The Atlas and the Air Force: Reassessing the Beginnings of America's First Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

Abstract

In March 1954, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) decided to move ahead with the development of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), a central weapon of the cold war. The advent of thermonuclear weapons with their vastly enhanced firepower and small size caused experts and policymakers in the United States military to proceed with the development of America's first ICBM, the Atlas, at roughly the sam! e time as Soviet leaders began their own ICBM program for the same reason. Historians influenced by the political crisis in the United States caused by the Soviet launch in 1957 of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, criticized the USAF for waiting until 1954 to begin the development of ICBMs. This article questions these criticisms, and argues that American policymakers have usually been strongly biased in favor of nuclear weapons programs rather than against them, in part because of beliefs promulgated in the wake of Sputnik.