Project Vista was a top secret study conducted by prominent physicists, researchers, military officers, and staff at California Institute of Technology from April 1 to December 1, 1951. The project got its name from the Vista del Arroyo Hotel in Pasadena, California, which was selected as the headquarters for the study. The project was originally meant to analyze possible improvements relating to the relationship between ground and tactical air warfare. Initially, project Vista was not meant to be specific to a certain geographical region, but the focus was quickly set towards Western Europe, as the immediate threat to Europe, United States, and NATO, was the Soviet Union. The report was buried after its release, and was only partially declassified in 1980.
Background
When the Cold War started, the fear of communism was on the rise in the Western world. The Cold War had initiated an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union which would continue for decades. In 1950, communist North Korea started the Korean War when they invaded South Korea, fueling the fear among western countries of growing communism in the world. Seeing the communist invasion of South Korea, European countries, NATO and especially the United States saw the possibility and feared that the Soviet Union could potentially invade Europe in the near future. At the time, the newly formed NATO was inferior to the Soviet Union, both in terms of conventional arms, aircraft, and personnel in Europe. The only assurance NATO and Europe had against a possible communist invasion was the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command.
The Strategic Air Command had measures in place to organize a high yield atomic blitz war against Soviet cities and infrastructure, but the current atomic arsenal available consisted of mainly large bombs that had to be transported by special bombers. However, these attacks had to be organized from the United States, and did not guarantee that the Soviet invasion of Europe would stop.
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) nuclear physicist Charles C. Lauritsen toured the Korean battlefields in the fall of 1950, serving as a military advisor on military systems and technology for the United States. Charles C. Lauritsen observed and noted that the United States military needed to improve their tactical air support of ground troops, and upon his return to Caltech he brought his observations to the attention of the Caltech trustees. Charles C. Lauritsen had recently been a part of a summer study conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on military technology and tactics, and brought up the topic of a potential summer study at Caltech, focusing on his observations made on the battlefields of the Korean War. After President Harry S. Truman made the decision to start a project to build the hydrogen bomb, the Air Force Research and Development Division began informal conversations with Lee A. DuBridge, Charles C. Lauritsen, and Robert F. Bacher about a possible summer study at Caltech.
Lee A. DuBridge, a physicist, and Caltech's first president pushed for the University to take on the summer study, that would eventually address the threat of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Lee A. DuBridge, focusing on the lucrative deal this study would bring the University, while performing a national service in a time where the Soviet Union, and communism were considered the United States' greatest threat, managed to convince the University's trustees and administration to take on the summer study. The project was worth $600,000 over nine months from April 1 to December 1, and was officially approved on April 2, 1951, by the University, though unofficially started a day earlier. Caltech was cleared and ready to take on a broad study of ground and tactical air warfare.