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Minuteman silos, sunk 80 feet deep in the earth, are "hardened" by thick concrete walls. About 150 such silos, holding a Minuteman apiece, are dispersed over hundreds of miles of rugged western U.S. terrain. McNamara argued that no single Soviet missile—no matter how big—could be expected to knock out more than two silos at once. Less reassuring is the fact that the Minutemen's hardened sites have never been tested definitively by nuclear explosion effects, and McNamara admitted there are "uncertainties" in the design. But if the silos did survive the crushing pressures and ground fires of a first strike, the Minutemen would blast off with a combined power of hundreds of megatons. Already, they are aimed (by special tapes at SAC's underground command post near Omaha) at Russian and Chinese Communist targets, over 5,000 miles away.
"In addition," said McNamara, "we have duplicative facilities which will in the future include the capability of launching each individual Minuteman by a signal from airborne control posts." The mobile control posts are KC-135 jet tankers of the Strategic Air Command which have been converted into communications centers under the control of an Air Force general officer. Such an officer could, from his airborne headquarters, launch the Minuteman flights.
Safe at Sea. The Minutemen, however powerfully protected, are immobile. But the submarine-based Polaris missile relies on swift movement and concealment. The Polaris A-2 has a range of 1,725 miles, can fire at Russia or China from beneath the ocean's surface. Thus, even if a significant number of Minutemen were knocked out, virtually all the Polaris missiles would survive to strike back.
Following the Minuteman and Polaris on the arsenal list is the Army's upcoming Pershing missile—a 400-mile supersonic "tactical" weapon that can be zipped around combat areas via truck, helicopter or airplane. It can be set up, aimed and fired from its portable launcher in less than an hour; it delivers a bang of up to one megaton —which makes it a threat to entire cities, if needed.
The rest of the tactical atomic wallop comes in comparatively "little" packages. Yet many of these nuclear runts can carry up to a 100-kiloton load—which is five times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. These include the Army's 75-mile Sergeant (now replacing the aging Corporal), Lacrosse (for pinpoint blasting of pillboxes, bunkers, etc. less than 20 miles away), the 12-mile Honest John and the 10-mile Little John, the 1,200-yard Davy Crockett (smallest of all the nuclear weapons, it can be hauled about on a Jeep, is designed to blast such targets as tanks, gun emplacements, troop concentrations). The Navy has the 8-mile Asroc and the 11-mile Astor (both ship-launched torpedoes), the 65-mile Talos (a ship-launched, 1,850-m.p.h. antiaircraft and shore-bombardment weapon), the not-yet-operational 25-mile Subroc (a submarine-launched antisubmarine rocket), and the Navy and Air Force both use the 6-mile Bullpup (fired from airplanes at tactical ground targets).