Did the US serioulsy plan any ICBMs larger than say the MX(~195,000 pounds)? If not, why not?

Titan II weighed in at a bit more than 150K kgs. About twice the weigtht of an MX. Larger too, in both length and diameter.

It came into operational service in about 1962 or 63, and stayed in service until the late 1980s.

So you have the sequence wrong. There were larger missiles before the MX. Not just "serious plans", but full deployment.

The US moved away from larger ICBMs because there was no practical need for them. US nuclear weapons were getting smaller, so larger missiles were an unnecessary expense.

Saturn could have served as an ICBM too, just as Atlas and Titan both served as ICBMs and as space-launch rockets. It most certainly would have been several times larger than an MX. But there was no call for a Saturn ICBM.

Or so I understand.

-Mark 1

ECHOES THAT NEVER WERE: AMERICAN MOBILE INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILES, 1956-1983, pages 136-137. There was also WS-120A, a predecessor to MX, that would have carried 10-20 MIRVs

Heck, Saturn could've carried Tsar Bomb if the US made one, no?

I was thinking how many MIRV warheads it could carry. Imagine as well the silo for a Saturn V ICBM....

The original Atlas proposal was for a five engined missile about twice the mass of the eventual production product. (Fueled by avgas, too, not kerosene, but that's another story.) As they proceeded through the early design phases, they kep getting lower and lower payload requirements, because the projected mass and cube of the 1 MT H-bomb -- the target payload -- was getting smaller and smaller.

I watched a panel once on CSPAN where they had astronauts talking about the early manned space program. John Glenn gave a pretty good five minute class on why the Soviets got ahead of us for a while. It boiled down to the fact that our bomb technology was so advanced that we never really needed or built missiles the size of the R-7.

It could have MIRVed Tsar Bombas if you wanted (about four by my estimate). As an ICBM, if its throw weight is double its LEO capability, you could get a 900MT warhead.

Back in the '50s, the USAF concentrated on manned bombers because they considered the nukes of the time too big for a missile. The Sovs just went ahead and built big missiles; the "best is the enemy of good enough/brute force" approach. As Tony said, this gave them a considerable edge during the early space race. Atlas and Titan were ICBMs before they were NASA launch vehicles. Nowadays, retired Minuteman missiles are being used as satellite launchers.

I know that Titan was both earlier and bigger than the MX. I should have been more specific in my question. I was referring more to the Minuteman and later periods.

If there was no "practical need" for larger ICBMs why did we (the US) have search panic attacks over the SS-18(BTW, roughly 420,000 lbs twice MX and twice the throw weight).

I've heard stories of Saturn as an ICBM. That would have been something!! Although how do you silo that monster? The rocket tech was there afterall look at Saturn V just how come they("heavy weight"ICBMs) were never built?

This looks like a treasre trove. Thank you! I bought a volume of Swords of Armageddon by the late Chuck Hansen but it's more about warheads than the missile itself.

When I was a kid, say 72 or so, I remember asking why we didn't just load the Saturn V up with as many nukes as it could carry...

I was about 7.

talk about a saturation nuclear bombardment missile!

I actually like the idea of fewer but larger nukes, and for these nukes to be oriented towards counter-value, not counter-force - but that's just me.

A Saturn V ICBM would have been awesome, and very INTIMIDATING to enemies (and we have never balked at intimidation as our diplomatic style, so this plays into USian doctrine just fine).

However, something that size would need force protection: massive dispersal, LOTS of dummy silos, a schedule of moving the missiles around different live silos (sort of a variant of the MX "shell game") and so forth. IMHO, it would have been well worth it.

Plus: silo placement to make pre-emption more difficult (maybe steep mountainsides nearby, for a tougher trajectory requirement), silo camo-deception measures (forests, soil, whatever).

SS-18 was feared because it had the accuracy and throw weight to take out a large number of our silo-based ICBMs. This made it a handy tool for budget appropriations. Past that, I think any fear mongering over it is/was absurd. It did nothing to diminish our effectively invulnerable SLBMs (meaning that it did not threaten our ability to deterrence) and the Minuteman force was designed for preemptive counterforce strikes (which are very ineffective when their targets launch first at them).

You wouldn't silo it. Saturn V is a first-strike weapon due to fuel (you couldn't fuel it in time against an enemy strike and the fuel won't hold for long) and the warhead capacity.




Countervalue requires more nukes actually (ten deliverable warheads may be a very credible deterrent but it takes quite a few more to eliminate Russian ICBM fields) and I don't see any point in orienting towards it. The chance that you'll get every single enemy warhead on the ground in order to prevent enemy retaliation isn't the greatest unless you massively outnumber them and you'll still end up killing tens of millions of people (assuming you're going up against someone like Russia of course).

Phallic symbol diplomacy at its finest. Regrettably, it wouldn't do a single thing to intimidate them over and above what any nuke could do.



I'm not sure you could actually do any of that for a Saturn V actually, certainly not and have it be affordable.

The SS-18 was/is a scary weapon and I still don't get why we didn't do something similar. Not that I'm disparaging the MX. Pound for pound probably the most capable ICBM in the world.

I think you're confusing counterforce(strikes against an enemy's nuclear attack forces) with countervalue(attacking an enemy's population centers). Originally the Minuteman missile was a countervalue weapon since the AF figured US policy was to hit back after being struck first so going after vacant enemy nuclear installations would be useless. Minuteman probably did not become a counterforce weapon until the W-78 warhead with its hard target kill ability.

I'm aware of what counterforce and countervalue are, I just goofed and made a typo on that second paragraph. From what I can tell, Minuteman II was designed for counter-force work, though Minuteman I wouldn't be useful for it simply due to a limited number of storable targets (to wit, one).

The thought of moving an inherently fragile liquid-fueled rocket 363 feet high and 33 feet in diameter between silos quickly and unobtrusively enough to keep the Soviets guessing boggles the mind.

Hojutsuka

The U.S. was simply to sensible to build it's own SS-18.

ICBM's launched between the USSR and USA had flight times to long be useful for counterforce targeting. If the Soviets launched their SS-18's at the U.S. silo fields those fields would be empty long before the missiles arrived on target. Even if they wiped them all out it was pointless, the SSBN fleet would be able to level the USSR in retaliation.

When it came to killing silos the US bomber/ALCM missile force was a far better tool than the SS-18. A cruise missile is accurate enough to kill any silo even with it's modest warhead and unlike ICBM's doesn't loudly announce it's presence to the world the moment it lifts off. The Advanced Cruise Missile and B-2 were better still, because they had a reasonable to chance to reach their targets unnoticed until it was to late.

Even then it was still pointless because the USSR's SLBM fleet was still more than big enough to level the USA. Not to mention the small number of ICBM's that would almost certainly survive any attack.

It didn't matter if the ICBM's carried three warheads or three hundred, a disarming first strike was simply impossible for either side.

That presumes a US president would actually launch on warning. There's a considerable volume of work discussing whether or not riding an attack out wouldn't make more sense -- no matter how much of the ICBM force you lose, whatever is left wouldn't have been expended against empty silos or other targets of dubious vlaue.

Understood, simple mistake. My assessment of the role of the Minuteman was from Chuck Hansen's CD-ROM series Swords of Armageddon. The CEPs of Minuteman warheads prior to the W-78 would have made it problematic in the silo killer role. Although against radar installations and other surface military targets(including ABM sites which are not as hard as ICBM silos) It probably would have been enough.

A Saturn V ICBM would have been ridiculous. Vulnerable, unresponsive, incredibly expensive to operate and maintain.

Which is amazing why the military-industrial complex never proposed it! Hmmm, "Homeland Security Atlas V".

Heirophant, counter value is most efficient using large numbers of small warheads gridded out across an urban area.

Indeed.

Three 170Kt warheads impacting across a city will do far more damage than one 1Mt warhead in the center of that same city.

That was the calculus that lead to the MIRV (originally MRV) race. It was only later, as CEPs came down, that counter-force was considered.

Another issue, which has been skirted a bit in the discussion, but not hit right on the head, is that solid-fueled ICBMs are far more intimidating than liquid-fueled. But they have limited throw weight. Solid-fueled ICBMs like Minuteman can be launched with no externally-visible preparation. Liquid-fueled ICBMs require fueling soon before launch. Fine, if you want to put up a big neon sign that says "I am preparing to nuke you!", but such was generally not the best approach for dealing with a nuclear-capable adversary.

The Minuteman force was so effective because it was always ready to launch. No visible preperations, and no meaningful prep time. "We can hit you any time we want, even if you shoot first." Very intimidating. Far better than "I can't hit you back right away, but if you'll give me a day or two ..."

-Mark 1

Not all liquid fueled missiles require such fueling procedures prior to launch, just the first generation ones. The Russians have historically been fond of storable liquid fueled ICBMs, though they appear to be switching to solid fueled. Both the R-36 and the UR-100, the latter of which was produced in even larger numbers than Minuteman, were liquid fueled but capable of rapid launch.

Ref liquid fuels, I believe the Titan II, with its hypergolic* fuel was kept fueled, though they did have a tendency to spontaneously attempt self-launch (that heavy silo lid seems to have served a double purpose ).

*Ignition on contact.

I remember reading of a proposal, back in the 1980s, to use the Saturn 5 as an anti-airfield weapon - not nuclear armed, just the final stage itelf as a huge kinetic projectile, to save on possible nuclear escalation.

Of course anyone who was nuclear capable at the time who picked up the launch would retaliate in a nuclear fashion prior to impact , making the point of a 'limited' strike somewhat pointless.

The problem with early missiles was the use of liquid oxygen (LOX) as an oxidizer. While we think of LOX today as a standard industrial chemical, it's still got properties that make it hard to store aboard a missile (1). So they wouldn't fuel LOX/kerosene rockets until right before launch. The switch to hypergolics wasn't so much in the interest of dispatch reliability (2), but for the ability to store fuels aboard, as stated above.

1. Corossive, cryogenic, etc.
2. A Titan 2 that was supposed to launch one of the Gemini missions had an engine failure on the pad for example, and that was after much more careful preparation than an ICBM would have in combat.

Yep. They weren't reported at the time, but Titans going off in their silos was not a completely unheard-of event. I remember reading of one such event where the warhead was blown a considerable distance away.

There was one major explosion of a Titan II in an operational silo - it took place in September, 1980, at Little Rock AFB. A propellant transfer team was refueling the missile and a 9lb socket detached from the socket wrench they were using (they didn't check to make sure it was secure) and punctured the first stage fuel tank. The silo filled with fumes and a spark triggered an explosion. The blast threw the 750 ton blast door hundreds of feet into the air, with it landing 625 feet away from the silo. Twenty ton pieces of debris where thrown up to 1,700 feet. One man was killed in the accident.

Weren't using SnapOn, tsk tsk tsk. I do recall that incident, I didn't know it happened in Arkansas.

Thanks for the details. That's why I'm a TankNet FanBoy.

"Weren't using SnapOn, tsk tsk tsk."

What, that junk sold out of the back of a truck? CRAFTSMAN, boy. Sold at a real store! Sears!

There were at least a couple other incidents involving Titans leaking where fumes killed large numbers of people, though in the end didn't explode. The wrench example is the most dramatic but I believe had about the lowest lost of life.

There were five fatal accidents involving Titan II missiles or silos - all were determined to be caused by human error. The worst happened in August 1965 at Little Rock,when a contractor was doing major upgrades to the silo. The missile was fueled but the warhead was removed. A welder nicked a hydraulic line that started spraying a fine mist. The hot weld ignited the fluid and the silo filled with dense smoke - 53 people were killed. The other incidents included a crewman falling off a work platform in the silo, a crewman suffocating on cleaning fluid, and 2 crewman killed by oxidizer when they failed to correctly follow procedures when refueling the missile. The fifth accident was the silo explosion in 1980.