Intercontinental ballistic missile
The liquid-fueled V-2, designed by Wernher von Braun and his team, was then widely used by Nazi Germany from mid-1944 until March 1945 to bomb British and Belgian cities, particularly Antwerp and London.
Under Projekt Amerika, von Braun's team developed the A9/10 ICBM, intended for use in bombing New York and other American cities.
After the war, the US executed Operation Paperclip, which took von Braun and hundreds of other leading Nazi scientists to the United States to develop IRBMs, ICBMs, and launchers for the US Army.
This technology was predicted by US General of the Army Hap Arnold, who wrote in 1943: Someday, not too distant, there can come streaking out of somewhere – we won't be able to hear it, it will come so fast – some kind of gadget with an explosive so powerful that one projectile will be able to wipe out completely this city of Washington.
[2][3]After World War II, the Americans and the Soviets started rocket research programs based on the V-2 and other German wartime designs.
Things changed in 1953 with the Soviet testing of their first thermonuclear weapon, but it was not until 1954 that the Atlas missile program was given the highest national priority.
A heavily modernized version of the R-7 is still used as the launch vehicle for the Soviet/Russian Soyuz spacecraft, marking more than 60 years of operational history of Sergei Korolyov's original rocket design.
served as a highly visible means of demonstrating confidence in reliability, with successes translating directly to national defense implications.
SALT II was never ratified by the US Senate, but its terms were honored by both sides until 1986, when the Reagan administration "withdrew" after it had accused the Soviets of violating the pact.
China developed a minimal independent nuclear deterrent entering its own cold war after an ideological split with the Soviet Union beginning in the early 1960s.
[9] China also deployed the JL-1 Medium-range ballistic missile with a reach of 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi) aboard the ultimately unsuccessful Type 092 submarine.
[10] In 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in the START I treaty to reduce their deployed ICBMs and attributed warheads.
Israel is believed to have deployed a road mobile nuclear ICBM, the Jericho III, which entered service in 2008; an upgraded version is in development.
[11][12] India successfully test fired Agni V, with a strike range of more than 5,000 km (3,100 mi) on 19 April 2012, claiming entry into the ICBM club.
[13] The missile's actual range is speculated by foreign researchers to be up to 8,000 km (5,000 mi) with India having downplayed its capabilities to avoid causing concern to other countries.
In early July 2017, North Korea claimed for the first time to have tested successfully an ICBM capable of carrying a large thermonuclear warhead.
[25] In July 2023, North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile that landed short of Japanese waters.
The Alaska-based United States national missile defense system attained initial operational capability in 2004.
[31] ICBMs can be deployed from multiple platforms: The last three kinds are mobile and therefore hard to detect prior to a missile launch.
[citation needed] Although the USSR/Russia preferred ICBM designs that use hypergolic liquid fuels, which can be stored at room temperature for more than a few years.
Once the booster falls away, the remaining "bus" releases several warheads, each of which continues on its own unpowered ballistic trajectory, much like an artillery shell or cannonball.
The warhead is encased in a cone-shaped reentry vehicle and is difficult to detect in this phase of flight as there is no rocket exhaust or other emissions to mark its position to defenders.
The high speeds of the warheads make them difficult to intercept and allow for little warning, striking targets many thousands of kilometers away from the launch site (and due to the possible locations of the submarines: anywhere in the world) within approximately 30 minutes.
authorities say that missiles also release aluminized balloons, electronic noisemakers, and other decoys intended to confuse interception devices and radars.
[citation needed] As the nuclear warhead reenters the Earth's atmosphere, its high speed causes compression of the air, leading to a dramatic rise in temperature which would destroy it, if it were not shielded in some way.
In one design, warhead components are contained within an aluminium honeycomb substructure, sheathed in a pyrolytic carbon-epoxy synthetic resin composite material heat shield.
It was decommissioned in compliance with arms control agreements, which address the maximum range of ICBMs and prohibit orbital or fractional-orbital weapons.
[citation needed] Using that approach, it is theorized, avoids the American missile defense batteries in California and Alaska.
On 12 March 2024 India announced that it had joined a very limited group of countries, which are capable of firing multiple warheads on a single ICBM.
On 19 April 2012, India successfully test fired its first Agni-V, a three-stage solid fueled missile, with a strike range of more than 7,500 km (4,700 mi).
