The Governors of Maryland and Education the Politics of Peacekeeper Rail Garrison

Abstract

In 1985, the Congress capped at 50 the number of Peacekeeper ICBMs that could be deployed in vulnerable Minuteman silos, thereby sending the Reagan administration and the Air Force in search of another basing mode so that 100 of the ton-warhead missiles could be deployed as recommended by the Scowcroft Commission. The result was Peacekeeper rail garrison--a strategic nuclear weapon system that combined the Peacekeeper missile with railroad trains garrisoned at military installations. The missile trains would have dispersed across the nation's railways only during times of 'national need like the Cuban Missile Crisis. This case study examines the politics of that weapon system in order to contribute to the literature regarding weapons acquisition, test a number of propositions suggested by the bureaucratic politics model, and assess the influence of nonbureaucratic forces and actors on Peacekeeper rail garrison's fortunes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1992
Accession Number
ADA252518

Entities

People

  • Alan R. Van Tassel

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Congress
  • Foreign Relations
  • Governments
  • Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
  • International Relations
  • Law
  • Military Science
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Political Science
  • Public Administration
  • Public Policy
  • Sociopolitics
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Treaties

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Missile Defense Systems.
  • Strategic Security Studies