The rise and fall of Safeguard: anti‐ballistic missile technology and the Nixon Administration

Abstract

The Safeguard anti‐ballistic missile system was the first (and up until 2002 the only) system deployed to defend the USA from nuclear‐armed ballistic missile attack. It was finally declared operational in September 1975 after many years of development and fierce controversy over both its feasibility and its desirability. However, almost immediately Congress voted to close the system down and it was dismantled within a few months. This paper draws on documents available in the Nixon archives to describe the complex intertwining of ‘politics’ and ‘technology’ that meant that a system that involved huge investment, and that had been portrayed as central to US defense policy, became apparently dispensable almost overnight.