them up. Longrange strategic muscles already fire down the entire 5000 mile missile test range successfully, some of them already in the air force inventory, some of them soon to be, and others coming along , projected, planned, designed, incorporating everything weve learned from every missile weve designed and built. Heres one weve already got launched by rocket engines developing tons of thrust and millions of horsepower within seconds, imparting speeds faster than 1000 miles an hour, it hits and throws a Nuclear Warhead over 5 over 5000 miles with accuracy. Towards is only a step the more effective missiles we will have only a few short years from now. And yet, even though we have the icbm, we still have the b47 jet bomber, probably our best known intermediate range carrier, and the finest plane ever built. For the last six or seven years, it has been the allaround workhorse of the Strategic Air command, capable of the delivering Nuclear Weapons to almost any target we might have to strike. Just as the icbm blends with the longrange manned bomber, there are intermediate range Ballistic Missiles supporting the b47. Operational missiles fire 1500 miles or more to pose an additional effective counter threat along the same parameter defended by the manned b47 now. Right here it begins to get more complex because there are other missiles working with our aircraft. It is not just a question of having a longrange bomber and an intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or having a b47 and an intermediate range missile. These weapons alone arent enough to guarantee survival. Lets look at that longrange bomber again and see what it takes to get it through to the target now. Because it is big enough to carry auxiliary agreement and crew, this bomber has a good chance of survival at any operating altitude. The crew can select the best altitude and tactics for penetrating enemy defenses and put the load exactly where they want it to go. They have diversionary missiles that we can drop or launch from the air to expose, decoy, or destroy ground weapons. This diversionary or countermeasure missile is a strategic weapon. They all Work Together to get the payload through and knock the enemy out of the war. That is just part of the story. Jet airplanes, icbms, they put the United States well within range of just about anybody who would like to take a crack at us. Force, itsent longrange capability has so far prevented that. When any identified flying object enters our radar, the system is at once alerted. The fighter interceptor scrambles to make a positive identification. If it is a hostile intruder, the pilot notifies the Defense Commander and attacks. Other Fighter Aircraft are then forceled out so maximum can be brought on the enemy before they can get in range to release their surfacetoair missiles. The old machine gun and the 275 rocket are obsolete now. Today these aircraft carry missiles like this one, either a beam rider or infrared homing missle. Or this one here, another infrared homing or target seeking guided missile. Or this one. Some consider it the best of all, these air launch missiles. This is actually a rocket with an atomic warhead, a highly effective defensive weapon. Our surface to air missiles then take over. This interceptor missile is a dependable and accurately guided missile with an effective range up to 200 miles. It will have a 400 mile range in the near future. In addition, it is a real good weapon where those fighters cant operate too well. Control provided by sage centers allows to employment of Fighter Aircraft and the same airspace. So you see, this missile and the complementary to each other in defending us against air attack. That is the air Defense Command story today, but there is one other area of air force responsibility, tactical air. Tactical air is particularly tailored for local or small wars. During 1958, the composite airstrikes for the firemen deployed to the middle and far east. In the lebanese situation, f100d aircraft flew nonstop from myrtle beach, South Carolina to turkey in a little more than 12 hours. The Tactical Fighter is a multipurpose weapon. It delivers Nuclear Weapons by divebombing straight down into the target, and by what the trade calls over the shoulder bombing. The Tactical Fighter also has an air superiority mission using homing missiles to gain superiority. And it has a key Ground Support role in land battles to attain the superior forces of an enemy. There are tactical missiles too that blend with or support tactical aircraft. This one for instance, electronically controlled from ground, it can travel 500 or 600 miles to carry either a conventional or Nuclear Warhead deep into enemy territory. A number of tactical missile groups armed with this weapon are already deployed in europe, and ive deliberately avoided calling any of these weapons by name because there are so many of them. Youve heard about icbms and irbms, im 99 and tm76, sm 75, and then youve heard the same weapons called falcon, hound dog, matador, and it all just adds to the confusion. Why so many . Why are there sometimes two or three different kinds of a particular missile type. Itan ands and t minuteman . Arent they all icbms . They are, but they are related. They are not identical. Each of these weapons represents a new generation. Some are good, some better, some not good at all because they have been made obsolete, but each one was the best weapon we could develop for a specific purpose of the time each of these missiles was designed and assembled. Each of these weapons has been and many still are important bricks in the defensive wall with which up until now we have been to keep we have managed to keep the peace. Where do we go from here . What Weapons Systems will we be using 5, 10 years from now . Over what ranges and at what speeds and altitude will would have to defend ourselves next . Is it possible that a lowflying, slowmoving atomic powered manned airplane might set aside all these missiles and airplanes we are building now . Maybe. Although it sounds like a bomber pilots dream. Maybe it would plug one more gap in the free worlds defensive wall. Maybe the trend five years from now will still be up. That is the way it has always been. Ever since this. I didnt build this one. It is too tough. But this is a model of the Wright Brothers airplane they flew back in kitty hawk in 1903. Ever since then the trend has been up to increasing speed and altitude, flying higher and farther and faster than the other planes. But right about here in the early days of world war ii on flights above 10,000 and 15,000 feet, we encountered something new. Because of the thinning of the air, pilots and crew men first began to take their own groundlevel atmosphere along with them, but the race for speed and altitude when on. And for quite some time now, the military aircraft has been sealed vehicle, traveling at altitudes at which man cannot survive without wearing special close and taking oxygen with him. But almost by leaps and bounds, this aircraft has been evolving towards a true spacecraft. Because what is space, or what is the difference between air and space . Where does air come to an end, and where does space begin . Maybe there isnt any difference. Maybe as far as flight is concerned, air force crews have been making space flight ever since they first left their natural habitat in 1942. If that is true, todays highperformance jet aircraft is more than ever a spacecraft. This mornings flight of an air force bomber crew at speeds in 1 and altitudes of over 60,000 feet, very much like the experience men will have in our first true spacecraft. The day of that first space flight isnt that far away either. As we go racing into the future, the airplane and the Ballistic Missile get closer and closer together, each one dissolving evolving towards the ideal long range weapons system, combining the advantages of both. One you can get right off the ground at speed and out to two, but also one that you can diverge and recall. You give this experimental airplane the speed and altitude the missile has, or put this cockpit or control panel that hat in its block house now, put that back into the missile airframe and give the pilot the equipment he needs to overcome heat and the weightlessness of gravity. These problems and if you like them and youre not have a man and a missile, you will have an air force pilot in a spacecraft. Men will be in space. That may happen been a whole lot sooner than we think it will. Space is for us what the unknown land once was, the uncharted sea. A place into which all of mans history and all he has ever been undone compels him to move. Like the explorers of the past, he may have to fight up there. That is why the air force has to do what it has always had to do, get up higher and go faster than the others because war, if it comes, it will not confine itself to air, but it will expand to the billions of miles surrounding it. That is the only way it all makes sense. Missiles and airplanes of defending us today and manned spacecraft tomorrow. I dont know whether i have answered all the questions we started off with. Why so many weapons . What are they for . What are we doing with this big force . I think we are buying more than the aircraft in the missiles we have been talking about. I think we are buying peace. I think we are investing in the future by deterring war. We have to because, look here. The lights are on in my house tonight. My wife and children are asleep upstairs and weve got to keep it that way. Lights burning, children asleep, and peace and security everywhere. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] this weekend, on american artifacts, we tour the Railroad Exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in dearborn, michigan. This is a replica of an 1831 locomotive. The replica was built in 1892 so it is historic now. This gives us an idea of what steam locomotives and trains would have looked like in the late 1820s and early 1830s. It was located in new york state and eventually became part of a railroad in new york city, one of the largest railroads and United States. Railroads in 1830 were very small, local affairs. Had grander ambitions of connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the great lakes, eventually we got to that point, but it took us decades as these local systems grew into each other to form comprehensive national networks. Seele are always shot to this locomotive, especially the cars. They look like stagecoaches on steel wheels. That is exactly what they are. Developa few years to the standard travel coaches we know today. When the railroad was introduced they use the technology they knew trade stagecoaches worked fairly well to start with, but they tended to rock and roll when you are traveling down the road. Railroad designers realize they could come up with a more efficient system. It was not long that they went to the more standard rectangular box configuration we think of today when we think of a Railroad Locomotive or railroad coach. When the railroad was introduced in the 1830s, it wouldve been fairly expensive to travel on. It was the upper classes that were traveling on. Fares startedn, to fall and the typical average for the 19th century would be about three cents a mile for your transportation. We now had the idea of separate classes of travel, from firstclass cars with all the luxurious appointments all the way down to what wouldve been called immigrant last immigrantclass which wouldve been a simple wooden ranch with wooden seats. You would be traveling in either more or less comfort to pending on how much you could pay for your fare. Watch the entire tour on american artifacts. This is American History tv, only on cspan3. Tv is onan history cspan3 every weekend, featuring museum tors, archival films, and programs on the presidency, the civil war, and more. Heres a clip from a recent program. Way to go back is to go back and try to understand what was actually going on. That leads to problems, because what we think should have been going on often is not what was going on. South,the people in the a great war to end slavery makes sense. Eradicate the institution of slavery from the american republic. When you go back and read stuff, which is dangerous, you find out that is not the primary motivation you find out that you have to come to terms with the union, and that is a hard sell. It is hard to tell people what union meant. What did it mean . Part of that as we have been a great power for all these decades, it is hard to imagine anything internally destroying the republic now. People do not wake up and wonder whether the nation is still going to be here next year, but that was a genuine fear in the mid19th century and it is tied to union and recovering that can be difficult. That causes us to get outside our current comfort zones and come to terms with the real past , it is not about picking people , i like them and i dont like them, that is inevitable, but the goal for the second way to get the war is to be understanding what was going on in the past. Not deciding whether you like Robert Gould Shaw more than you like jubal early. You can watch this and other American History programs on our website, where all of our video is archived. That is cspan. Org history. Next, author and u. S. Military history Professor John mcmanus presents an illustrated the fallenled american soldiers of world war ii, their world of combat. The National Park service, separate shepherd university, and Eastern National cohosted this 90 minute event as