ABSTRACT

The Soviet Union's first nuclear test in 1949, coupled with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, raised the specter of a Soviet bomber attack on the United States. Over the objections of the Air Force, whose strategic posture was focused on an offensive 'atomic blitz' of Russia should war occur (Herken, 1985, p. 63), President Truman approved an air defense study that became known as Project Charles, The scientists at Project Charles, including many veterans of the Manhattan Project, recommended the construction of a vast, two billion dollar continental air defense system, which would combine a distant early-warning radar network, the DEW line, with a system of computers, the Semiautomated Ground Environment, or SAGE, which would provide intelligence and interception capabilities in the event of a bomber attack on the continent. In scope, and in political controversy, the SAGE proposal rivaled the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposed by President Reagan three decades later.