Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

CHAPTER 9
The Nuclear Arena
The Korean War and the desire to meet any potential threats by the Soviet
Union intensified the efforts begun during War World II to develop rockets 1 and
missiles. In 1952 and 1953, tests with the hydrogen bomb con firmed the fact that
long-range ballistic missiles 2 were a potentially efficient means of delivering
thermonuc lear warheads to distant targets. A key factor was the great reduction
in the weight-to-yield ratio of nuclear warheads. Technological advances seemed
to warrant the great expense that re search, development, and production of such
missiles entailed. Despite War Department reports favoring missile development,
the bulk of the reduced peacetime budget had gone into more potent atomic bombs
and jet-propelled aircraft to transport them. Missile research had remained a minor
item in the defense budget during the early postwar years. Thus, with tech nological
breakthroughs in the development of nuclear war heads, the Army, which stood the
most to lose with the downgrad ing of its conventional forces, made a special effort
to share prominently with the other services in the development and employment
of missiles and rockets.
Early Missile Developments
The Army became interested in the development of rockets and missiles during
World War II. To pursue this objective, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in early 1942
constituted what became known as the Joint Committee on New Weapons and
Equipment, chaired by Office of Scientific Research and Development director
Vannevar Bush, a renowned scientific administrator who enjoyed a distinguished
career in applied mathematics and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in the two decades following World War I. The committee
had two principal functions: to coordinate military and civilian research during the
war and to advise the Joint Chiefs on any technical advances that directly affected
strategy. There remained, however, an absence of controlling directives, and the
missile programs of the several military departments were uncoordinated. A spirit
of rivalry sprang up that further frustrated overall missile development. Even though
1 A rocket is a self-propelled vehicle without an installed or remote control guidance mechanism,
whose trajectory or flight path cannot be altered after launch.
2 A ballistic missile is one that is guided during the first part of its trajectory, but becomes freefalling
in the latter stages of its flight to the target.