Science: Defensive Tests

AEC Chairman Lewis L. Strauss announced last week that nuclear tests to be held in the Pacific next spring will “involve less powerful weapons than the largest used in the 1954 tests.” Also announced: the series “will be the further development of defense against nuclear attack.” This probably means that atomic explosives or atom-armed missiles will be tried against airplanes high in the sky. It will partially meet military complaints that the AEC tests “nuclear devices” rather than practical “weapons systems.”