Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/62

  in 1961, President Eisenhower established the National Reconnaissance Office to direct all U.S. reconnaissance efforts, with the Air Force and CIA participating. To provide satellite early warning of a nuclear attack, the Air Force also developed the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS) and its operational successor, the Defense Support Program (DSP), that detected missiles within moments of their launch. DSP would later play a key role in detecting the launch of Scuds during the Gulf War. After the discontinuance of the space reconnaissance mission, on March 28, 1961, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assigned the Air Force responsibility for other DOD military space operations such as the worldwide Defense Satellite Communications System I (DSCS I). Twenty-six system satellites were launched from 1966 to 1968. Beginning in 1972, larger geosynchronous communications satellites reinforced the original DSCS I, followed in the 1980s by a third generation of DSCS and in the 1990s by the Military Strategic Tactical and Relay Program (MILSTAR) system. Another key space flight project was the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) for monitoring weather conditions around the globe, with information transmitted to the Air Force's Global Weather Center at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. The Air Force tracked and identified space debris produced by space missions through the Space Detection and Tracking System (SPADATS). The service also held primary responsibility for launching all DOD satellites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida (into low inclination equatorial orbits) and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (into polar orbits). 

Flexible Response and Vietnam President John Kennedy initiated a more activist, interventionist national strategy in 1961, one that brought profound changes to the overwhelmingly nuclear-strike Air Force. The Kennedy administration authorized the expansion of the Air Force's ICBM arsenal to 1,000 Minuteman and 54 Titan IIs, deployed mainly at isolated bases in the north-central United States. The Navy nuclear component grew to 41 Polaris submarines, while the Army field forces eventually increased from 12 to 16 divisions and included a counterinsurgency capability. This expansion was intended to give the President increased flexibility in ordering a military response to international crises. In the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, enormous American offensive power forced the Soviet Union to back down and prompted Secretary of State Dean Rusk to con-