Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE
a limited attack, although difficult, was perhaps possible.) At
this point, the major country of interest was the People’s Republic
of China, which had detonated a nuclear device in October
1964 and test-fired an ICBM in October 1966. These two
objectives merged in the December 1966 Plan I-67 that identified
the Chinese as a potential nuclear missile threat and also
focused on ABM defense of US land-based missiles.
The Soviets’ ABM efforts also prodded the US system. In July
1962, for example, Nikita Khruschev boasted that the Soviets
could hit a fly in space. The first missile to attract Western attention
with the possibility of ABM capability was code-named
Griffon (fig. 83). It resembled a large-sized SA-2 (the surface-toair
missile type that had downed American U-2s over Russia and
Cuba and was used by the communists in the Vietnam War). The
Soviets began flight tests in 1957, deployed the missile outside
Leningrad in 1960, and built 30 firing sites within two
Figure 83. Griffon. The first Soviet ABM known to the West was the
Griffon. Flight tests in 1957 led to the construction of 30 firing sites in
the early 1960s. But the Soviets stopped construction in 1963 and
abandoned the sites the next year. (Reprinted from Federation of Atomic
Scientists.)
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