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Describes the first silo launch test of the LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM, aka the MX Missile.
Public domain film from the US Air Force, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
The LGM-118A Peacekeeper, also known as the MX missile (for Missile-eXperimental), was a land-based ICBM deployed by the United States starting in 1986. The Peacekeeper was a MIRV missile that could carry up to 10 re-entry vehicles, each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead in a Mk.21 reentry vehicle (RV). A total of 50 missiles were deployed starting in 1986, after a long and contentious development program that traced its roots into the 1960s.
Under the START II treaty, which never entered into force, the missiles were to be removed from the US nuclear arsenal in 2005, leaving the LGM-30 Minuteman as the only type of land-based ICBM in the arsenal. Despite the demise of the START II treaty, the last of the LGM-118A “Peacekeeper” ICBMs was decommissioned on September 19, 2005. Current plans are to move some of the W87 warheads from the decommissioned Peacekeepers to the Minuteman III.
The private launch firm Orbital Sciences Corporation has developed the Minotaur IV, a four-stage civilian expendable launch system using old Peacekeeper components…
Minuteman
Deployment of the Minuteman ICBM began in 1962, during the Cold War, and proceeded rapidly. Limited accuracy with a circular error probable (CEP) of about 0.6 to 0.8 nautical miles[4] and a small warhead of less than 1 megaton meant the system was unable to attack hardened targets like missile silos…
Continued work on the Minuteman led to the Minuteman II specification, set in 1962. The new version included two key improvements. One was the new NS-17 inertial navigation system improved the CEP to 0.34 nautical miles, enough to allow it to attack hardened targets…
Golden Arrow
The Air Force had depended on the engineering firm TRW during the early days of the development of their ICBM force. In 1960 a number of TRW and other engineers involved in the ICBM program formed The Aerospace Corporation… In 1964, the Air Force contracted them to consider a wide variety of survivable ICBM solutions, under the name “Golden Arrow”.
During the late 1970s, the Soviet Union fielded a large number of increasingly accurate MIRVed heavy Heavy ICBMs like the SS-18. These missiles carried as many as 10 warheads…
The outcome of this thinking was obvious from the start; in 1971 the Air Force started a requirements development process combining the ICBM-X and SABRE concepts into a single platform, “Missile, Experimental”, or MX. The new missile would be so accurate and carry so many warheads that even a few survivors would be able to destroy enormous numbers of any remaining Soviet force. The specifications for MX were fixed in February 1972, and the advanced development program started in late 1973. At the time, MX was to be based in existing Minuteman silos, in keeping with the original ICBM-X concept of MX as essentially a bigger Minuteman…
In 1976, Congress refused to fund MX using a silo-based system on grounds of vulnerability, and the project was halted. Several new proposals were made for alternate basing arrangements…
Eventually, the program was reinstated in 1979 by President Carter, who authorized deployment of 200 missiles throughout eastern Nevada and western Utah. The deployment would occur in a system of multiple protective shelters linked by underground or aboveground roads, the so-called “Racetrack” proposal…
On 22 November 1982 the administration announced that the missile was to be known as Peacekeeper, and introduced an entirely new basing concept, the “dense pack”. The dense pack idea involved building super-hardened silos…
A compromise was eventually developed in mid-1983. Under this scheme, 100 missiles would be deployed in existing Minuteman silos to “show national will”…
The operational missile was first manufactured in February 1984 and was deployed in December 1986…
The last Peacekeeper was removed from alert on September 19, 2005…
The Peacekeeper rockets are being converted to the satellite launcher role by Orbital Sciences, as the Minotaur IV (OSP-2), while their warheads will be deployed on the existing Minuteman III missiles…
