Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
It was McNamara and the Kennedy amdinistration that accelerated the arms race with first massive boost of SLBM and later ICBM. This was to "out-threat" the Soviets on the nuclear terrain as well as their numerical tank superiority in Europe. The Soviets reacted to that boost in American nukes with for example the SS-20. To which the US then reacted with the Pershing-II and nuclear Cruise Missiles. None of the two sides is free of guilt in having helped the nuclear arms race. But I tend to think that it was the US really igniting the nuclear arms race.
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The US started
development on Polaris one year before the 1st Zulu class SSB was
fielded. Polaris and their USN SSBNs was deployed in 1960 3 years
after the Soviets had a SLBM and the same year the Soviets deployed their 1st SSBN.
Actually the Soviet had the initial lead in SLBM development, but we caught up and surpassed them with in three years.