History of National Missile Defense

The 1940s

1940 | 1950 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000

The 1940’s witnessed the advent of both the missile and nuclear ages.  Although still in an embryonic stage, missile strategies, tactics, and technologies began to take shape and evolve during WWII.  The Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets that rained down upon London during WWII represented the first use of missiles in strategic bombardment.  The V-series rockets were inaccurate and, from a military and tactical perspective, ineffectual.  Rather, Hitler valued them for their ability to frighten, terrorize, and psychologically demoralize the enemy, a characteristic similarly found in the unused ICBM arsenals of the Cold War and today.  The V-rockets’ very name revealed their true purpose; Vergeltungswaffe or “revenge weapon.”  Hitler conceived of the V-rocket as an “instrument of terror” in response to the devastating Allied firebombing campaigns of German cities.  

Although the more accurate heavy bombers remained the preferred delivery vehicle for strategic nuclear bombardment, defense scholars recognized that the development of missile forces, and the stunning destructive power of newly introduced nuclear weapons, had fundamentally transformed traditional concepts of strategy, warfighting, and security.  To this point, Hanson Baldwin remarked, “The first line of defense…will be the directors of ‘push-button’ war – the men who fling gigantic missiles across the seas.”[1] 

[1] Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), p. 24.

Timeline

1944-1945 – The first anti-ballistic missile concepts emerge as Allies develop a plan to use timed anti-aircraft barrages to defend London against incoming V-2 missiles. The plan was never implemented due to the damage which would result from unexploded shells falling back on the city.