At two secret meetings on 16 and 18 November 1959, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Twining, recommended the Air Force's plan for the B-70 to reconnoiter and strike rail-mobile Soviet ICBMs, but the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General White, admitted the Soviets would "be able to hit the B-70 with rockets" and requested the B-70 be downgraded to "a bare minimum research and development program" at $200 million for fiscal year 1960 (equivalent to $ billion today). President Eisenhower responded that the reconnaissance and strike mission was "crazy" since the nuclear mission was to attack known production and military complexes, and emphasized that he saw no need for the B-70 since the ICBM is "a cheaper, more effective way of doing the same thing". Eisenhower also identified that the B-70 would not be in manufacturing until "eight to ten years from now" and "said he thought we were talking about bows and arrows at a time of gunpowder when we spoke of bombers in the missile age"."Note": 18 November meeting quotations in this article are Goodpaster's paraphrasing of White & Eisenhower (e.g., "said he thought we [White, Goodpaster, et al") – possibly from an audio recording if one was made at Augusta.</ref> In December 1959 the Air Force announced the B-70 project would be cut to a single prototype, and most of the planned B-70 subsystems would no longer be developed.