ABSTRACT
One of the most important military inventions in recent years is Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV). This chapter discusses that several independent military requirements led to several different lines of technological developments. As time went on, ideas and personnel were interchanged among the various programmes, resulting in a very complex web of technological developments and inventions. This web could have been cut in a large number of places, and the ultimate result would have remained about the same: MIRVs on ICBMs at the beginning of the 1970s. In the early sixties, a number of events, developments, and situations brought about the requirements for and the development of the Poseidon MIRV. The most important of these were: the completion of the Polaris A-3 development programme; changing ideas about ABM design and possibilities, particularly changes in American perceptions about Soviet ABM; and further developments in strategic thinking, as exemplified by Secretary McNamara’s ‘Counter-force’ speech.
