(Download) "Highball! Missiles and Trains." by Air Power History # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Highball! Missiles and Trains.
- Author : Air Power History
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Engineering,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 620 KB
Description
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When one thinks of the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the common image is of missiles emplaced in underground launch facilities The launch facility ("silo" in popular parlance) is the reigning paradigm of American ICBM deployment. Significantly less known was the serious American desire for mobile ICBMs. Regarding a mobile Minuteman, historians hardly mention this tale of an American technological road not taken. This is a paradox because many nations currently operate mobile intercontinental or intermediate-range ballistic missile systems, including Russia, China, and India, to say nothing of various Middle East countries. Moreover, the persistent presence of ICBM mobility represents a significant piece of American military and technological history. It consumed large resources: $108 million by 1961 for mobile Minuteman alone ($2.9 billion in year 2008). (1) It was a significant factor in the discourse shaping the American nuclear deterrent, originally the triad of manned bomber aircraft, land-based ICBMs operated from fixed sites, and mobile submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The early debate on a mobile Minuteman demonstrates the functioning of the military-academic-industrial triangle, complete with late fifties--early sixties interservice rivalry. Lastly, the foundational work done for mobile Minuteman later resurfaced in the 1970s and 1980s as the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, James E. Carter, and Ronald W. Reagan struggled with a burgeoning Soviet nuclear threat. (2) For well over thirty years, the U.S. continuously researched mobile ICBMs, spent enormous sums of money on the idea, and ultimately dropped it, begging the question, "why?"
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