The article below was published in the newspaper The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, USA, on page 16, on July 1, 1947.
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Having completed a tour of Army and Navy advanced research installations, Hanson W. Baldwin, the New York Times military analyst, though his findings should contribute toward dispelling the fears of those persons who take seriously the comic-strip accounts of Russians being able to send clouds of mysterious missiles over the polar icecap to destroy Washington in a puff of smoke or melt down Pittsburgh some day next week.
Baldwin finds our people making progress toward developing "push-button" warfare, but it is, he said, "far off, if, indeed, it is ever fully realized..." The problems are "immense and virtually unsolved," they cannot be solved overnight, and their realizations will take time and tremendous amounts of money.
From this report it may be deduced that Russian science has not advanced to the stage where we will be wiped out before we solve the housing shortage.
Baldwin reports that co-ordination between the services in the research programs has been improved during the last 12 months, but there are still frictions and duplications. He suggests that wide distribution of progress reports while experiments are under way will be helpful.
Co-ordination has been improved under the joint research and development board, but 100 per cent co-operation cannot be expected before there is a merger of the armed services at the top.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
