Dense Pack Dense Pack is a strategy for basing intercontinental ballistic missiles , or ICBMs , for the purpose of maximizing their survivability in case of a surprise nuclear first - strike on their silos conducted by a hostile foreign power . The strategy was developed under the Reagan administration as a means of safeguarding America ' s inventory of MX missile s during the final decade of the Cold War . The U . S . commitments under the Anti - Ballistic Missile ( ABM ) Treaty prevented the development and staging of adequate ABM installations around its nuclear missile silos . Therefore , it was decided that new and unconventional strategies for protecting these military assets from a sneak - attack had to be developed . Dense Pack was merely one of them . Other ICBM basing strategies considered during this time were scatterpack , deep basing , rail - mobile , alert ground dispersal , and reverse - inclination basing . According to the Dense Pack strategy , a series of ten to twelve hardened silos would be grouped closely together in a line . This line of silos would generally run north - to - south , as the primary flight path for Soviet inbound nuclear missiles would be expected to come from the north over the North Pole . The rationale for this thinking went like this : As the first inbound warhead detonates over its target silo , it would throw a large cloud of debris over the entire missile field . Every other warhead targeted on that missile field would have to travel through that debris cloud to reach its target , and it was theorized that the act of traveling through that debris cloud would " trash " the warhead before it could detonate . Every successful explosion over the missile field would throw more debris up into the air , increasing the chances that each successive warhead would be destroyed before it could trigger . Due to the hardened nature of the missile silos , the military believed that the silos could be destroyed only by a direct hit from a nuclear warhead ; warhead air bursts were believed to be ineffective to the task of penetrating the armored silos , as were any " near - miss " ground bursts that might occur from an inaccurate ballistic trajectory . The proposed Dense Pack initiative met with strong criticism in the media and in the government , and the idea was never implemented . Detractors of the Dense Pack strategy pointed out a number of flaws . First , the advent of Multiple Independently - targetable Reentry Vehicles , or MIRV , negated the concept due to their ability to conduct a time - on - target barrage . Simply put , a single missile could deliver a volley of three to twelve warheads to the target where they could each detonate at approximately the same time , thus dispensing with the disruptive debris cloud that Dense Pack relies upon for protection . Secondly , there were widespread doubts at the time that the hardened nature of the armored missile silos were as robust as the military claimed , leading to worries that a single warhead could in fact destroy an entire Dense Pack missile field . Finally , Dense Pack was perceived by some to be a provocative , if not overtly hostile measure at a time when nuclear warfare seemed to be a distinct possibility .