Missile gap The missile gap was the term used in the United States for the perceived disparity between the number and power of the weapons in the U . S . S . R . and U . S . ballistic missile arsenal s during the Cold War . The gap only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force ( USAF ) figures . Even the CIA figures that were much lower and gave the US a clear advantage were far above the actual count . Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier , it was later demonstrated that the gap was known to be illusionary from the start , and was being used solely as a political tool , an example of policy by press release . Introduction . The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957 highlighted the technological achievements of the Soviets and sparked some worrying questions for the politicians and general public of the USA . Although US military and civilian agencies were well aware of Soviet satellite plans , as they were publicly announced as part of the International Geophysical Year , Eisenhower ' s announcements that the event was unsurprising found little support among a US public still struggling with McCarthyism . Political opponents seized on the event , and Eisenhower ' s ineffectual response , as further proof that the US was " fiddling as Rome burned . " John F . Kennedy stated " the nation was losing the satellite - missile race with the Soviet Union because of … complacent miscalculations , penny - pinching , budget cutbacks , incredibly confused mismanagement , and wasteful rivalries and jealousies . " Fact vs . fiction . The National Intelligence Estimate ( NIE ) 11 - 10 - 57 , issued in December 1957 , predicted that the Soviets would " probably have a first operational capability with up to 10 prototype ICBMs " at " some time during the period from mid - 1958 to mid - 1959 . " After Nikita Khrushchev claimed to be producing them " like sausages " , the numbers started to inflate . A similar report gathered only a few months later , NIE 11 - 5 - 58 released in August 1958 , concluded that the USSR had " the technical and industrial capability . . . to have an operational capability with 100 ICBMs " some time in 1960 , and perhaps 500 ICBMs " some time in 1961 , or at the latest in 1962 . " Beginning with the collection of photo - intelligence by U - 2 overflights of the Soviet Union in 1956 , the Eisenhower administration had increasing hard evidence that claims of any strategic weapons favoring the Soviet Union were false . Based on this evidence , the CIA placed the number of ICBMs closer to a dozen . Continued ( sporadic ) flights failed to turn up any evidence of additional missiles . Curtis LeMay argued that the large stocks of missiles were in the areas not photographed by the U - 2 ' s , and arguments broke out over the Soviet factory capability in an effort to estimate their production rate . In a widely syndicated article in 1959 , Joseph Alsop even went so far as to describe " classified intelligence " as placing the Soviet missile count as high as 1 , 500 by 1963 , while the US would have only 130 at that time . It is known today that even the CIA ' s estimate was too high ; the actual number of ICBMs , even including interim - use " prototypes " , was 4 . Playing for the public . In 1958 Kennedy was gearing up for his Senate re - election campaign and seized the issue . The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term " missile gap " in 14 August 1958 when he stated : " Our Nation could have afforded , and can afford now , the steps necessary to close the missile gap . " According to Robert McNamara , Kennedy was leaked the inflated USAF estimates by Senator Stuart Symington , the former Secretary of the Air Force . Unaware that the report was misleading , Kennedy used the numbers in the document and based some of his 1960 election campaign platform on the Republicans being " weak on defense " . The missile gap was a common theme . Eisenhower refused to publicly refute the claims , fearing that public disclosure of this evidence would jeopardize the secret U - 2 flights . Consequently , Eisenhower was frustrated by what he conclusively knew to be Kennedy ' s erroneous claims that the United States was behind the Soviet Union in number of missiles . But knowing the truth that America was substantially ahead in missiles , and confident that Americans would not believe that a professional soldier like him would ever leave America vulnerable to an enemy , Eisenhower chose not to publicly refute Kennedy . Kennedy and Lyndon B . Johnson were made aware of the differing estimates in a CIA briefing by the Director , Allen Dulles , in July 1960 . In January 1961 McNamara , the new secretary of defense , and Roswell Gilpatric , a new deputy secretary who strongly believed in the existence of a missile gap , personally examined photographs taken by Corona satellites . Although the Soviet R - 7 missile launchers were large and would be easy to spot in Corona photographs , they did not appear in any of them . In February McNamara stated that there was no evidence of a large - scale Soviet effort to build ICBMs . More satellite overflights continued to find no evidence , and by September 1961 a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the USSR possessed no more than 25 ICBMs and would not possess more in the near future . There was a missile gap , but it was greatly in the United States ' favour , as it had already deployed substantial numbers of several varieties of land - and sea - based missiles . The Corona ' s did more than simply disprove the gap , however . The R - 7 requires as much as 20 hours to be readied for launch , meaning that they could be easily attacked by bomber before they could strike . This demanded that they be based in secret locations to prevent a pre - emptive strike on them . As Corona could find these sites no matter where they were located , the Soviets decided not to build large numbers of R - 7s , in favour of more advanced missiles that could be launched more quickly . Kennedy was embarrassed by the whole issue . Kennedy had already admitted as much publicly , " The Listener " , 19 April 1962 noted " The passages on the ' missile gap ' are a little dated , since Mr Kennedy has now told us that it scarcely ever existed . " Effects . Later evidence has emerged that one consequence of Kennedy pushing the false idea that America was behind the Soviets in a missile gap was that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and senior Soviet military figures began to believe that Kennedy was a dangerous extremist who , with the American military , was seeking to plant the idea of a Soviet first - strike capability to justify a pre - emptive American attack . This belief about Kennedy as a militarist was reinforced in Soviet minds by the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and led to the Soviets placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 . ( Kennedy was informed the missile gap was " a fiction " in January 1961 . ) Warnings and calls to address imbalances between the fighting capabilities of two forces were not new , as a " bomber gap " had exercised political concerns a few years previously . What was different about the missile gap was the fear that a distant country could strike without warning from far away with little damage to themselves . Concerns about missile gaps and similar fears , such as nuclear proliferation , continue . Popular culture . The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film " " in which a Doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they had read in " The New York Times " that the U . S . was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a " Doomsday Gap " . As the weapon is set up to go off automatically if the USSR is attacked , which is occurring as the movie progresses , the president is informed that all life on the surface will be killed off for a period of years . The only hope for survival is to select important people and place them deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation clears . The generals then worry about a potential " mine shaft gap " between the US and Soviets . In reference to the alleged " missile gap " itself , General Turgidson mentions off - hand at one point that the United States actually has a five to one rate of missile superiority against the Soviet Union . The Russian ambassador himself also explains that one of the major reasons that the Soviets began work on the doomsday machine is that , ultimately , they realized that they simply could never match the rate of American military production ( let alone outproduce American missile construction ) . The doomsday machine only cost a small fraction of what they normally spent on defense in a single year . " Missile Gap " is also the title of a science fiction book by Charles Stross , which depicts an alternate resolution to the missile gap situation and subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis . 1970s . A second claim of a missile gap appeared in 1974 . Albert Wohlstetter , a professor at the University of Chicago , accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment , in his 1974 foreign policy article entitled " Is There a Strategic Arms Race ? " Wohlstetter concluded that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing a perceived missile gap . Many conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA ' s annual assessment of the Soviet threat . This led to an exercise in competitive analysis , with a group called Team B being created with the production of a highly controversial report . According to then - Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by 1976 the USA had a 6 - to - 1 advantage in the number of nuclear warheads over the Soviet Union .