The Offense: Missiles and War Games

Abstract

The German V1 missile was the first cruise missile, not a ballistic missile, that flew a flat trajectory, obtaining oxygen from the air, like an airplane. The German V2 was the first ballistic missile that flew on a parabolic trajectory above the atmosphere and needed to carry its oxygen. The first German V2 flight of October 2, 1942, was the first of 3,700 V2–flights. The V2 carried 750 kg a distance of 300 km, similar to today's Russian Scud B. The accuracy of the V2 was poor, only 35 % landed within 2 km of their targets. At this rate, the accuracy of ICBMs would be 60 km over a range of 10,000 km. As ICBMs improved, the nuclear arms race shifted from production of slow, recallable bombers to that of fast, nonrecallable, MIRVed (multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles) ICBMs. The increased accuracy of ICBMs led to decreased weapon yields, dropping from nuclear weapons from multi megatons to 300–500 kilotons (kton). To attack foreign leadership, as well as buried weapons, the U.S. also developed earth-penetrating warheads.