Project Wizard

Project Thumper and Project Wizard were the earliest official efforts to develop an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.^[1] They were both concerned with the task of shooting down V-2 like rockets in flight. The programs were similar in concept; the US Army Air Forces contracted General Electric to run Thumper in March 1946, and University of Michigan’s Aeronautical Research Center (MARC) to run Wizard in April. Wizard was also concerned with the radar systems and command and control networks needed to support attacks that would be timed in minutes.

Due to funding problems within the newly created US Air Force, the original Thumper work was cancelled in 1949 and it's funds were re-directed to the GAPA anti-aircraft project. When that program ran into technical problems, it was merged with MARC's Wizard team to produce the CIM-10 Bomarc missile. Throughout this development, the Air Force was in a constant race with the US Army's Nike team, and the introduction of the greatly improved Nike Hercules represented a clear threat to the Bomarc program. A rush to deploy followed, along with various taunts in the press. Bomarc was ultimately unsuccessful, deployed only to a handful of sites compared to Hercules' hundreds.

When the Army announced they were further upgrading the Nike concept into the Nike Zeus ABM, Wizard was re-funded in 1955 and the race began anew. By 1958 it was clear the Army was once again far in the lead for deployment, and as the imagined threat of Soviet ICBMs grew to a crescendo (see missile gap), Zeus was declared the winner and Wizard was re-directed to radar and communications research. In 1959 the Air Force tacitly gave up on their ABM efforts, noting that Wizard was not economically possible.

Early efforts

Thumper and Wizard were a follow-ons to several missile projects developed by the US Army in the late World War II era, starting in 1944. The Army split development efforts between the Army Air Forces or the Ordnance Department based on whether or not the design "depend[ed] for sustenance primarily on the lift of aerodynamic forces" or "primary on the momentum of the missile". That is, whether the missile operated more like an aircraft (Air Forces) or a bullet (Ordinance). Of the many projects being studied, two surface-to-air missile projects were started, the Ordinance department's Project Nike with an industry team led by Bell Laboratories, and the Air Forces' Ground to Air Pilotless Aircraft, or GAPA, led by Boeing.^[2]

Thumper and Wizard

As part of a sweeping review of post-war requirements, on 20 June 1945 the Army Ground Forces Equipment review listed the requirement for "High velocity guided missiles… capable of… destroying missiles of the V-­2 type, should be developed at the earliest practicable date."^[3] In July of that year, the US Army Signal Corps started basic research into two radar systems for ABM use.^[3] In January 1946 the Commanding General of the Army Ground Forces (AGF) established a requirement for a study program on the V-2 problem. In early February, the Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment, the "Stillwell Board" run by Joseph Stilwell, restated the antimissile requirement in its report on a Proposed National Program for Guided Missiles. By 1 April Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson had signed off on the program, and at the end of May the Stilwell Board published a requirement for an antimissile with a 100,000 yard range.^[4]

In March 1946 the Air Forces started Project Thumper (also known as MX-795) to consider the problem of defending against ballistic missiles like the V-2, using the "collision intercept" method. General Electric won the contract for Thumper, which is the first known ABM effort.^[5] Thumper was followed in April by a similar contract awarded to the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center (MARC) under the name Project Wizard (MX-794).^[6] A funding crisis in 1947 caused both projects to see reduced interest, and in the summer they were turned into long-term studies, with General Electric receiving $500,000 a year and the MARC $1,000,000 a year.^[3]

A major part of the Wizard efforts concerned the overall system design needed to successfully attack missiles in flight. Given the ranges of a missile like the V-2, about 200 miles, such a design would cross over conventional organizational boundaries. A missile site would normally be assigned to a squadron-level organization, with operational range equal to the missile, but detection and early tracking would have to take place well outside this range. This demanded communications networks that could quickly and accurately forward this data from the forward radar sites to the missile launchers.

To address this requirement, the Wizard program created the Air Defense Integration System (ADIS), a computerized command and control system that coordinated radar data to allow efficient direction of both manned interceptors and missile defences. ADIS competed with a similar system being developed by MIT at the Lincoln Laboratories. The Lincoln system, later renamed SAGE, was eventually selected, and Wizard was re-directed "to early warning radars, tracking and acquisition radars, communications links between the early warning radars and SAGE." [sic][3] On June 12, 1945, Maj Gen Morris R. Nelson identified the US could employ "an American version of CDS" (Comprehensive Display System, a British C2 system) for computerized air defense,[4] and the "WIZARD 3 radar" was located on a hill in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thumper and Wizard were based on a similar missile design, 60 feet long and 6 feet in diameter, with a range of 550 miles.^[7] Over time the Wizard efforts developed into a somewhat more capable design, able to reach 500,000 feet altitude at speeds of 4,000 to 5,000 mph with a 50 percent kill probability against a V-2.^[1][8] In the spring of 1947, it was estimated that it would be ten years "before the necessary long-range ground radar, long-range and highly accurate guidance systems and long­r anne radar seekers could be developed for the test support of any antimissile missile devised by General Electric or the University of Michigan."^[1]

GAPA and Bomarc

Meanwhile the GAPA project had several successes. By March 1947 various test designs had been fired with 31 times, and the team were confident the production system, under the name SAM-A-1 (Surface-to-air, Army, Missile, number 1), would be capable against aircraft flying at up to Mach 0.9 at altitudes up to 70,000 feet, higher than the competing Nike design. However, Nike was even more successful during this period, having launched numerous times and made several successful intercepts of various targets including a drone Boeing B-17. A review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that there was too much overlap in the missile designs, and curtailed funds for GAPA to support only another 70 test vehicles. In order to restore funding to what was then the newly created USAF's only surface-to-air weapon, on 30 June 1949 they allowed the Thumper contract to lapse, and re-directed those funds to GAPA.^[9]

By 1950 the situation had not improved; Nike was going from success to success, and in March 1950 the Army ordered the system into production as the Nike I (or 1). Meanwhile, GAPA was stalled and under constant threat of cancellation.^[9] Worried that the cancellation would lead to the disbanding of the Boeing missile team, in January 1950 the Air Force asked Boeing and MARC to consider merging the GAPA and Wizard projects. By June the teams returned a new design concept for a much larger and more powerful missile, able to fly at Mach 3 at 80,000 feet to intercept aircraft at ranges up to 200 miles. Combing their names, Boeing and MARC, the new design became Bomarc.^[10]

Wizard follow-ons

The Army had mostly dropped their interest in antimissile systems after the Air Force split in 1948, but maintained the Signal Corps effort to study suitable radar systems. An 8 February 1950 report by the Secretary of the Army to the Secretary of Defense noted that "there was no guided missile or other device in sight for protection against enemy supersonic guided missiles" due to the immaturity of the systems.^[4] The situation continued to be studied particularly in a 20 October 1952 conference and an Army Field Forces report of late 1954. It was not until a February 1955 study with Bell that the field had matured enough for the Army to consider active development, starting a program then known as Nike II that fall.^[11]

With the announcement of the Nike II, soon to become Nike Zeus, the Air Force quickly re-established their original ABM plans under the existing Wizard program. With MARC's involvement in Bomarc, the original Wizard team was no longer active. The Air Force directed Wizard funding to three industry teams, Convair/RCA, Lockheed/Raytheon and Bell/Douglas. The teams delivered a number of studies and proposed missile systems between 1955 and 1958. The Bell/Douglas team had already been working together as part of the Army's Nike efforts, including Nike Zeus. General Donald Putt, deputy chief of staff of R&D, stated that the Bell/Douglas design was too similar to Zeus, and preferred the designs from Convair/RCA and Lockheed/Raytheon.^[12]

Army/Air Force fighting

By 1956 the Army had successfully deployed the original Nike, now known as Ajax, was into the process of deploying Hercules, and had begun development of Zeus. Meanwhile the Air Force was struggling with Bomarc, which was still nowhere near ready for deployment, and Wizard was at its earliest stages. As it seemed likely Bomarc would be downsized or cancelled in favour of Hercules, and the same might happen to Wizard due to Zeus, the Air Force's long development program was in jeopardy.^[13]

In reaction, the Air Force began a policy of policy by press release, publishing a series of article denigrating the Army efforts and going so far to claim that the Army was "unfit to guard the nation" on the front page of the New York Times.^[14] The Defense Secretary, Charles Erwin Wilson, was not impressed by their claims, and replied that Nike was the only operational system while Bomarc was still not ready.^[15]

In hopes of settling the fighting, Wilson then put limits on the types of missiles the two forces could develop, limiting the Army to missile with ranges less than 200 miles, and in the case of air defence systems, 100 miles.^[16] This did little to settle the fighting, and the press quoted Army Colonel John Nickerson Jr. publicly denouncing Wilson, while leaking details of their latest missile design, the Pershing. The resulting flap led to calls for Nickerson to be court-martialled and was compared to the Billy Mitchell court-martial in the 1920s.^[17]

In spite of the rhetoric, Wizard was not doing well behind the scenes. On 16 January 1958, the new Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, re-directed Wizard solely to radar research and gave the Army free hand to develop the Zeus system as they saw fit.^[18] Bomarc deployments were reduced dramatically, finally settling on eight US bases and two Canadian ones. By c. 1959 the Air Force had concluded that "the proposed Wizard system, advocated as an alternative to Nike Zeus was…not cost effective.^[3]

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