How much development was there in regards to the rail garrison trains. I just ran across this site http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-118.htm , and wondered how many cars and which type of cars were actually constructed, and what kind of power was proposed. This may sound a bit on the ignorant side, but I never realized that this program had progressed this far. If this program had been deployed, I would hate to have actually seen one of these trains riding the rails…
We could tell you, but then we would have to send over the white boxcars. [:-^]
The National Museum of the Air Force at Dayton OH has a prototype boxcar. Here is the fact sheet concerning it:
Fact Sheets : Peacekeeper Rail Garrison Car : Peacekeeper Rail Garrison Car
I always thought this was a goofy idea. The theory seems to have been that of a giant shell game, that is we will hide 25 trains on 200,000 miles of line. In fact probably only about 100,000 miles of main track would have been suitable.
These trains would have stuck out like a sore thumb, being only 8-10 cars of specific arrangement sent out from locations known as well to the Soviets as to our Air Force. The Soviets could have tracked them in real time by satelite. In addition, launch sites would have had to been pre identified. You could not light off that pair of rockets any old where.
I do not recall now why the project was cancelled, but it was. Good thing, as I do not think it would have worked.
Mac
Uh, let’s see, maybe something called the breakup of the Soviet Union might have had something to do with the cancellation of Rail Garrison and Hard Mobile Launcher (HML) Midgetman programs. The pressing need for strategic nukes to counter the Soviet threat had diminished considerably with that event.
As for the “real time” satellite imagery, not really true as the Soviet spy satellites were LEO (meaning a pass every 1-2 hours) and not extraordinary in number. The concept of real-time C-cubed from space is an expensive one, which was consistent the US strategy of bankrupting the USSR in the arms race. HML and Rail Garrison were bets among others to push the pot with the Soviets. In that respect, it worked.
Colorado, New Mexico & Kansas got other benefits from the first order control net that Rail Garrison used to check the accuracy of their internal guidance systems.
Our Division Engineer at the time refered to the cars as “portable switch heaters” and used to toy with the scenario of one of the things being set off in Raton Tunnel.
It is to be expected that they will at least try to deploy the things by rail.
Large sections of the rail network can be visually covered and probably are not candidates for launch sites. If they do launch em anyhow, chances are good that people will not be in a position to care very long.
The ultimate survivability is on Boomers undersea, covered by two SSN’s as line backers until they find a way to penetrate deep waters with sensors.
There is another concept which I have been tracking for some time, a airborne laser weapon called “First Light” that is probably very close to being in service and capable of intercepting inbound missiles.
But back to the missiles, they could hide the things in grain elevators and no one will be the wiser.
Here is the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison Car at Wright-Pat:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=66926
Dave
In today’s world, the idea seems far fetched but you have to consider this within the context of the world as it “existed” when Reagan entered office. Two of the three legs of the triad were viewed as vulnerable to the USSR’s SS-20 ICBM and the existing SSBN’s (the Trident boats were just beginning to enter service) could become vulnerable to the new class of Soviet attack boats undergoing sea trials which were faster and more stealthy than the Los Angeles class SSN’s. Additionally, it looked like the next generation of the SS-20 would go road mobile. SDI was not on the table yet and the B-2 was still in development.
Using technology developed for the Pershing II IRBM, the USAF proposed several mobility concepts for the PEACEKEEPER including railcars. The idea of using the entire rail system was dropped fairly early in the program for a variety of reasons. Instead, attention turned to building rail systems within several large government owned reservations such as White Sands, or the Nevada Test Site/Nellis Bombing Range. In times of increased tension, the cars would roll out on to the rails to disrupt targeting and lower the PK factor versus fixed silos which might not survive the increased accuracy of the SS-20 MIRV’s.
Why all of this was important at the time was that our war fighting strategy was to ride out a first strike and then respond in the appropriate way. Without a reasonable degree of assurance that sufficient forces would survive the first strike, the only alternative would be to launch on warning – a bad and dangerous situation for all sides.
Poppyl
Back in those days I would have books from the library that detailed civilian targets like the AT&T switching, Refinerys and things of that nature. Within those you had charts of the current Soviet warhead strength, and in some cases actual patterns. I think Washington DC had a pattern of 16 to 32 overlapping blast/fireball radius targeted with similar patterns around other cities.
Ft. Richie was the alternate along with Greenbrier in those days as well. They are obslete now.
I think the first battle problem was to get the President into the air on a 747 or similar. That scenario played out on 9-11 in a time where I did not think we would ever use that plan. The next problem was probably to flush the bombers and close up the missile silos.
The Navy was probably our best card in a Nuclear fight. Those carriers would be “Poof” but the Boomers will be the last sailor standing when it’s all over. But probably will face the prospect of having a nation full of ashes and hellfire to return to.
I dont think today’s generation growing up can withstand a loss of a carrier and 5,000 people aboard. That would probably cause our Government to be overthrown. Back in the cold war… it was part of the price of freedom and I hope that we aint got wussyfied in this day.
The Soviets were able to rail-mobile thier stuff as well. I think when we had the truck mounted Pershings in Europe things kinda got rough because those were able to reach Moscow and it was unacceptable to the Soviets at the time.
In those days we lived 30 minutes to an hour from Nuclear Holocaust. I think movies like “Wargames” packed theaters to the max. I recall a mall (Torn down now…) that had 20 Movie rooms with 16 set aside for approx 400 each standing room only with strict limits on crowd control as thousands stood in line hoping for a ticket and a spot to watch the movie. I stood in this line for a time and recall that with that many people on the upper deck there was not much &qu
That’s correct – the commercial rail network was not viable because it could not be readily commandeered for the MX trains without shutting it down. It’s one thing to do that in case of national emergency but another to do it every day for training and system reliability testing purposes. The USAF thought they could simply enter the main track any time they wanted and run either direction without telling anyone, or having their trains appear on a CTC machine, and somehow everything would just stay out of the way by magic. Apparently they thought the U.S. railroad system ran like a giant trainset and they could reach in from the outside, just push a button, and trains would all run like toys to the places they wanted. They had a very steep and unhappy learning curve about the U.S. railroad system which those of us who were involved are still marveling over. But we did get some nice survey work done on the side.
S. Hadid
I hope to live long enough to read the story of the first USAF training foray into the USA civilian rail system. The CTC or equivilants must have had a brick when they realized this military wrench rolling into thier territory.
What saddens me now is that virtually every base or installation Ive been on are either removing railroads entirely or cutting into the track and sod it over for real estate that is for non-rail construction.
Responding to Safety Valve’s above post, I recently read a study done by the US government of a nuclear strike using Detroit and the city formerly known as Leningrad as examples. It was a very detailed study and was extremely sobering. The study was done in the 80’s. I hope to never see it happen.
Well, there’s no reason an Air Force officer would know anything about the U.S. railroad system. An Army transportation officer would be a different story.
I’ll give 'em credit for thinking “outside the box”. They had to protect the missels and the “Rail Garrison” was one possible way to do it.
Thinking “outside the box” is a good thing. It will produce a lot of impractical ideas. But it will also produce good, inovative solutions.
The idea of launching missels from a submarine underwater was “outside the box” at one time. The idea of launching missels from a train just didn’t work out as well.
Can you imagine being the crew called for one of those trains?
I think the timing of it was very important, by the 1980’s you had a number of up-and-coming folks in the State Dept, Defense Dept and CIA who had been brought up with the 1950’s Lionel Rocket Launcher cars and target balloon sets etc., so it made sense for them to try to adapt that to the “real world”.
[(-D]
Fine…as long as you brought along the fire trucks, a crane, a flat car full of panels, track gang and another set of cars with track machinery for what you did after the thing was set off while parked on the main line somewhere. [:D]And the original premise was to be tucked into a road freight (roadswitcher) consist or coal train , tucked in-between a set of buffer cars. (no special train going into and out of Cheyenne/F.E. Warren AFB…and then the question is, is the now “fried to a crisp” car the thing launched from even in any condition to move?[swg][swg][swg]
If we actually got into a situation where we launched them, would anybody CARE about the railcar or the track where it was launched from?[:D]
They seem to be single use throw-away cars. If such a thing is possible.
As I recall there was a joke going around back in the 1980’s about putting the Peacekeeper missiles on Amtrak trains because Amtrak trains then were often so late they rarely ran on schedule so the whereabouts of the missiles were not predictable.
Someone might care, but there would be far more pressing needs than replacing the car or track.
Good point.