An Untaken Road. Steven A. Pomeroy
Missile Office
This book concerns the history of a technology, namely the American mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Many people representing avenues within my life contributed to its writing. First, I thank my family. Luke, Sarah, and Marnie supported my intellectual passions for history, technology, and innovation. I love you and thank you.
For eight years while an associate professor at the Air Force Academy (and now at Colorado Technical University), I studied the context, theory, and application of military power. Many colleagues have contributed ideas to this book, and I will mention four. Professor James R. W. Titus was instrumental in my appointment. He convinced the academy to fund my doctoral studies, and he has provided me with years of mentorship and friendship. Professor John Farquhar reviewed many chapters. Lt. Col. (retired) Tom Allison’s mental clarity and expansive intellect linked ideas in ways I had never considered. Col. (Professor) Ed Westermann, now at Texas A&M University, introduced me to the study of innovation, and we cotaught my first course on military innovation. Thank you.
Many colleagues within the operational Air Force recommended Auburn University’s history of technology program. They counseled wisely, particularly Col. (Dr.) David Arnold and Col. (retired) Mike Grieco. Colonel Arnold, a space historian, offered a plan to succeed in a doctoral program that helped immensely. He is now an associate professor at the National War College. Colonel Grieco knows more about the workings of ICBMs than anyone else I know, and he has taught me about them for over a quarter-century. He explains arcane technical details effortlessly. On a 2001 midsummer night, I destroyed one of his rockets (a Peacekeeper ICBM) following an in-flight staging anomaly. Fortunately, he forgave me. Thank you.
I tell new faculty members that students remember their best and worst professors. They forget the mundane. I remember many wonderful educators from Auburn University’s history department. Professors William F. Trimble, Guy V. Beckwith, and James R. Hansen guided my initial researches and taught me their craft. The collections staff at the nearby Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) deserves recognition. Mr. Archangelo “Archie” DiFante is a dedicated public servant who declassified the documents I needed. He provided me with thousands of pages of declassified sources. Thank you. My editor, Gary Thompson, and the outstanding team representing the Naval Institute Press, including Pelham Boyer and Marlena Montagna, embody the Navy’s spirit of intellectual debate and innovation. Thank you for your dedication and artisanship. Lastly, I thank the individuals who read manuscript versions, including the book’s anonymous reviewers, for their courteous, professional, and relevant critiques.
A trainload of solid action. . . . The mobile missile launcher with a cargo of fighting cars! A guardian of peace . . . on land . . . on sea and in the air! This “all fighting” train includes . . . a long distance Minuteman Missile Launcher hidden in a car.
THE LIONEL CORPORATION1
I like trains, and I like rockets. When I was young, my grandparents gave me some Lionel electric trains and a copy of the 1961 catalog. On one glorious two-page spread stood “the mobile missile launcher,” starring a new Minuteman-missile-launching car. Lionel’s stubby boxcar bore the markings of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and a two-piece, blue, hinged roof that ran the car’s length. Inside was a two-stage, spring-fired rocket. It looked nothing like a Minuteman. I did not care. I spent hours slamming the train into sidings. There, I pressed “the button.” It was orange. The roof opened, the missile elevated, and away blasted a “guardian of peace” against the Soviet Union. Even then, I knew when it was time to “get out of Dodge”: the train flew out the siding and down the mainline to hide from Red warheads. It was heady stuff. I did not know my toy had a prototype.2
Eventually, I grew up, worked with real rockets, including Minuteman, and became a professor. During twenty-five years as an Air Force officer, I performed many roles, most with operational nuclear weapon systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and shorter-ranged, mobile, ground-launched cruise missiles. Later, I helped launch forty rockets into space. Their payloads ranged from satellites to a few probes, ICBM test flights, and some antiballistic missile test shots. My duties ranged from operations, training, and evaluation to major command-level planning and programming. I cowrote the technical and operations manuals governing the Western Range’s mission flight control operations.3 My teams and I blew up one erratic rocket and saved two others from in-flight destruction. The distillation of these experiences prepared me to master what historians of technology term the “internal elements” of a technology. The technology I am interested in is the American mobile ICBM.
I started my doctoral studies in 2003, finished in 2006, and became a historian of technology. This training taught me the value of the “external elements” and their importance to an overall “technological ambient” that combines internal and external elements. Synthesizing the internal and external elements illustrated the enormous efforts required to deploy new national-level technologies. As a professor, I teach and publish about the importance of respecting the strategy/technology relationship. My courses apply concepts developed within the history of technology to identify emerging strategic opportunities and problems. With the help of colleagues and students, I have developed a broad perspective about technology, agreeing with Lewis Mumford that language and the organized mind are fundamental technologies.4 While an associate professor of military and strategic studies at the United States Air Force Academy and now at Colorado Technical University, I have continued researching technological change, processes of innovation, and emerging technologies capable of defining an era.5
The United States never deployed mobile ICBMs, making this history the tale of a road not taken. As I walked this road and its alleys, I realized that the decision not to build a technologically feasible weapon was a reasoned attempt by national leaders (and later the public) to direct technological change. At times, the reasoning was logical. Other times, it was not. Passions intruded. Fog, friction, chance, and uncertainty played roles. National security strategy, technological innovation, foreign policy, domestic politics, economics, engineering, and social concerns, including environmentalism, converged upon the mobile ICBM. In this study, elements internal to technology are crucial, because policy makers debated the feasibility of those weapons technologies. The dividing line between internal and external factors blurred, but it was factors external to technical development that ultimately prevented deployment of American mobile ICBMs. Thus, this study stresses the interplay of internal and external elements.
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