Everything about The Missile Gap totally explained
The
missile gap was the term used in the United States for the perceived disparity between the number and power of the weapons in the
U.S.S.R. and
U.S. ballistic missile arsenals during the
Cold War. The gap only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the
Gaither Committee in 1957 and
United States Air Force (USAF) in the early 1960's, the
CIA provided figures that were much lower and gave the US a clear advantage. Like the
bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it's believed that the "gap" was known to be illusionary from the start, and was being used solely as a political tool, another example of
policy by press release.
Introduction
The Soviet launch of
Sputnik 1 on the
4 October,
1957 highlighted the technological achievements of the Soviets and sparked some worrying questions for the politicians and general public of the USA.
John F. Kennedy stated "the nation was losing the satellite-missile race with the Soviet Union because of ... complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies." The Soviet lead was due mostly to the US having suitably forward basing in Europe and Turkey, allowing them to concentrate on much shorter-range, smaller IRBMs. The Soviets, lacking suitable overseas bases, were forced to move directly to the much larger and technically daunting ICBM, which made them more suitable for space launches.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 11-10-57, issued in December 1957, predicted that the Soviets would "probably have a first operational capability with up to 10 prototype ICBMs" at "some time during the period from mid-1958 to mid-1959." After Khrushchev claimed to be producing them "like sausages", the numbers started to inflate. A similar report gathered only a few months later, NIE 11-5-58 released in August 1958, concluded that the USSR had "the technical and industrial capability ... to have an operational capability with 100 ICBMs" some time in 1960, and perhaps 500 ICBMs "some time in 1961, or at the latest in 1962."
Effects
Later evidence has emerged that one consequence of Kennedy pushing the false idea that America was behind the Soviets in a missile gap was that Soviet premier
Nikita Kruschev and senior Soviet military figures began to believe that Kennedy was a dangerous extremist who, with the American military, was seeking to plant the idea of a Soviet first-strike capability to justify a pre-emptive American attack. This belief about Kennedy as a
militarist was reinforced in Soviet minds by the
Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and led to the Soviets
placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962.
Warnings and calls to address imbalances between the fighting capabilities of two forces were not new, a "bomber gap" had exercised political concerns a few years previously. What was different about the missile gap was the fear that a distant country could strike without warning from far away with little damage to themselves. Concerns about missile gaps and similar fears, such as
nuclear proliferation, continue, with most recently the aggressive missile testing between
India and
Pakistan.
Popular culture
The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film in which a
Doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they'd read in
The New York Times that the U.S. was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a "Doomsday Gap". Also in the movie, the President of the United States is warned by his generals against allowing a "mine shaft gap" to develop when the idea of moving people of the world into safety in mine shafts is being decided upon.
Missile Gap is also the title of the
science fiction book by
Charles Stross, which depict
alternate resolution to the missile gap situation and subsequent
Cuban Missile Crisis.
1970s
A second claim of a missile gap appeared in
1974.
Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the
University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, in his 1974
foreign policy article entitled "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" Wohlstetter concluded that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing a perceived
missile gap. Many
conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat.
This led to an exercise in competitive analysis, with a group called
Team B being created with the production of a highly controversial report.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Missile Gap'.
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