1950 to 1959: Starting the Ascent of Digital Computers and Software - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 84

SAGE also started a trend that still continues today. The costs of World War
II weapons were a fairly small component of the United States' annual budget.
Starting with SAGE and other new weapons systems, military spending became a
progressively larger part of the national budget.
BOMARC
SAGE was not the only new computerized weapon system during this decade. In
1959, the Boeing BOMARC supersonic guided missile was added to the U.S. ar-
senal. It used an analog computer for guidance combined with navigation from
SAGE computers.
The name of this missile was a combination of Boeing and the University of
Michigan Aeronautical Research Center. The “BO” came from Boeing and the
“MARC” came from the Michigan research lab.
This was the first long-range operational air-defense missile in the U.S. arsenal.
It had a range of 400 miles in its later forms and could be launched instantly be-
cause hundreds were kept in constant readiness. The BOMARC could reach alti-
tudes of 80,000 feet, which was higher than any other combat aircraft at the time.
It flew at about Mach 2.5, so it was faster than any contemporary combat aircraft
that it might encounter.
The BOMARC missiles depended on navigation instructions from the SAGE
air-defense system for their initial trajectory, but their own onboard radar, sensors,
and analog computers could handle the final few miles to detonation.
Neither SAGE nor BOMARC were used in actual combat, and that is perhaps
one of their virtues. They were considered to be fairly formidable defense systems
that could wipe out enough inbound attacking aircraft to make air strikes on U.S.
and Canadian territory unlikely to succeed.