Yes. It’s time (long past time, IMO) to move them from the Air Force to the Army. They’re really just very long-range artillery. Get the USAF out of both the missile and space business and get it to focus on aviation.
36 thoughts on “ICBMs”
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Sounds totally sensible, so unlikely to happen.
If it does happen it is likely to be only after an uphill fight. But Space Force happened. And that wasn’t exactly the USAF’s favorite idea either.
True and unfortunate
If it were to pass to the army national command structures would need to change. NORAD would need to reintegrate with Army command structures. Rather than focus solely on the ICBM force it would be a good time to review our command structures both for land space and air. Perhaps threat assessment and strategic battle operations might be re-centered around the Space Force
which could go far beyond CONUS “defense”. IMO giving them something meaningful to do.
The advent of Golden Dome means “threat assessment and strategic battle operations” are already destined to be in Space Force’s hands. And quite soon.
NORAD is about space based detection which is a Space Force mission. NORAD doesn’t launch anything.
Not sure the average soldier is someone I’d want handling the ICBM mission – officer, or enlisted.
But sure, lets put the long-range fires under the Army…along with the SLBMs since the weapon matters, not the delivery branch.
Even putting aside the inter-service smack talk, you don’t really engage with Harrison’s substantive case. The Army has long traditions of both operating from fixed fortifications and of managing long-range fires. The latter have been more and more rocket- and cruise missile-based in recent decades. ICBMs are a far better fit for the Army than for the USAF and always have been.
Anent your mocking suggestion to put SLBMs under Army control too, that makes no sense as the Navy also has a long tradition of managing shipborne long-range fires that have also become more and more rocket- and missile-centric – even more so than the Army’s. The SLBMs are fine where they are.
Finally, there is a matter of culture. The USAF culture is defined by the notion of human-piloted aircraft. The USN has its own version. Both need to yield, and quickly, to a force structure based on far more numerous, physically smaller, and far cheaper remotely-piloted and/or autonomously-piloted aircraft. Attrition in combat is real and neither the USAF nor USN air asset inventory is sufficient to stand very much such in any conflict with a consequential adversary. We need to quickly return to the WW2-era view of aircraft as being something much closer to ammunition than to capital ships in nature.
USAF culture has also, sadly, been defined by reflexive hostility to most anything initiated by the other services. The paradigmatic example was USAF resistance to GPS in the ’70s and ’80s strictly owing to its USN origins. The fact that the entire upper echelon of the USAF at that time was too obdurately stupid to see GPS as the greatest potential USAF force multiplier in history is a permanent black mark. The widespread mistrust of, and failure to incorporate, radar effectively into USN operations for the first couple of years of WW2 and the US Army’s failure to grasp the potential of aircraft even after WW1 are the only comparable dark episodes in US military history.
Having no pilots, ICBMs were red-headed stepchildren from the get-go in the USAF. Give them to the Army. The Knights of the Air are going to have a hard enough time getting used to the idea that, like their armored predecessors on horseback, they have become obsolete as a class.
The last time the Army managed long-range artillery fire from fixed fortifications was pre-WWII, with Coastal Artillery units.
I’m not sure when the last time the Army actually ENGAGED anyone like that….if ever
A 100-years ago tradition? There is no institutional memory left, and what they had was obsolete even then.
Throwing shade at the Army for a delay in accepting aviation? 1903 to 1914 is not a very long time at all. Throw some shade at maintaining horse-mounted cavalry and carrier pigeon platoons through Korea if you must.
The Army tradition of long-range fires from fortifications would have had a much shorter interregnum had it been assigned the ICBM job from the get-go. Maybe a decade.
I threw shade at the Army for its aviation failures after WW1, though, now that you mention it, the Army didn’t exactly cover itself with glory anent aviation from 1903 to 1914 either. Or from 1914 to 1918. US pilots flew British and French aircraft during WW1 and usually under British or French command.
The Army went back to ignoring aviation in the apparent hope it would just go away if no one fed it through the ’20s. The US was still building biplane “fighters” well after Europe had moved on. Not a good look.
The Brits were building and flying biplane ‘fighters’ well into WWII.
Not fighters. But torpedo planes like the “Stringbag,” sure. Our own Devastators were monoplanes, but barely faster.
The Nike Zeus ABM systems was a partnership between the Army and the Phone Company.
Bell Labs and Western Electric. Those were, respectively, the R&D and manufacturing portions of The Phone Company. The parts of the Bell System that installed phones, connected calls and kept the lines in good shape weren’t involved – though I admit the idea of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine character launching ABMs from her switchboard has a certain charm.
I admit the idea of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine character launching ABMs from her switchboard has a certain charm.
…snork. Is this the party with whom I am nuking?
Heh. Good one.
NORAD also uses ground radars to detect attacks from both aircraft and potential missiles. There are radars line the old DEW line designed to detect aircraft, and there are other radars that only track ballistic missiles and satellites. The primary radars are located at Clear, Alaska, Thule, Greenland (got a new name but I don’t know it), and Fylingdales, UK. There are also radars at Beale AFB, CA and Cape Cod, MA. The radar at Shemya, Alaska can do the mission as well, although it’s primary mission is intelligence gathering.
The rule for nuclear attack warning is Dual Phenomenology for confirmation. Most missile launches are first detected by infrared based early warning satellites, usually very soon after launch. However, there are natural events that can sometimes cause a false warning. Warnings will be released but the order to launch is withheld until confirmation by a radar. There are things that can cause a false alarm for a radar as well, but nothing that could cause corresponding false alarms of both types of systems at the same time.
The flight time and trajectory for ICBMs depends on the launch and impact sites. From Russia to the US, the flight time will typically be from 25-35 minutes with the trajectory following a great circle path. It typically took about 15-20 minutes from launch until the missile warhead(s) flew into a radar’s field of view. I was a crew commander for a radar that did missile early warning as one of our three missions. We practiced using simulations on most shifts, but all of those were Russia based attacks. We never practiced for an attack from any other country, so I don’t know the flight paths. For similar ranges, the flight times will be about the same.
Golden Dome needs to have both IR and radar sensors in LEO so there is no thumb-twiddling while enemy ICBMs mosey up into the lines-of-sight of land-based radars. These would find SLBM launches just as promptly and would also find any attempts at fractional orbit bombardment from azimuths other than over the pole.
The fact that we could have had such a warning system in place for decades is, by itself, a damning indictment of USAF derelictions anent anything that doesn’t breathe air or have wings.
I believe the Cape Cod MA system is one of the phased-array PAVE PAWS systems.
Yes, my memory isn’t as bad as I thought. According to Grok:
“Is the PAVE-PAWS phased array radar in Cape Cod MA still in operation?
Yes, the PAVE PAWS phased array radar at Cape Cod Space Force Station in Massachusetts is still in operation as of November 2025.
Operated by the U.S. Space Force’s 6th Space Warning Squadron, this AN/FPS-115 radar provides early warning for sea-launched ballistic missiles and tracks space objects over the North Atlantic, with a range of about 3,000 nautical miles. It achieved initial operating capability in 1981 and has remained active, unlike other sites closed in the 1990s.
Recent indicators of its ongoing use include:
An August 2024 Pentagon Inspector General report noting maintenance challenges like spare parts shortages and outdated tech, but confirming it as part of the active strategic early warning system.
A $495 million Raytheon contract (awarded around 2019 and extending into recent years) for solid-state module replacements to sustain PAVE PAWS operations.
Software upgrades like Algorithmic Option Code (AOC) 1.0 (fielded before 2025) for better decoy detection and AOC 1.1 (development started in 2025) for hypersonic threats, using the existing Cape Cod hardware without replacement.
A U.S. Air Force-managed prescribed burn at the station in April 2024, showing active site management.
No decommissioning plans have been announced, and it’s integrated into the Ballistic Missile Defense System.”
The problem isn’t the service branch. The silos would be just as tight a niche for the Army. Essentially zero commonality of skills between the field army and ICBM’s.
The real problem is the duty itself combines all the problems of maintaining a peace time force squared.
Not so, as Harrison points out. The Army has long experience with rockets and missiles including many precision-guided varieties that are just as electronics-intensive in their designs as ICBMs. US ICBMs are bigger and their launch tubes are not portable. But, as I noted in passing above, the US Army also has long experience with operating long-range fire weaponry from fixed fortifications going all the way back to its origins as a service.
I am completely baffled by what you imagine makes maintaining an ICBM force in peacetime so onerous. Even the decidedly non-optimal-for-the-task USAF has done a passable job of that and it has always been peacetime for ICBMs since their inception.
“has always been peacetime for ICBMs since their inception.”
That’s the point. Peacetime militaries always go to seed eventually. Effective officers replaced by those that have excelled at politics and backstabbing over killing the enemy and leading troops. Whoever does it will not have many useful skills or pertinent experience for other specialties in wider service. So, effectively siloed. As far as it always being peacetime, to the contrary, you’re locked in a hole, perpetually 20 minutes from the end of the world.
The syndrome you describe is not simply a matter of lacking a war, but of lacking a real opponent. The SAC bomber guys and the missileers ran pretty tight ships for as long as the Soviet Union was around even though we were never at actual war with the USSR. Once it collapsed, yeah, the USAF strategic forces went to seed a bit – missing nukes and such.
But now we have the PRC – for at least a few more years. Russia is proving to be pretty small beer as a replacement for the USSR, threat-wise.
Persuasive but maybe there are other ways to deal with the issues he raises, if they need to be dealt with.
Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you might suggest at least one such alternative?
No, I am content reading what everyone else is saying. As with most things, there are multiple ways to do something.
The writer benefits from constructing the outcome, which I thought was effective writing, but it is important to recognize the game being played and that there is more to the question than the author included.
It is interesting but more information is needed and while it could work out just fine, so could other arrangements or even status quo. It isn’t worth arguing about and I thought the most notable thing was the writing itself.
So you’ve got nothing beyond a vague discomfort with altering the status quo. Gotcha.
Space Force, they are closest to the old Soviet Rocket Force. Space Force is the best fit.
If it crosses the Karman line, Space Force!
Superficially sensible. But, while ICBMs undisputably transit space, they are not based there and are not usefully targeted at things there. They are a land-based weapon system designed to attack land-based targets at extremely long range. That’s an Army job – especially the making of recommendations to US command authority as to which targets should be hit in any selective response to enemy aggression that crosses certain thresholds. The Space Force will have quite enough on its plate being the primary actor in any strategic defense of the US.
“If it crosses the Karman line, Space Force!”
An EXCELLENT metric!
Which, of course, makes the SLBMs a Space Force mission.
I served in both the Army and Air Force. If you believe the Army doesn’t screw up major systems acquisition and runs things well, you haven’t been paying attention.
Not sure if this was intended for me or not, but I’ll certainly agree that the Army has no patent of immunity when it comes to messing things up. I just don’t think the USAF has any obvious advantage over the Army in that respect.
Setting aside the acquisition issue momentarily and Larry J’s point, which I agree… I rather fold USAF back into the Army and transfer ICBMs to Space Force. That way we can focus on an integrated military for land attack, airspace denial, and air superiority. Space Force can then figure out a way to protect the solid rocket booster supply chain without NASA and Senate promoting SRBs for human spaceflight.
First thought: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Second thought: Re-create and expand the ABMA?
The Navy is a completely separate thing, with its own air and Marine corps. Not to mention its own artillery batteries. Treasury has its own navy. Should it have its own ballistic missiles?
Ome of the things we’ve seen is, without nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles aren’t worth their cost.
Well, both Russia and Ukraine have found conventionally-armed ballistic missiles with much shorter ranges than ICBMs to be quite useful. But I would certainly agree that the longer the range of a missile – and the greater its unit cost – the less sense there is in arming it with a conventional warhead.
There is also the problem of one’s opponent having perhaps adopted a launch-on-warning posture for its own nuclear-armed ICBMs and there being no way to determine what sort of warhead an in-flight ICBM actually carries. That certainly constitutes a strong game-theoretic argument against conventionally-armed long-range missiles.