21 August 1957
The R-7 makes the type real.
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.