World War I (part 2)

The initial stages of the war Initial strategies The Schlieffen Plan Years before 1914, successive chiefs of the German general staff had been foreseeing Germany's having to fight a war on two fronts at the same time, against Russia in the east and France in the west, whose combined strength was numerically superior to the Central Powers'. The elder Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff from 1858 to 1888, decided that Germany should stay at first on the defensive in the west and deal a crippling blow to Russia's advanced forces before turning to counterattack the French advance. His immediate successor, Alfred von Waldersee, also believed in staying on the defensive in the west. Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, who served as...

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War (part 3)

The control of war The international environment within which states and the people within them operate is regarded by many theorists as the major factor determining the occurrence and nature of wars. War remains possible as long as individual states seek to ensure self-preservation and promote their individual interests and—in the absence of a reliable international agency to control the actions of other states—rely on their own efforts. It is no accident that reforms of the international system figure prominently in many prescriptions for the prevention of war. Whereas the reform of human propensities or of the state is bound to be a long drawn-out affair if it is at all possible, relatively straightforward partial reforms of the international...

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War (part 2)

The Causes of War Contemporary theories of the causes of war divide roughly into two major schools. One attributes war to certain innate biological and psychological factors or drives, the other attributes it to certain social relations and institutions. Both schools include optimists and pessimists concerning the preventability of war. Biological theories Theories centring upon man's innate drives are developed by ethologists, who draw analogies from animal behaviour, and also by psychologists and psychoanalysts. Ethology Ethologists start with the persuasive argument that study of animal warfare may contribute toward an understanding of war as employed by man. The behaviour of monkeys and apes in captivity and the behaviour of young...

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Matador And Other Programs

The third postwar U.S. cruise missile effort was the Matador, a ground-launched, subsonic missile designed to carry a 3,000-pound warhead to a range of more than 600 miles. In its early development, Matador's radio-controlled guidance, which was limited essentially to the line of sight between the ground controller and the missile, covered less than the missile's potential range. However, in 1954 an automatic terrain recognition and guidance (Atran) system was added (and the missile system was subsequently designated Mace). Atran, which used radar map-matching for both en-route and terminal guidance, represented a major breakthrough in accuracy, a problem long associated with cruise missiles. The low availability of radar maps, especially of...

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Rocket And Missile System3

Ballistic missile defense  Although ballistic missiles followed a predictable flight path, defense against them was long thought to be technically impossible because their RVs were small and traveled at great speeds. Nevertheless, in the late 1960s the United States and Soviet Union pursued layered antiballistic missile (ABM) systems that combined a high-altitude interceptor missile (the U.S. Spartan and Soviet Galosh) with a terminal-phase interceptor (the U.S. Sprint and Soviet Gazelle). All systems were nuclear-armed. Such systems were subsequently limited by the Treaty on Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems of 1972, under a protocol in which each side was allowed one ABM location with 100 interceptor missiles each. The Soviet system,...

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Rocket And Missile System2

Multiple warheads By the early 1970s, several technologies were maturing that would produce a new wave of ICBMs. First, thermonuclear warheads, much lighter than the earlier atomic devices, had been incorporated into ICBMs by 1970. Second, the ability to launch larger throw weights, achieved especially by the Soviets, allowed designers to contemplate adding multiple warheads to each ballistic missile. Finally, improved and much lighter electronics translated into more accurate guidance. The first steps toward incorporating these technologies came with multiple warheads, or multiple reentry vehicles (MRVs), and the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). The Soviets introduced both of these capabilities with the SS-9 Scarp, the first...

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Rocket And Missile System

From liquid to solid fuel This first generation of missiles was typified by its liquid fuel, which required both a propellant and an oxidizer for ignition as well as a complex (and heavy) system of pumps. The early liquid fuels were quite dangerous, difficult to store, and time-consuming to load. For example, Atlas and Titan used so-called cryogenic (Hypercold) fuels that had to be stored and handled at very low temperatures (−422° F [−252° C] for liquid hydrogen). These propellants had to be stored outside the rocket and pumped aboard just before launch, consuming more than an hour.As each superpower produced, or was thought to produce, more ICBMs, military commanders became concerned about the relatively slow reaction times of their own...

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