| Army's Fight With Space AgencyWut to President in Crucial Meeting

By WILLIAMHINESStar BUS Writer

The "battle of Huntsville’’—now hardly more than adesperate rear-guard action—heads into Its crucial phase

etoday.» The new Space Council was scheduled to hold the second'meting of Its brief life to discuss with President Elsen-hower. its chairman, a proposal by the National Aeronautics

I INTERPRETIVE REPORT

> jthe final retreat to Appomattox,, the Army is not really hoping; for victory; rather. It wants to

, delay defeat a little,

r Defeat, in the present case,

i would be the freeze-out of the

and Space Administration totake over certain Army spaceactivities.

The Army, asserting whatamounts to squatters' rightsover an Important sector ofspace research and develop-ment, la now openly battlingfor time. Like Lee’s troops on

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Army from the burgeoning 1space business. As 1946 sponsorof "Operation Paperclip’’—the iimportation of Oerman scien-tists—the Arnjy witn some Jus-tification regards Itself as theUnited States pioneer In outerspace. Understandably, theArmy is loath to see Itselfremoved from the Interstellarpicture at this time—or anyother.

For fully two weeks now,the Army has been fighting inthe arena of public opinion toprevent removal of some of itsmost Important space elements.Because the new Space Agencyhas refused to get Into the ringand slug, the battle to date haslooked very much like a shadow-boxing session.

But it has been a very realbattle nevertheless, and to adegree has been fruitful for theArmy.

Few Knew Story

As nearly as can be deter-mined, the Army managed onlylast week to undo a decisionthat had been made. The likeli-hood that the decision will be.reaffirmed in the next monthor six weeks does little or noth-ing to detract from the bril-liance of Army maneuvering.

Because of a White House-Imposed gag on public discus-sion of the NASA-Army con-troversy, few outside the SpaceCouncil know the nature of theNASA proposition or the reasonsit was put forward.

Briefly, this is what NASAwants, and why:

It seeks to take over theArmy’s Jet Propulsion Labora-tory, operated at CaliforniaTech In Pasadena, Calif., as aquasi-civilian facility under. Dr.William H. Pickering, and theArmy Ballistic Missile Agency,run as a military installation atHuntsville, Ala., under Brig.Gen. John A. Barkley.

The reason for this raid onthe Army’s space potential isthat NASA needs three capa-

bilities—as an operating out-fit—which it did not have inthe old National Advisory Com-mittee on Aeronautics setup.

Nearby Units Involved

Capability No. 1 Is In therealm of space science—thebasic research end Os astro-nautics. It has recently ac-quired this capability as a re-sult of the transfer of Dr. JohnP. Hagen and his Vanguardgroup from Navy control.

Capability No. 2 is in elec-tronics and guidance. NASA—-as its present deputy admin-istrator, Hugh Dry den. testi-fied before Congress last year—-needs a "captive laboratory” todevelop this complex and vitalpart of space hardware. The JetPropulsion Lab is its first tar-get; NASA also has eyes for theLincoln Lab at MassachusettsInstitute of Technology and theJohns Hopkins Applied Physics

Silver Spring.

Capability No. 3 Is In "vehiclesystems engineering.” Virtuallythe only governmental organi-zation that fills the bill fromNASA’s point of view Is theRedstone operation usuallyknown as the "Wemher vonBraun team.”

It is NASA’s position thatthese three capabilities—as in-tegral parts of the SpaceAgency’s organization—are es-sential If NASA is to carry outits mission of peaceful civilianactivity beyond the atmosphere.

Delays Forseen ’

Any time table in connectionwith any phase of space activ-ity is extremely tenuous, but itwould teem that if NASA hadto start from scratch in creat-ing for itself Capabalities 2 and3, it would take from three tofive years. As It Is, the transi-tion of the existing Capabilities2 and 3 from Army to NASAjurisdiction, if authorized bythe President, will take from 18months to two years.

The Initial maneuver byNASA to get JPL and the Red-stone group seems to have beenmade at about the same timethe Hagen team was transferredfrom the Navy, on NASA’s natalday of October 1. It is under-stood that a firm decision totransfer the other two activi-ties was agreed on by NASAand Defense Department offi-cials—without Army concur-rence—shortly after the firstof the month.

This left the Army without avoice in the Space Council,which was originally scheduledto meet the President yester-day—later set back 24 hours.From the Army point of view,other measures were required.

These measures took the formof a leak to a military affairsreporter of the fact that NASAhad tapped the Army for JPLand the Von Braun group. Theleak brought the story out intothe open, after which Armyofficials felt themselves entitledto answer questions and com-ment on public issues.

Sincerity StressedThat this was not regarded

by the White House as a properway to do business is now con-ceded throughout the Govern-ment. While no one has yet un-dertaken to reprimand Lt. Gen.Arthur O. Trudeau, Army re-search and development chief,and MaJ. Gen. John B. Medaris,head of the Huntsville complex,for their public utterances, thebest anyone has been able tocome up with in their behalfhas been the kind of faintpraise that usually accompaniesdamnation.

A knowledgable Army source,asked to Justify the generals'activities, pointed out that they

| were both sincere and dedi-cated—attributes that it would

ley under Gen. Medaris’ over-all command.

Rebuttal to the rest of theArmy’s case would entail in-volved argumentation which—-to date at least—those on the !other sido have shunned. Onejmore or less neutral observerpooh-poohed the Corps of En-gineers ‘‘civil functions” anal-ogy, just as others have hooted;at Gen. Trudeau's assertion.that the Army’s role in space'is to take and hold ground—-even lunar ground.

There seems scant doubt thatsooner or later the Acmy is go-ing to be out qf the space busi-ness Army strategy now aimsat making lt "later” rather than“sooner.” One way—the bestImmediate way—would be todrag feet until the end of the.year. After December 31, 1958.under the Space Act’s section302(c), the President mustreport all proposed functionaltransfers to Congress and sub-mit the proposals for a possibleCapitol Hill veto.

The Army reasoning is that

hardly seem necessary to cite ,In the case of high Army (officials.

And Acting Defense Becre- \tary Quarles uttered a mildcomment in derogation of thegenerals’ statements. Duftngquestioning on Mutual Broad-casting System's "ReportersRoundup" Sunday, Mr. Quarleswas asked whether he thoughtthe two were "out of line.”

"Discussing this matter inpublic on its merits while itis under active considerationby the President is inappro-priate. To that extent, I sayit was out of line," Mr. Quarlessaid.

Voa Braun Provoked

"But,” he added. "I must sayit reflected the Army view-!point.”

The Trudeau-Medaris state-ments came chiefly at theArmy Association meeting herelast week, although Gen. Me-daris had sounded off earlierin Chicago. Also, Dr. von Braunleft no doubt about his ownpique, and that of his "team,”at the NASA proposal.

What the general and Dr.von Braun have said, bothovertly and covertly, has beenbolstered by behlnd-the-handdiscussion in other Army quar-ters. The cumulative effect hasbeen distinctly mindful of the“Op 23" scandal of 1949, whenthe Navy undertook —withjustification, as it has turnedout-—to criticize the Air ForceB-36 program and incidentallyto get In a few out-of-channelsshafts against unification.

The Army case now bollsdown to this;

Huntsville is a smoothly op-erating team, Integrated fromtop to bottom. Half of lt can’tbe taken away without ruiningthe other half; the top can’t beskimmed off without leaving anineffective, headless organiza-tion behind. *

Furthermore—the Army casecontinues—the “Paperclip” sci-entists, liberated from postwarGermany and imported into theStates like so many V-2 rockets,are a closely knit group whowill not stand for being rentasunder. Rather than allow theGovernment to transfer themIndiscriminately about, theywill quit Government serviceand avail themselves of some ofthe juicy industrial plums re-peatedly offered them.

Civilian Corps Not Large

Personnel and organizationalconsiderations aside, the Armygoes on, the Von Braun groupcomplements what is beingdone in military weaponry; In-deed, less than 10 per cent—-“vastly less,” according to Gen.Medaris—of the work at Hunts-ville is civilian • type spaceactivity.

And in any case, the Armycontinues, there is no reasonwhy an activity should be takenaway from the Army just be-cause lt is civilian in nature.The Corps of Engineers, as Gen.Medaris pointed out last week,"has done a highly creditableand successful job over a periodof many years” in dam buildingon America’s great rivers and"Idon’t know of anything war-like in building a dam.”

More important, accordingto the Army, is the Nike-Zeusproject now under way atHuntsville. In this antimissilemissile development programlies America’s primary hope ofshielding itself from a rain ofnuclear death should war withRussia come.

And finally, there is the mat-ter of squatter sovereignty. AsGen. Trudeau put it: “Anagency which was foresightedenough 13 years ago to get thegroup of German scientists andto go into the missile fieldearlier than anybody else anddevelop a greater competencyand demonstrated capabilitythan anybody else” deserves alittle better than what nowseems to be in store for theArmy.

Problem Solvable

In addition to all this, theArmy officials say there is noreason why NASA can’t get itswork done on a contract basis.Gen. Medaris said "we can putup another wicket at the gate”and take NASA work orders in-stead of breaking up the team.

Supplementary to these moreor less formal arguments are awelter of rumors. Three of them—that the Redstone team willbe moved bodily away fromHuntsville; that the NASA’sreal reason for the Huntsvilleraid is that it wants Dr. vonBraun as chief scientist of thenew agency, and that after thiscoup the next NASA raid willbe on the Air Force for theCape Canaveral (Fla.) launch-ing facility—all can be cate-gorically denied.

‘ The Army case fares betterunder cursory than under de-tailed examination. The actualcrux of the Army’s argumentlies in what is being done atHuntsville for the national se-curity. These are the facts:

The Jupiter IntermediateRange Ballistic Missile has beenassigned to the Air Force foroperations, and is out of Hunts-ville's hands.

The 200-500 mile Pershing. solid-fueled, ground-to-ground

tactical missile has been as-, signed to the Martin Co. for, research, development and pro-duction, and Huntsville retainsonly some monitoring respon-

i sibility.¦

Delaying Action Seen

The Nike-Zeus project atHuntsville is under the ArmyRocket and Guided MissileAgency commanded by Brig.Gen. John G. Shinkle, and notin the ken of the Von Braun

! team supervised by Gen. Bark-

If an OK on the latest NASAproposal can be deferred for63 days beyond the councilmeeting the plan will be tossedthe Army's Congressional

! friends can block it.The only trouble with this

reasoning—from a long rangepoint of view—is that every-body would lose and nobm*ywpuld win by guch strategy. If

i the NASA plan is deferreduntil 1959, NASA undoubtedlywill give up as a lost cause anyhope of absorbing going con-cerns. Willy-nilly, lt will setabout the long, hard businessof building from the ground up.

Meanwhile, in a couple ofyears’ time, the Huntsville

, group will find its militaryprojects taken over by the AirForce under apparent presentPentagon policies of puttingall space eggs in one basket.

At length perhaps in 1961ior 1962—the Von Brsun-Medaris operations would find

' themselves worked out of a job.

And, as a team at least, theywould have nowhere to go.

For this and other reasons,all signs point to a White

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THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1958

House decision in favor ofNABA; not this week, probably,but in all likelihood within thenext month or six weeks.

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