Effects of MX Racetrack?

So, back in the late 70s-early 80s, it seems to have been generally thought that missile silos either were or would shortly be obsolete, due to improvements in Soviet ICBM accuracy. In order to stay in the ICBM game, the USAF was considering all sorts of crazy basing options, with the most popular being variants of MPS, Multiple Protective Shelters, also called the Racetrack. In the end, we decided not to use Racetrack, but I'm wondering what the effects of building Racetrack, or one of the even crazier variants, would have been. I'm not sure it would make that much difference to the strategic picture (feel free to correct me), but it seems like it might have a substantial impact on domestic politics and in other areas of the defense budget. I'm curious for the thoughts of board members more knowledge than I.

In terms of domestic politics, Racetrack seems to have been viciously unpopular in the state(s) they wanted to build it. I haven't been able to find any polling data showing the opinion of the rest of the country, however, and I'm not sure if it would have had any substantial political impact outside Nevada.

In terms of budgeting, USAF cost estimates were about $33 billion in 1980 dollars (~$90 billion today), while outside estimates ran to as much as $55 billion (~$150 billion). That's for MPS; Multiple Protective Pools, some of the air-mobile plans, or the original super-hardened plan (the one buried under a mountain, distinct from densepack) would have cost even more. Could Reagan have gotten that in the defense budget without cuts elsewhere? And, if not, what would have been cut?

Thoughts?
 
The only thing I recall about the MPS is that it would have tied up 50% of US concrete production for something like 5 or 7 years.

Personally I don't know why they didn't park the MXs under the single ABM site they had, ungrading instead of deactivating it in 1983.
 
If they are worried about silos being too vulnerable, just do what the Russians did and use trains. The US did develop a rail launch system for the Peacekeeper, but it was never used operationally because of cutbacks to the defense budget after the fall of the Soviet Union.
 
TheMann said:
If they are worried about silos being too vulnerable, just do what the Russians did and use trains. The US did develop a rail launch system for the Peacekeeper, but it was never used operationally because of cutbacks to the defense budget after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I'm not saying it was a good idea; quite the contrary, I think it was a piece of Pentagon dream-gineering whose only real purpose was to keep the USAF in the missile game. Rail-mobile was a much better idea (although it had its own set of issues). I'm just curious what the knock-on effects would be of spending $150 billion to turn a piece of Nevada the size of Rhodes Island into a missile field.

Personally I don't know why they didn't park the MXs under the single ABM site they had, ungrading instead of deactivating it in 1983.

SAFEGUARD had a number of problems that probably made it unworkable. These included: the long-range SPARTAN missiles were highly susceptible to decoys; the short-range SPRINT missiles blinded their own RADARs when they went off; and even if the technical issues could be solved, the economics probably couldn't. The cost per warhead launched would be far, far less than the cost per warhead destroyed, so the Russians could build more bombs faster than we could build more interceptors.

One of the Racetrack proposals, MPS/LoADS, did include an ABM component, but with a far more modest objective; they were only trying to force the Soviets to target each shelter with multiple RVs to ensure a kill.
 
I wouldn't expect miracles from ABMs, only to allow launch under attack to be standard procedure. 100 ABMs might destroy 30-50 incoming RV, ensure that an attack was actually underway and give the Pres a few extra minutes to make a decision and tie up another 100 of the USSRs high-end missiles for counterforce attacks just to be safe.
 
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