page_title: Nike-X
section_title: Nike-X
hierarchical_section_title: Nike-X / History / Nike-X
caption_attribution_description: English: Cancellation of the Nike Zeus program in 1963 led to the formation of the Nike-X project office in February 1964, along with this new project emblem.
context_page_description: Nike-X was an anti-ballistic missile system designed in the 1960s by the United States Army to protect major cities in the United States from attacks by the Soviet Union's intercontinental ballistic missile fleet during the Cold War. The X in the name referred to its experimental basis and was supposed to be replaced by a more appropriate name when the system was put into production. This never came to pass; in 1967 the Nike-X program was canceled and replaced by a much lighter defense system known as Sentinel.
  The Nike-X system was developed in response to limitations of the earlier Nike Zeus system. Zeus' radars could only track single targets, and it was calculated that a salvo of only four ICBMs would have a 90% chance of hitting a Zeus base. The attacker could also use radar reflectors or high-altitude nuclear explosions to obscure the warheads until they were too close to attack, making a single-warhead attack highly likely to succeed. Zeus would have been useful in the late 1950s when the Soviets had only a few dozen missiles, but would be of little use by the early 1960s when it was believed they would have hundreds.
context_section_description: The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, today known as DARPA) was formed in 1958 by President Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, in reaction to Soviet rocketry advances. US efforts had suffered from massive duplication of effort between the Army, Air Force, and Navy, and seemed to be accomplishing little in comparison to the Soviets. ARPA was initially handed the mission of overseeing all of these efforts. As the problems with Zeus became clear, McElroy also asked ARPA to consider the antimissile problem and come up with other solutions. The resulting Project Defender was extremely broad in scope, considering everything from minor Zeus system upgrades to far-out concepts like antigravity and the recently invented laser.
  Meanwhile, one improvement to Zeus was already being studied: a new phased-array radar replacing Zeus' mechanical ones would greatly increase the number of targets and interceptors that a single site could handle. Much more powerful computers were needed to match this performance. Additionally, the antennas were mounted directly in concrete and would have increased blast resistance. Initial studies at Bell Labs started in 1960 on what was then known as the Zeus Multi-function Array Radar, or ZMAR. In June 1961, Western Electric and Sylvania were selected to build a prototype, with Sperry Rand Univac providing the control computer.
  By late 1962 a decision on whether or not to deploy Zeus was looming. Bell began considering a replacement for the Zeus missile that would operate at much shorter ranges, and in October sent out study contracts to three contractors to be returned in February. Even before these were returned, in January 1963 McNamara announced that the construction funds allocated for Zeus would not be released, and the funding would instead be used for development of a new system using the latest technologies. The name Nike-X was apparently an ad hoc suggestion by Jack Ruina, the director of ARPA, who was tasked with presenting the options to the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). With the ending of Zeus, the ZMAR radar effort was renamed MAR, and plans for an even more powerful version, MAR-II, became the central part of the Nike-X concept.
caption: The Nike-X Project Office took over from Nike Zeus in 1964. The office's emblem features the statue of Nike of Samothrace, the Greek goddess of victory.
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