Comment: History Lesson "Fact Sheet: U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe". Yes, this was a Cold War! My high school classmate served in Europe with mobile Army nuclear weapons.
"The rail garrison concept consisted of 25 missile trains, each carrying two Peacekeepers. Specially designed rail cars would transport the missiles and serve as launchers."
Illustration: Convair/General Dynamics
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https://www.airandspaceforces.com/house-appropriators-cut-back-sentinel-2025-mobile-basing/
Quote:
June 12, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak
The House Appropriations Committee, frustrated with soaring costs and schedule slips on the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, wants to slash the Air Force’s 2025 budget request for the program by $324 million. But lawmakers also want the service to leave program leaders in place longer and explore an old idea for the Sentinel: giving it some kind of mobility to complicate enemy targeting.
The committee, in its mark of the 2025 defense appropriations bill, would still direct some $3.4 billion for Sentinel in the coming fiscal year. And in accompanying report language, lawmakers noted their prior support for the program to the tune of more than $12.5 billion since 2020.
Ultimately, however, they want to cut the Air Force request by around 8.7 percent because of “insufficient justification and program uncertainty for execution needs in 2025,” which typically means it doesn’t think the Air Force will spend as much as it planned in that year.
Sentinel is currently undergoing a review, having substantially overrun its cost and schedule estimates. The Air Force estimates the Sentinel will cost 37 percent more than expected and is now running two years behind schedule.
Quote:
But the HAC also indicated it won’t simply rubber-stamp continued work of the Sentinel.
“The committee expects a full discussion on all statutorily required aspects of the Nunn-McCurdy review; specifically alternatives considered, including those recommended” in a 2023 report from the “Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.”
Quote:
Along those lines, lawmakers want another report from the Secretaries of Defense and the Air Force, along with the head of U.S. Strategic Command—within six months from passage of the defense bill—”on the most feasible recommendations highlighted in the Commission’s report related to interim capability to augment a potential capability gap caused by delays in Sentinel, to include the feasibility of fielding some portion of the future intercontinental ballistic missile force in a road-mobile configuration.”
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The Air Force extensively explored mobile options for the LGM-118 Peacekeeper missile (previously called the “M-X”), which was fielded in 1985 and removed from the inventory under the START treaty in 2005. Such options included moving the missiles around quickly and unpredictably from one silo to another; this shell game would force the Soviet Union to target all silos, not knowing which were occupied and which were empty. “Rail garrison” would have disguised the missiles as commercial freight on rail lines, able to stop, elevate and launch on short notice, depriving the Soviets of a certain target.
