Human-cost band
not a war -- a system; human cost sits in the nuclear-age crises and the wars that funded the type
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale75
Intensity35
Duration62
Tech shift96
Political impact85
Cultural memory72
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
Did ICBMs come from the V-2?
Teams, drawings, and the idea of a ballistic rocket did. Range, warhead, and guidance of the 1957-62 types were a different industrial generation. Mittelbau-Dora slave labour is part of the V-2 ledger.
What was the Cuban Missile Crisis to this type?
October 1962 was about medium-range missiles in Cuba and a US blockade, with ICBM and bomber forces on high alert in the background. It is a political crisis file, not a firing drill.
What did SALT and START do?
They capped and later reduced declared launchers and warheads, with verification. SALT I is 1972; START I is 1991; New START is 2010. Details belong to the treaty texts, not to a targeting lesson.
How does the submarine page relate?
SSBNs carry SLBMs -- the sea leg of the same deterrent idea. See that page for boats; this page for land missiles and the shared treaty story.
How does Korea fit?
The ROK was not a 1950s ICBM operator. The peninsula sits in later extended-deterrence and regional missile politics -- described as history, not as a live threat map.
Mittelbau-Dora dead are the first human-cost band. Later costs are fiscal (triad budgets) and psychic (civil-defence childhoods).
Nuclear-age close calls are a risk ledger without a battlefield body count from the ICBM itself.
Bands
Dated span (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45))
Intercontinental ballistic missile is taught as 1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45). 1944-09-08 and 2010-21 are the usual poles.
Theatre (From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to sil.)
From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to silos, submarines, and treaty tables is the geography of the ledger -- cities, seas, plants, or ministries as the file requires.
R-7 ICBM flight
1957-08-21: First intercontinental ballistic missile flight.
SALT I and ABM Treaty
1972: The type becomes a counted diplomatic object.
Regions
From Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to silos
Core theatre of Intercontinental ballistic missile (1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 ancestry 1944-45)). US, USSR, and Britain take people and hardware from the German programme.
Ancestry
1944-57: V-2 to first ICBM flight.
Triad and SALT
1963-79: Parity talk and the first limits.
Inheritance and new testers
After 1991: Ukraine transfers; later regional programmes as news, not as a manual.
US / UK / AU / CA classrooms
US/UK/AU/CA museums and air/navy shows carry Intercontinental ballistic missile as a type icon; school hours stay thinner than film.
Korean comparative reader
Intercontinental ballistic missile is read beside Yulgok, Hanwha, and ROK procurement history: a type or firm in a conscript-alliance state, not a live ORBAT.
Key numbers
Span1957-present as a deployed type (V-2 an.
Cost bandnot a war -- a system; human cost sits .
TheatreFrom Peenemunde and Kapustin Yar to sil.
Hero articleIntercontinental ballistic missile
Makers
Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun (Engineer) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. V-2 technical lead, then a US space-and-missile name -- a career that begins in a slave-labour rocket and ends in NASA fame. Use as history, not as a hero stencil.
Sergei Korolev
Sergei Korolev (Chief designer) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. The R-7 and Sputnik bureau head, long hidden behind a title. Died 1966. The Soviet ICBM story without a Hollywood face.
Bernard Schriever
Bernard Schriever (USAF general) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. The institutional American missileer -- Atlas to Minuteman as a procurement politics.
Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay (SAC) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. The bomber-age commander who had to absorb missiles as a rival leg. A cultural memory as much as a staff name.
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet leader) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. Sputnik politics, Berlin, and Cuba -- the ICBM as a speech and a gamble.
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy (US president) is a named maker of the Intercontinental ballistic missile story. The October 1962 counterpart. The public file is ExComm, a blockade, and a bargain -- not a launch order.
Do not launder Dora through NASA nostalgia.
Korean War dead are on that war's page; they are not ICBM casualties.