The Soviet Union is a powerful military state today and it is continually growing stronger. Estimates vary widely as to whether it is one year, two years or five years ahead of the West in the development of the intercontinental missile, but there is almost general agreement that it is substantially ahead of us in a timetable in which the development from one stage to the next depends upon first achieving certain scientific and engineering break-throughs and then advancing from those. In other words, this is not the kind of developmental time lag which can be made up easily, if at all.