Shortly thereafter, Hugh DeWitt wrote a letter to the "New York Times" about Excalibur. He explained the actual state of the program, saying it was "still in its infancy" and that developing it completely "might require 100 to 1200 more nuclear tests and could easily require ten to twenty more years". DeWitt and Ray Kidder then wrote to Edward Kennedy and Ed Markey to complain that LLNL's objection to ongoing talks of a nuclear test ban rested solely on the X-ray program.