Word: minuteman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Capabilities. The new Minuteman ICBM is a three-stage rocket, 57 ft. long, weighing 65,000 lbs., with predicted 5,500-mile range. It is designed to pack a thermonuclear warhead smaller than that of the liquid-fueled ICBM Atlas, but big enough to take out major targets. Its major components can be broken down to make shorter-range missiles; by itself the missile's third stage could make a useful tactical ballistic missile (TBM) with 500-to 1,000-mile range; its second and third stages would combine to make a 1,500-mile IRBM for use from...
Already, the Navy is at work on a weapons system that mates the solid-fuel intermediate-range Polaris to the nuclear submarine (TIME, March 3). Now, with his decision to move ahead into the research and development phase of Minuteman, Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, only 20 weeks in office, is driving for a second-generation ring around the U.S.S.R. designed to deter war and to support U.S. diplomacy through the mid-and late-1960s. Target date for the first 50 to 60 Minuteman missiles on the defense line: July...
Present planning is that Minuteman will be grouped in batteries of 50 missiles, controlled from one command post, and with individual missiles dispersed to the point that an enemy five-megaton hit on the installation would theoretically take out no more than one Minuteman missile. Each missile will be countdown-ready at all times, will be hooked up electronically to the underground battery command post so that any defect can be spotted. If a red sensing-light flashes trouble, the sick missiles will be removed, replaced at once and repaired at a specially built factory not more than 500 miles...
...Southwestern U.S., will rent missile sites from farmers and ranchers. In peacetime, the missile sites will stand unmanned, surrounded by electric fences, and patrolled from the air and on the ground. But in the event of war, nothing more than the press of a thumb on a Minuteman red switch would be needed to flip back the steel caps, fire the missiles in their tubes and shoot them out on 800-to 1,000-mile-high trajectories to preplanned targets. Still another new Minuteman paper asset: a secret new high speed to enable the missile to race to target faster...
...Breakthroughs. Plans for this formidable new weapons system have been developed during the past few years under the eye of the Air Force's Missile Boss-and Minuteman Boss-Major General Bernard A. Schriever (TIME, April 1). The concept was developed and presented by a brilliant colonel, Edward N. Hall, 43, a day-after-tomorrow kind of officer with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Caltech and a twelve-year background in ballistic-missile science...