page_title: Nike-X
section_title: Continued pressure to deploy
hierarchical_section_title: Nike-X / History / Continued pressure to deploy
caption_attribution_description: English: Official portrait of former United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
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 basic outlines of these various studies were becoming clear by 1966. The heavy defense from the original Nike-X proposals would cost about $40 billion ($315 billion in 2020) and offer limited protection and damage prevention in an all-out attack, but would be expected to blunt or completely defeat any smaller attack. The thin defense of Nth Country would be much less expensive, around $5 billion ($39 billion in 2020), but would only have any effect at all under certain limited scenarios. Finally, the Hardsite concepts would cost about the same as the thin defense, and provide some protection against a certain class of counterforce attacks.
  None of these concepts appeared to be worth deploying, but there was considerable pressure from Congressional groups dominated by hawks who continued to force development of the ABM even when McNamara and President Johnson had not asked for it. The debate spilled over into the public and led to comments about an "ABM gap", especially by Republican Governor George W. Romney. The Air Force continued their opposition to the ABM concept, having previously criticized their earlier efforts in the press, but the construction of the A-35 ABM systems around Tallinn and Moscow overrode their opposition. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) used the Soviet ABM as an argument for deployment, having previously had no strong opinion on the matter.
  McNamara attempted to short-circuit deployment in early 1966 by stating that the only program that had any reasonable cost-effectiveness was the thin defense against the Chinese, and then noted there was no rush to build such a system as it would be some time before they had an ICBM. Overruling him, Congress provided $167.9 million ($1 billion in 2020) for immediate production of the original Nike-X concept. McNamara and Johnson met on the issue on 3 November 1966, and McNamara once again convinced Johnson that the system could not justify the cost of deployment. McNamara headed off the expected counterattack from Romney by calling a press conference on the topic of Soviet ABMs and stating that the new Minuteman III and Poseidon SLBM would ensure the Soviet system would be overwhelmed.
  Another meeting on the issue was called on 6 December 1966, attended by Johnson, McNamara, the deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, Walt Rostow of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Joint Chiefs. Rostow took the side of the JCS and it appeared that development would start. However, McNamara once again outlined the problems and stated that the simplest way to close the ABM gap was to simply build more ICBMs, rendering the Soviet system impotent and a great waste of money. He then proposed that the money sidelined by Congress for deployment be used for initial deployment studies while the US attempted to negotiate an arms limitation treaty. Johnson agreed with this compromise, and ordered Secretary of State Dean Rusk to open negotiations with the Soviets.
caption: Robert McNamara had resisted pressure to deploy Zeus knowing it would have little real-world effect, and faced the same problem with Nike-X four years later.
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