21 August 1957
The R-7 makes the type real.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale75
Intensity35
Duration62
Tech shift96
Political impact85
Cultural memory72
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
Did ICBMs come from the V-2?
Teams, drawings, and the idea of a ballistic rocket did. Range, warhead, and guidance of the 1957-62 types were a different industrial generation. Mittelbau-Dora slave labour is part of the V-2 ledger.
What was the Cuban Missile Crisis to this type?
October 1962 was about medium-range missiles in Cuba and a US blockade, with ICBM and bomber forces on high alert in the background. It is a political crisis file, not a firing drill.
What did SALT and START do?
They capped and later reduced declared launchers and warheads, with verification. SALT I is 1972; START I is 1991; New START is 2010. Details belong to the treaty texts, not to a targeting lesson.
How does the submarine page relate?
SSBNs carry SLBMs -- the sea leg of the same deterrent idea. See that page for boats; this page for land missiles and the shared treaty story.
How does Korea fit?
The ROK was not a 1950s ICBM operator. The peninsula sits in later extended-deterrence and regional missile politics -- described as history, not as a live threat map.
The "campaigns" of this type were tests, alerts, and treaty rounds -- Cuba, SALT, INF -- dated political sequences.
There is no ICBM land battle to diagram as a how-to.
Principles
October 1962
Alert without launch -- the political peak.
SALT I, 1972
Counting replaces an open race, on paper.
Triad
Land ICBM, bomber, and SLBM as three legs -- a dated US doctrine word. Read as a 1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45) concept in From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to silos, submarines, and treaty tables.
SALT / START
The numbered treaty families that made the type a diplomatic object. Not a present instruction.
Steps
- V-2 combat use
1944-09-08: Paris and then London -- a city-attack rocket, not yet intercontinental.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
- Team scramble
1945: US, USSR, and Britain take people and hardware from the German programme.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
- R-7 ICBM flight
1957-08-21: First intercontinental ballistic missile flight.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
- Sputnik
1957-10-04: The same family of rocket as a political shock in orbit.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
- Atlas and Minuteman
1959-62: US land types enter service; silo fields begin.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
- Polaris at sea
1960: The SLBM cousin is operational.
A dated type-history beat of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). No employment, arming, or build steps.
Diagrams
From V-2 combat use (1944-09-08) through Polaris at sea (1960) to New START (2010-21) in From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to silos, submarines, and treaty tables. One sequence, not a staff overlay.
Wernher von Braun (Engineer) and Sergei Korolev (Chief designer) sit at the centre of most English accounts; Robert McNamara and Stanislav Petrov correct the usual photograph.
Limits
Source limits
Figures such as "not a war -- a system; human cost sits in the nuclear-age crises and the wars that funded the type" stay in ranges because records are incomplete, political, or still closed. Did ICBMs come from the V-2? is answered as a band.
No how-to
Intercontinental ballistic missile is systems history and employment as a past fact. This page does not teach manufacturing, arming, aiming, or attack procedures.
Memory bias
English-language fame of Intercontinental ballistic missile and local memory in From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to silos, submarines, and treaty tables are not the same map. Stanislav Petrov is often the correction the first photograph drops.
Able Archer 1983 is a scare in the public file, not a template for an exercise you should run.
Verification trains and inspector hotels were the unglamorous operational art.