The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation: II: `Going for Broke' — The Path to Trident II

This paper (the second of two Parts) continues the historical case study of the evolution of Fleet Ballistic Missile guidance and navigation technologies by tracing the origins and development of the Trident system. This comprises a new submarine and two different missiles, Trident I (C4) and Trident II (D5), the latter of which is considered to be optimized for the destruction of `hardened' targets such as missile silos and command posts. It thus appears to mark a significant shift from the ultimate retaliatory `counter-city' deterrent (which was the main perceived role of Polaris). Is Trident II's technology simply the culmination of inevitable technological change, acting as an independent causal factor that itself determines strategy? Or is technological change the consciously intended product of political will? This historical case is used to discuss various analytical frameworks commonly used to explain such developments — `Technology-out-of-Control'; `Soft Determinism'; `Technologists-out-of-Control'; `Politics-in-Command'; and `Bureaucratic Politics'. It is concluded that the material is most consistent with a `Bureaucratic Politics' perspective, but that this unduly favours one set of `factors' in a `seamless web' where the `technical' cannot readily be distinguished from the `social'. Nevertheless, we feel it possible and useful to try to distinguish patterns in this seamless web, and close with a discussion of one such pattern — the `black-boxing' of technical programmes.

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