to have SAC review future target lists before sending them to JCS. Eisenhower By the end of 1953, SAC would have 1,000 nuclear-capable bombers and was deploying the B-47 jet bomber. In January 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower inherited the Truman administration's large defense budget. The new president believed such expenditures threatened the economy, and cut $5 billion in defense spending that spring. Based on extensive experience with nuclear strategy and targeting from his terms as Chief of Staff of the United States Army and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, the Eisenhower administration's NSC 162/2 of October 1953 chose a less expensive, defensive-oriented direction for the military that emphasized "massive retaliation", still primarily delivered by USAF, to deter war. The document formalized efforts begun under Truman to deploy newly developed tactical nuclear weapons small enough for most Air Force and Navy planes. The administration believed that they would be useful both during a general war and to deter a local one in Europe, and Eisenhower said of tactical weapons that "on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else". The doctrine of massive retaliation meant that, for the first time, atomic weapons became the basis of NATO strategy rather than an option of last resort. Similarly, the Soviet doctrine of non-atomic warfare began to change after Stalin's death in March 1953. In September that year a general proposed in a military journal that new weaponry might end a war quickly unlike World War II, and in October the Soviet Army held its first military exercise based on the enemy using atomic weapons. In 1954 Soviet forces in Europe received their first tactical atomic weapons, by which time Soviet officers publicly debated in the journal the merits of preemptive war. Prevention versus preemption Many in the West also seriously discussed the idea of preventive and preemptive war. Truman rejected preventive war, stating that "[s]tarting an atomic war is totally unthinkable for rational men", but Attlee stated in 1945 that "twice is he armed who gets in the first blow". JCS proposed in 1947 that the president be authorized to use atomic bombs to prevent a nuclear attack. NSC 68 of April 1950 opposed "a military attack not provoked by a military attack on us or on our allies", but acknowledged "if possible" the