Bw
AFSWC History Office
their capabilities and the Joint Task Force stated that initial inquiries with
PMR led them to believe that PMR could accept this responsibility.
Air
Force offered to include a beacon on the missile to assist in tracking but
said this requirement would have to be fe.
on at anearly date.
The tail
pods discussed by AFSC which they could provide are conventional pods which
had previously been used on the ATLAS Program;
ejection mechanism,
Telemetry package.
the system includes the
recovery gear (including parachutes), and possibly a
Some of the discussion addressed the question of whether
the trajectories should take the detonation above Johnston Island or moveit
significantly down range from Johnston Island and Starbird indicated that two
main reasons gravitated against going downrange since this meant a vast
increase in danger area and also that the danger area would encompass
populated islands not all of whichwere under U.S.
availability of missiles,
following was stated:
their distribution,
control.
As for the
and the disposition of spares
the
''THOR production has stopped and al the remaining
operational THORs are committed to combat training launches with the British.
These launches are accomplished once every three months.
It may be possible
to obtain enough of the missiles from this category and rebuild some older
R&D types to fill out the remainder of the Combat Training Launch Program......
It was recommended that all spare missiles be kept at Vandenberg rather
than dispersing them to Johnston.
It is planned that, should the first confirmation
round, from Vandenberg fail, a second confirmation round be fired as soon as
~38-
.