tat VI OFFICE OF THE OF DEFENSE WASHINGTON 25TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING Egg MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY or THE AIR FORCE i a a I have been over your memorandum of December 4th which you sent me in regard to the briefing for the National Security Council session In this memorandum you bring up the question of the ranges for Soviet missiles that have been tested I have reviewed the available data on this subject this morning and Mr Horner was present during the review Based on the information obtained from the radar installed in Turkey the average range indicated for the last 22 sightings is 310 nautical miles These sightings all occurred this year There is some uncertainty in this range due to the fact that the launching point is not exactly known The most probable range is somewhere between 600 and 700 nautical miles For your information I am tabulating the best values for these last sightings Sighting No Range Sighting No Range 62 0 15 550 27 600 17 s40 43 10 36 600 At our discussion this morning information for the first 13 sightings was not available It was pointed out however that where reliable data was available there is no significant difference from the ranges tabulated above The Soviets have made a number of tests at shorter ranges It was also brought out in the discussion that there were two sightings that gave an estimated range substantiallyu'n excess of those listed This was during the early stages of the radar ion and it is felt that the information is of poor quality and is not '-ted by subsequent data Sighting #35 which is not included in the bulation was a shorter range missile L9 - E V Murphree 36 5339 Special Assistant for Guided Missiles cc Mr Robertson This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu