Ancestry
V-2 to first ICBM flight.
Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- V-2 combat use
- Team scramble
- R-7 ICBM flight
- Sputnik
- Atlas and Minuteman
- Polaris at sea
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- SALT I and ABM Treaty
- INF Treaty
- New START
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.
Start with Dora and Peenemunde, not with a clean 1957 birthday. The type inherits a crime and a captured staff.
R-7 and Sputnik are one political season, not two unrelated shocks.
Timeline
- V-2 combat use
Paris and then London -- a city-attack rocket, not yet intercontinental.
- Team scramble
US, USSR, and Britain take people and hardware from the German programme.
- R-7 ICBM flight
First intercontinental ballistic missile flight.
- Sputnik
The same family of rocket as a political shock in orbit.
- Atlas and Minuteman
US land types enter service; silo fields begin.
- Polaris at sea
The SLBM cousin is operational.
- Cuban Missile Crisis
Alert, blockade, and a bargain -- not a launch.
- SALT I and ABM Treaty
The type becomes a counted diplomatic object.
- INF Treaty
A whole class of shorter missiles eliminated -- a cousin story that recast the ICBM debate.
- New START
Signed 2010; extended 2021 -- the late numbered limit.
Eras
Shock years
R-7, Sputnik, Atlas, Minuteman, Cuba.
Triad and SALT
Parity talk and the first limits.
Scare and reduction
Able Archer; INF; START as the Cold War ends.
Inheritance and new testers
Ukraine transfers; later regional programmes as news, not as a manual.
Milestones
21 August 1957
The R-7 makes the type real.
October 1962
Alert without launch -- the political peak.
SALT I, 1972
Counting replaces an open race, on paper.
Treaties are as historical as flight tests. A page that only lists rockets is a catalogue, not this atlas.
New testers after 1991 do not turn this file into a watch list.