The Nuke Deliverers That Never Were
- cepmurphywrites
- May 2
- 3 min read
By Colin Salt.
A truly massive amount of effort was made into thinking of basing and delivery methods for the MX/Peacekeeper missile, part of an effort that only produced fifty actual missiles. Even in the case of an alternate event like a continued USSR that would have allowed for more of them to supplant the ancient (even then) Minuteman, it's likely they would have just stayed in ordinary missile silos like the actually produced ones. That being said, a gargantuan number of planned platforms were proposed and analyzed, to the point where you could have an entire land/air/naval nuclear triad with nothing but LGM-118 Peacekeepers. Some were more practical than others.
Land Basing
There were various more exotic and elaborate silo systems planned in additional to the conventional ones that were actually used. While impressive (such as giant tunnel hives or blasting silos out of mountains for extra hardness), these aren't different enough in practice from normal ones to be worth much elaboration on.
Then there were the mobile launchers. Some involved smaller missiles like the MGM-134 "Midgetman", while others just carried the full-sized Peacekeeper. These were technically possible, as Soviet and Chinese mobile ICBMs show. However, they ran into the same inevitable problem: land-mobile ICBMs only really work in dictatorships, where roads can be cleared at any cost. Otherwise, they just get snarled and have an obvious political downside.
One 'solution' was to take the missiles off the road. One of the less ambitious options was to place the canister on the back of a superheavy offroad mining truck, put a bunch of bases full of said vehicles in the American Southwest, and have them disperse through the countryside in times of crisis.
And then there were giant hovercraft that would race across the Great Plains and dedicated train/movement trench systems. The last one predictably got nowhere.
Sea Basing
The first major sea basing proposal was to put the MXes on surface ships. Before submarine missiles became proven, there were similar attempts/proposals for battleship and cruiser hulls. These would have used transport hulls. It was technically feasible, and in fact the USSR proposed a similar type of slightly disguisable surface ship missile carrier some time prior. Then again any kind of sea basing would run up against the Navy and its submarines, both in not invented here turf wars and in reasonable arguments.
Of course, submarines were proposed for the MX as well. Too big to carry like Tridents, they would be placed in horizontal capsules attached to the side of diesel submarines. Plans included subs with two or four such missiles. They also included capsules tethered to the bottom of the sea (world's largest mines?) and capsules floating on the surface (what could go wrong?)
The US Navy probably ensured that any sea basing concept was not going to be adopted, but the proposals are still interesting.
Air Basing
The good news is that launching a ballistic missile from an airplane is technically possible and even has undeniable benefits. The oversimplified non-physicist version is that already being at a substantial altitude means the missile has a "head start" that increases its performance in practice compared to just launching it from the ground. This can be exploited.... for smaller missiles and space launch vehicles. The problem is that A: Minutemen/Peacekeepers already had intercontinental performance, and more importantly, B: They were/are huge, at least by the standards of air launched ballistic missiles.
Thus, variations on the 747 and C-5 platform were the smallest air-ICBM carriers proposed. Dedicated big platforms (which were proposed) would be the unquestionable largest planes ever, rivaled only by space shuttle transporters.
This of course meant that you had big, expensive, finicky planes that required big, expensive, fragile bases. It also crossed into the turf of the bomber force in a way that land basing methods didn't. Any theoretical advantage in mobility or ability to launch at unexpected angles was vastly outweighed by those gargantuan, unavoidable flaws. So naturally the plane basing went nowhere too.
There was one final unconventional air basing option that probably was inspired by the epic Captain Beefheart tune "The Blimp". Which was to carry the missiles inside high-endurance dirigibles. This gave them the altitude and (theoretical) mobility advantage while clearly not being airplanes. At least it was an attempt to think outside the box (and into the gas bag?)
Colin Salt is an author who, among other works, wrote The Smithtown Unit and its sequel Box Press for Sea Lion, and runs the Fuldapocalypse Fiction review blog.
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