This secret 1960s

study left its stamp USAF photo on US nuclear forces for the next 40 years.

Left: A time-lapse photo of Peace- keeper ICBM re-entry vehicles passing through clouds during a flight test. Above: USS Alabama, an Ohio-class nuclear-armed submarine, cuts through open waters.

STRAT-X turned out to be an intense, nine-month-long national effort. Partici- pants intended it to be a game-changing look at the question of what nuclear systems the US should deploy in coming years. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, STRAT-X clearly succeeded. STRAT-X Indeed, that was the conclusion of a By Peter Grier 2006 Defense Science Board report on n the mid-1960s, senior Pentagon of- a threat to America’s own weapons. How the future of US strategic strike capabili- ficials became concerned about the state could the US maximize the portion of the ties. STRAT-X, it said, introduced into the Iof the US nuclear deterrent force. nuclear arsenal to survive a Soviet first national strategic debate a number of The for years had been strike? important system concepts and ideas. The churning out more and more heavy inter- Second, ABM systems around Moscow, very large nuclear missile-carrying continental ballistic missiles—long-range, especially, generated doubts about US abil- submarines, aircraft-launched cruise mis- fast-flying, silo-based nuclear weapons. ity to hit key targets. How could Washington siles, small and mobile ICBMs, and similar At the same time, the Soviet Union had ensure that enough US weapons would get concepts all “have a STRAT-X legacy,” begun building anti-ballistic missile (ABM) through in a devasting second strike, and said the DSB. defense systems around important home- therefore deter Soviet leaders from ever The STRAT-X study’s emphasis on land targets. attempting a first strike? estimating and maximizing the damage The two developments, either singly or To analyze this situation, Secretary of US weapon systems could inflict upon the in combination, had the potential to alter Defense Robert S. McNamara in late 1966 Soviet Union also inspired the development the strategic superpower balance. launched a study aimed at developing some of multiwarhead ICBMs and submarine- The problems were fundamental ones. answers. That study was called Strategic launched ballistic missiles. STRAT-X led First, increasingly numerous ICBMs posed eXperimental, or STRAT-X, for short. to greater US emphasis on hardened missile 52 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2010 and TRW. Among those who took part in the effort was Freeman Dyson, an eminent DOD photo physicist and later an anti-nuclear activist. McNamara signed the order for STRAT- X on Nov. 1, 1966, specifying the study was to be a technological investigation “to characterize US alternatives to counter the possible Soviet ABM deployment and the Soviet potential for reducing the US assured-destruction force effectiveness during the 1970s.” Furthermore, study participants were to consider US alternatives from a uni- form cost-effectiveness base, as well as from the point of view of possible Soviet countermoves. The latter requirement led to an aspect of STRAT-X that today seems amusing. One of the volumes predicted USSR responses, and was written as if it were a staff study for Soviet Minister of Defense Gen. Andrei A. Grechko. It came complete with fulminations about the perfidy of capitalism and the inevitable triumph of the socialist will. What McNamara really wanted from STRAT-X were path-breaking ideas about new weapon systems, either offensive or defensive—and he did not want the existing defense bureaucracy to get in the way. That was made clear in a January 1967 memo to IDA from the office of the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineer- silos and a new generation of sea-based ing (DDRE). nuclear systems. In that sense, it was the The memo read: “The sys- inspiration for both the Peacekeeper ICBM tems to be analyzed need not and the Trident SLBMs, although neither be limited to those recom- system explicitly was part of STRAT-X. mended by the services, and AP photo by John Rous the STRAT-X study group is The Best and the Brightest encouraged to examine sys- The STRAT-X study was a wide-ranging tem concepts unrestrained by look at the future of US weapons that considerations of potential shaped the for decades, and management problems or po- remains a model for such efforts today. It litical influences.” was “one of the most influential analyses Land-, water-, underwa- ever conducted” for the Pentagon, noted a ter-, and aircraft-based missile 2002 RAND report on capabilities-based systems were all placed on planning. the table for consideration, Strategic eXperimental drew on the although the study’s terms of talents of many of the best and brightest reference specifically exclud- weapons engineers, nuclear planners, and ed the topics of manned bomb- strategic thinkers of the time. Lead con- ers and orbital bombardment tractor on the study was the Institute for systems. Winning systems Defense Analyses, a government-affiliated were to be those that provided think tank run at the time by retired Gen. an economic way to produce Maxwell D. Taylor, who had served as a surviving penetration pay- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under load for targeting against the President John F. Kennedy. urban and industrial base of Military advisory groups oversaw the the USSR. project, but the overall study was run by “Cost per surviving kilo IDA’s Fred A. Payne. He ran herd on a wide- pound of payload ... as a ranging group of civilian and academic function of Soviet costs to subcontractors—25 principals in all, from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara launched the negate that payload should Boeing and Booz Allen Hamilton to Thiokol wide-ranging STRAT-X study in 1966. be the primary but not sole AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2010 53 Canal-Based, which would entail Interestingly, this measurement did not sailing a missile about a network of canals actually assess either the accuracy or the USAF photo in an attempt to confuse Soviet targeters. nuclear yield of the surviving American Land Mobile, a truck-based transporter RVs. Analysts had figured out that the system that would drive a missile at speed vast majority of targets in the USSR were around a winding system of dedicated roads. vulnerable to pretty much any type of Ship-Based, where surface ships with warhead the US was considering. missile canisters would sail about the As Davis reported: “This, and concerns oceans, hiding amongst other maritime about air defenses and future interconti- traffic. nental ballistic missile survivability, in- Submarine-Based, in which large, fluenced the decision to move to multiple slow, and quiet submarines would cruise independently targeted re-entry vehicles randomly beneath the seas, with missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles in canisters attached to the outside of ... with small weapons.” their hulls. The final STRAT-X report was a massive Air Launched ICBM, in which circling document. Much of that work has never aircraft would be equipped with standoff been declassified. The volumes that have ballistic weapons that could be fired at been released, however, are testimony to Soviet targets without having to approach the thoroughness and ingenuity of STRAT- USSR air defenses. X analysts. The design of the land-mobile system, Capabilities-based Planning for instance, clearly presages that of the The 2002 RAND report, prepared by land-mobile Small Intercontinental Bal- Paul K. Davis, described STRAT-X as a listic Missile, or “Midgetman,” which the foundational exercise in what has come Air Force developed in the 1980s. The to be called “capabilities-based planning.” missile was canceled in 1992, following A Minuteman III is launched during a According to the RAND analyst, STRAT-X the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end test. STRAT-X encouraged the develop- participants made a point of transcending of the . ment of multiwarhead ICBMs. the myriad details in which they could have The STRAT-X land-mobile concept become embroiled. featured a rubber-tired transporter-launcher economic evaluation criteria,” concluded One of the study’s enduring conclusions, that carried one missile, capable of moving the DDRE memo. according to Davis, was that US nuclear quickly around a system of dedicated roads That dry language launched a crash forces should be shaped with an emphasis in the western United States to complicate nine-month effort in which STRAT-X on the number of arriving re-entry vehicles the job of Soviet attack planners. participants dreamed up and considered (RVs)—the number of warheads that would STRAT-X analysts figured everything dozens and dozens of variations of ways to actually reach Soviet soil in a retaliatory from the number of support personnel deliver the most powerful weapons man has attack. It was the bedrock manifestation each wing of land-mobile missiles would ever known. These concepts were matched of nuclear “capabilities.” need (5,606) to the percentage of each against the anticipated Soviet deployment To measure this, analysts had to take wing’s transporters that would typically of bigger and more-accurate ICBMs to see many factors into account, from the be down for maintenance at any one time which produced the cheapest survivable ability of a system to survive a Soviet (seven percent). options. first strike, to the reliability of all its Transporters would need about a 20 mph The name STRAT-X had been chosen components, and its ability to penetrate average speed and a 35 mph “dash” speed because it was vague, and did not hint at any USSR defenses. to enable them to adequately perform their bias to land- or sea-based systems. In the end, the study looked at some 125 weapon basing ideas. Of these, nine were studied in some detail, according to a declassified and redacted copy of the first volume of STRAT-X’s 20-volume final report. The nine candidate basing systems were: Rock Silo, in which missiles would be based in hardened silos anchored in the granite bedrock of the nation’s open western and northern ranges. Soft Silo, a similar system using silos more easily and cheaply constructed. Rock Tunnel, in which missiles would be shuttled by rail around a system of deeply dug granite tunnels, emerging at launch portals. Soft Tunnel, which would use a quicker and cheaper construction method than its STRAT-X considered a truck-based transporter system. It presaged the Midgetman rock counterpart. system, whose mobile launcher is shown here. 54 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2010 more conservative approach of sticking with missiles carried inside the sub. USAF photo For land systems, the STRAT-X discus- sion of mobility pioneered years of work on the land-mobile Midgetman, and on mobile basing systems for the MX, which included the “racetrack” plan to transport the large multiple-warhead missile around a road loop. The volume laying out the assumptions about how the USSR would respond to next generation US systems makes for fascinat- ing reading. “It has become increasingly obvious that the United States is making a number of serious mistakes by setting some seemingly impossible goals which are A B-52 Stratofortress carries Air Launched Cruise Missiles. STRAT-X emphasized perhaps generated by the computer dream the importance of lots of warheads reaching their targets. world in which it so delights,” claimed the faux-Soviet author writing in the voice of an shell game-like task of moving quickly The new sub would carry its missiles advisor reporting to the Minister of Defense. enough so that the USSR would not be outside of the pressure hull, in canisters. To The USSR would need to make “consid- certain of destroying enough of them in launch, the crew would jettison a canister, erable effort” to improve the accuracy of its a surprise attack, according to STRAT-X. which would drift away from the ship before missiles if it decides it wants a first strike These transporters would be scooting firing its missile. This concept allowed capability against US silo-based counter- about 65,000 square miles of public lands in the sub to carry larger and longer-range parts, said this volume, adding that such the southwestern states, STRAT-X figured. missiles, increasing the amount of ocean an effort will “doubtless be worthwhile.” The study assumed that land-mobile roads it could use as a range. Missile launch The report indicates the STRAT-X would traverse national forests and parks. could take place at all speeds and depths, analysts felt Soviet planners believed Analysts foresaw a day, however, when and firing could be delayed, so that Soviet they could reasonably expect to have people and missile transporters might clash. forces could not backtrack along the missile success in targeting the land-mobile Camping, fishing, rock-hunting, and other trajectory to find and destroy the submarine. missile system proposed as an option. recreations increasingly were spreading Sub-based systems, however, appeared into the hinterland of the West. The Mixed Legacy of STRAT-X to be another matter. “It is surprising how much activity occurs Speed was not of the essence. The new “Detection, location, and identification on [open western land]. ... To what extent sub was designed with a small and relatively of very quiet, slowly moving submersibles such activities may not be compatible with inexpensive nuclear power plant, because is indeed a difficult problem,” warned this land mobile/random deployment is an open STRAT-X analysis concluded that when “Soviet” analyst. question at this time,” noted the 1967 study. it came to undersea warfare, stealth was The legacy of STRAT-X is mixed. In the This was a prescient statement, one borne the most important characteristic a boat end, the Soviet empire collapsed, leading out in the 1970s and 1980s by the intense could have. to a far-reaching reduction in American local opposition to suggestions of vast “A high burst speed is a minor trail- strategic weapons and strategy. “racetrack” roadways and rail systems in breaking consideration against attack ve- Two postulated STRAT-X-inspired the West to move missiles. hicles in comparison with radiated noise road-mobile ICBM systems—the single- Meanwhile, the design of the proposed characteristics and sonar countermeasures,” warhead Midgetman and a force of 100 STRAT-X submarine was like nothing that said the study. multiple-warhead Peacekeepers—were had come before. Today’s Ohio-class Trident SSBN differs never fielded as intended. USAF did field One of the reasons for the study was from the STRAT-X’s original undersea con- 50 of the Peacekeepers in stationary silos the Pentagon’s perception that the exist- cept, of course. At the time, Adm. Hyman G. in a compromise brokered in 1983 by a ing Polaris submarine force had started to Rickover, director of Naval Reactors Branch commission headed by retired Lt. Gen. become vulnerable. Thus, planners were and the father of the nuclear Navy, argued Brent Scowcroft. Even so, the silo-based told to design an undersea concept that strenuously to Congress that any new sub Peacekeeper has since been deactivated. would allow a large increase in ocean should indeed be able to produce a burst of On the other hand, USAF—encour- operating area. getaway speed. This led to a requirement aged by STRAT-X—went ahead with its Their solution was a submarine designed for a much bigger nuclear power plant, Minuteman III ICBMs, the first missile to be as difficult as possible for the Sovi- and inevitably a much grander sub design. to fractionate its payload with multiple, ets to find. It would be extremely quiet In addition, further Navy analysis indi- independently targetable re-entry vehicles. and harder to hear on sonar, as it cruised cated that the unknown problems associated The Navy, for its part, went ahead with the randomly about the open seas. with the entirely new approach of carrying “new submarine,” the Trident. Both remain “The new submarine is one designed missiles outside the pressure hull might be in service, and are cornerstones of the US especially as a missile launcher and is, too great. In the end, Trident adopted the strategic deterrent. n therefore, considerably different from the [existing] SSBN, which is a converted Peter Grier, a Washington, D.C., editor for the Christian Science Monitor, is a long- attack submarine,” said the STRAT-X time defense correspondent and a contributing editor to Air Force Magazine. His summary volume. most recent article, “Chief Roy,” appeared in the December 2009 issue. AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2010 55