Rail Mobile Minuteman
Since World War II, American military leaders had feared a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack, and in the nuclear era, the stakes were higher. The idea of ??a railway based ballistic missile was first considered in the United States in the early 1960s. The emergence of the solid-fuel ICBM Minuteman, which did not need a pre-launch station, a stable (in contrast to early liquid-fuel rockets) to vibrate and shake in motion, made it possible for the first time to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles from a moving platform.
On February 12, 1959, the official launch of the project, called Mobile Minuteman took place. Military, given the geopolitical situation, required to conduct all the work in the shortest possible time. The new "missile train" was to be commissioned no later than January 1963. Thus, in less than three years it was required to conduct the whole complex of research, to develop the aggregates of the launcher and the train as a whole, and then to test a new armament system and establish its production.
According to reports, 10 mobile cars were to be part of the Mobile Minuteman BJRK, half of which were given up for living quarters and calculation workplaces. For example, the command post of the complex was to be equipped with two workplaces for officers responsible for launching missiles. For reasons of safety, the place of calculation was proposed to be divided by armored glass. In the other cars three launchers with missiles and special equipment were to be stationed.
On December 13, 1960, Boeing completed the assembly of a full-size mock-up of a prospective "rocket train". The mock-up was supposed to be shown by the military and to receive approval for the construction of a full-fledged prototype with all necessary systems. Thus, as early as 1961, the Mobile Minuteman project could go into the stage of full-scale road tests and test launches. The technical appearance of the train by this time has undergone some changes in comparison with earlier versions, but it was based on previous ideas related to the overall architecture of the complex, weapons and methods of application.
However, already on 14 December 1960, an order was issued to suspend all work. During the tests it became clear that in the proposed form the new missile system has both pluses and minuses. In addition, the active development of missile technology and nuclear forces as a whole affected the course of promising projects. Officially, the reason for stopping the project was its high cost. For almost two years the Mobile Minuteman project "ate" several tens of millions of dollars, and further work should lead to additional spending. As a result, the project was considered too expensive and stopped.
The second blow to the development of the American rail mobile missile was the order of the President of the United States John F. Kennedy on March 28, 1961. In accordance with this document, it was required to strengthen strategic nuclear forces not with a new wing armed with "rocket trains", but with a subdivision with silo-based missiles.
The last document in the fate of the project "Mobile Minuteman" was the order of the Minister of Defense Robert McNamara. On December 7, 1961, the head of the military department ordered to cease all work on the military railway missile system with a special version of the LGM-30A Minuteman I missile. Later this weapon was used only with silo launchers.
The development of the preliminary design, testing and subsequent work allowed to establish the positive and negative features of the original proposal. The advantages of the Mobile Minuteman complex include the highest mobility of launchers capable of navigating along a multitude of existing railways and a high probability of survival in the event of a nuclear conflict. In addition, the plus was the lack of the need to develop an entirely new missile. As part of the new train, it was intended to use a modification of the LGM-30A product with an updated guidance system capable of launching a missile to a specified target from anywhere in the United States.
The main issue was the high cost of development and construction of complexes. It was this shortcoming that ultimately led to the closure of the project. Great difficulties were associated with the preparation of the rocket for launch. After entering the starting position, it was required to begin a complex and lengthy procedure of preparation. In particular, it was necessary to accurately determine the coordinates of the train and introduce an updated flight program into the electronics of the missile, which seriously hampered combat operations in the real conflict situation. It was assumed that trains with missiles would be regularly redeployed between pre-calculated positions - since the ICBMs of that time needed to accurately determine the coordinates of the launch site for the operation of their inertial navigation system - and thus would be virtually invulnerable to the Soviet missile attack.
In the summer of 1960, as part of the theoretical study, Operation Big Star was carried out, in which prototypes of future rail launch complexes were moved along the US railways. The purpose of the exercises was to check the mobility of the complexes, the possibility of their dispersal by the railways in use. According to the results of the operation in 1961, a project was prepared and a prototype of the train was created, capable of carrying five Minuteman missiles on specially reinforced platforms.
It was assumed that the first mobile Minutemen would be introduced in the summer of 1962. The US Air Force planned to deploy 30 trains carrying a total of 150 missiles. However, the cost of the project was deemed too high. The mine start-up complexes for the Minutemen were deemed to be a more efficient solution-cheap (compared to the mine installations of the previous liquid Atlas and Titan ICBMs) and protected from existing Soviet ICBMs, which at that time had extremely low precision. In the summer of 1961 the project was closed; the prototypes of the starting trains created were used as conveyors for the delivery of Minutemen from factories to the mine deployment bases.
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