> LGM-118 Peacekeeper > MIRV ICMB produced and deployed by the United States from 1985 to 2005. The missile could carry up to twelve Mark 21 reentry vehicles (

> LGM-118 Peacekeeper > MIRV ICMB produced and deployed by the United States from 1985 to 2005. The missile could carry up to twelve Mark 21 reentry vehicles (although treaties limited its actual payload to 10), each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead. Initial plans called for building and deploying 100 MX ICBMs, but budgetary concerns limited the final procurement; only 50 entered service. Disarmament treaties signed after the Peacekeeper's development led to its withdrawal from service in 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper So, that's what we had been doing for a couple decades. The most crazy ass nuclear cluster bomb. Now we're still trying to replace the LGM-30 Minutemen ICBMs we have had since 1962: Northrop Grumman's LGM-35 Sentinel. And it's taking forever & costing an unbelievable sum ($200B, $210M/missile including ground systems, although they're back to the drawing board to try to get costs down). https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/07/08/pentagon-keeps-commitment-to-sentinel-nuclear-missile-as-costs-balloon/ https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/07/08/pentagon-keeps-co... This is after Minuteman was ~$7m/missile, a super-cheap cast-solid-fuel design, with McNamera shutting down efforts on more expensive & fancy Atlas and Titan missiles. Weighing 1/9th the weight of the monstrous Soviet R7. One persistent dude (Hall) convinced everyone we didn't need fancy we needed a survivable competent second strike capable missile swarm. Minuteman is wild. There are some great submissions on it; the communication network submission from three days ago was fabulous & shows very much a Paul Baram of RAND/Arpanet style network resiliency idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41019604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41019604 Also of note, Minuteman's original D-17B computer is also quite the thing. There are some great submissions on it. It uses an early hard-disk like thing as working memory. It uses diode-resistor logic (DRL) since diode-transistor-logic (DTL) wasn't reliable enough yet. Incredibly stunningly built guidance computer that was core to a reliable totally cutting edge inertial guidance system. Anyhow yeah, we built them decommissioned utterly crazy multi-warhead missiles. And are trying and having trouble going back and building a new single warhead ICBM.