Intercontinental+Ballistic+Missile

=** Intercontinental Ballistic Missile **=

By Cameron J.S Stevens Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are missiles with a range that of or greater than 5,500 km's. These missiles are usually and quite typically designed to carry nuclear warheads. ICBMs pose a serious problem for they enable a country to move out of a regional field of destruction and towards a potential for global impact. Regardless of who started a conflict, a country may involve the entire world simply by threatening to spread the war with an ICBM. The first ballistic missile was developed during WWII by Germany. Called the V-2 this was the world's first launch of a ballistic missile and the first rocket ever to go into the fringes of space. With this invention came the birth of a new weapons division in many countries including the United States of America. Weapon development was turning from the defensive to the offensive quite rapidly. If a country was able to develop a missile that could travel to other continents, they would be a ble to strike a deafening blow without the sacrifice of infantry. The first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was not conceived until 1946.

Flight Phases
These intercontinental ballistic missiles consist of propellant-filled stages, a guidance system, and a payload (warheads). Once launched, the missile passes through three phases of flight: boost, ballistic, and reentry. If a missile has more than one stage there may be more than one boost phase interspersed with several ballistic (coasting) phases where the missile follows its trajectory. Keep with me here. The missile can only be guided during boost phase with inertial or stellar or both. Inertial guidance uses onboard computer driven gyroscopes to determine the missile's position and compares this to the targeting information fed into the computer before launch. Stellar guidance uses an optical tracking system to triangulate star positions and update targeting information when it is out of the earth's atmosphere. Targeting cannot be changed after launch, nor can strategic missiles be recalled or destroyed in flight. Almost there you're doing great. These guidance systems produce accuracies measured in hundreds of feet at ranges of 7,000 miles. Payloads of strategic missiles consist of nuclear warheads which cannot arm themselves until the onboard computer confirms that all three phases of flight have been completed. This ensures for no failure of the delivery of the payload. ICBMs can be either launched from land based silos or submarines.

Cold War
The Cold War was the state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the US-led Western powers from 1945 to 1990. This war was more figuratively speaking an arms race between the western democracies and the eastern communist countries. ICBM's were one of the main "weapons" used in the Cold War. These missiles, however, were not used for fighting but more for intimidation. The United States had a land based silo launch pad in Turkey that was capable of launching missiles at Russia, if the circumstance permitted it. This frightened the Soviets who then decided to build a missile launch pad in Cuba. This event is famously known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. This crisis not only shows how powerful ICBM's really are to military supremacy but also to the safety of the world.

Sources: History Twelve Student Workbook by Jerry Falk ICBM: The Making of the Weapon that Changed the World by G Harry Stine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile media type="youtube" key="Io-9edOgs0o" height="315" width="420" align="right"