[1] The committee presented to the United States Air Force (USAF) their findings of the technical feasibility to develop weapons (bombs) and their delivery systems (intercontinental range ballistic missiles) that were completely invulnerable to "surprise" attack.

The Titan I would be fully independent in controlled flight from launch to the ballistic release of the warhead, which would descend to its target by the combination of gravity and air resistance alone.

In May 1955 the Air Materiel Command invited contractors to submit proposals and bids for the two stage Titan I ICBM, formally beginning the program.

[3] Martin was selected as the contractor due to its proposed organization[4] and method of igniting a liquid fueled engine at high altitude.

As a result of the ensuing recommendations, the USAF established the Western Development Division and Brigadier General Bernard Schriever was detailed to command it.

The Air Force was to act as "prime contractor," the Ramo-Woolridge Corporation was contracted to provide systems engineering and technical direction of all ballistic missiles.

[12][13] The Titan, proposed as a fallback in case the Atlas failed, was by December 1956 accepted by some as a "principal ingredient of the national ballistic missile force.

Titan I was the first program to have a new missile succeed on the initial attempt, which left launch crews unprepared for the series of failures that followed.

Missile B-4 exploded from a LOX pump failure during a static firing at Martin's Denver test stand in May and assorted other mishaps occurred in the following two months.

Postflight investigation found that the hold-down bolts released prematurely, causing B-5 to lift before full thrust rise had been achieved.

Missiles continued to be damaged through careless personnel mistakes and General Osmond Ritland sent Martin an angry letter calling their handling of the Titan program "inexcusable."

The piece of plumbing responsible for the missile failure was retrieved—it had popped out of its sleeve resulting in loss of first stage hydraulic pressure.

[26] The next launch at the end of the month (Missile J-4) suffered premature first stage shutdown and landed far short of its planned impact point.

[25] The string of failures during 1959–60 led to complaints from the Air Force that Martin–Marietta weren't taking the Titan project seriously (since it was just a backup to the primary Atlas ICBM program) and displayed an indifferent, careless attitude that resulted in easily avoidable failure modes such as Missile C-3's range safety command destruct system relays being placed in a vibration-prone area.

[22][27] In December, Missile V-2 was undergoing a flight readiness test in a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The added stress of this operation apparently resulted in a failure of either the gas generator or turbopump, as the vernier solo phase ended prematurely.

The only total failure in this last stretch of flights was when Missile V-4 (1 May 1963) suffered a stuck gas generator valve and loss of engine thrust at liftoff.

[34] After a brief period as an operational ICBM, it was retired from service in 1965 when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara made the decision to phase out all first generation cryogenically fueled missiles in favor of newer hypergolic and solid-fueled models.

[45] Martin, in part, was selected as the contractor because it had "recognized the 'magnitude of the altitude start problem' for the second stage and had a good suggestion for solving it.

George P. Sutton wrote "Aerojet's most successful set of large LPRE was that for the booster and sustainer stages of the versions of the Titan vehicle".

It used radar tracking of the missile to compute Titan flight data to the necessary burn-out point to start a ballistic trajectory toward the target.

[51][52] The Athena computer used a Harvard architecture design with separate data and instruction memories by Seymour Cray at Sperry Rand Corporation and cost about $1,800,000.

[63] The decision was made to deploy Titan squadrons in a "hardened" 3 X 3 (three sites with one control center and three silos each) to reduce the number of guidance systems required.

[64] Although Titan I's two stages gave it true intercontinental range and foreshadowed future multistage rockets, its propellants were dangerous and hard to handle.

Even though Titan complexes were designed to withstand nearby nuclear blasts antenna and missile extended for launch and guidance were quite susceptible to even a relatively distant miss.

It did not make economic sense to refurbish them as SM-65 Atlas missiles with similar payload capacities had already been converted to satellite launchers.

The remaining 50 missiles were scrapped at Mira Loma AFS near San Bernardino, CA; the last was broken up in 1972, in accordance with the SALT-I Treaty of 1 February 1972.

[82] By November 1965 the Air Force Logistics Command had determined that the cost of modifying the widely dispersed sites to support other ballistic missiles was prohibitive, and attempts were made to find new uses.

The chosen method was the Service and Salvage contract, which required the contractor to remove the equipment the government wanted before proceeding with scrapping.

The MIRACL Near Infrared Laser, at White Sands Missile Range, NM was fired at a stationary Titan I second stage that was fixed to the ground.