David K. Stumpf

The Titan II ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) program was developed by the United States military to bolster the size, strength, and speed of the nation's strategic weapons arsenal in the 1950s and 1960s. Each missile carried a single warhead -- the largest in U.S. inventory -- used liquid fuel propellants, and was stored and launched from hardened underground silos. The missiles were deployed at basing facilities in Arkansas, Arizona, and Kansas and remained in active service for over twenty years. Since military deactivation in the early 1980s, the Titan II has served as a reliable satellite launch vehicle.This is the richly detailed story of the Titan II missile and the men and women who developed and operated the system. David K. Stumpf uses a wide range of sources, drawing upon interviews with and memoirs by engineers and airmen as well as recently declassified government documents and other public materials. Over 170 drawings and photographs, most of which have never been published, enhance the narrative. The three major accidents of the program are described in detail for the first time using authoritative sources.Titan Il will be welcomed by librarians for its prodigious reference detail, by technology history professionals and laymen, and by the many civilian and Air Force personnel who were involved in the program -- a deterrent weapons system that proved to be successful in defending America from nuclear attack.

In the closing months of World War II, guided missile technology blossomed as a technological breakthrough for the delivery of offensive weapons. Late in the war, Germany introduced its V-1 and V-2 missile systems, and the Soviet ballistic missile program late in the decade heightened the need for a U.S. intermediate-range missile program. During this period, the Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation, famous for its F4U Corsair aircraft among others, began work on a new guided missile program with the U.S. Navy—giving birth to the Regulus missile. America's First Nuclear Submarine Missile provides a detailed report on Chance Vought's Regulus I and II guided missiles, the program that paved the way in the fields of inertial navigation, missile guidance and impact accuracy. The book covers examples of the day-to-day operations as well as the yearly milestones for the program as it reached operational status, and covers naval deployment on aircraft carriers, to heavy cruisers and finally to the five submarines that patrolled the North Pacific. Detailed appendices include detailed discussions of the missile's guidance systems, nuclear warheads, flight operations and production summaries. Regulus was an important step in the evolution of America's missile defense program, and this book is a fitting tribute to the history of this complex system, and the people who made it happen.

In March 1983, as the world’s superpowers continued aggressively stockpiling nuclear weapons, President Ronald Reagan described his vision for a world no longer confronted with the concept of mutually assured destruction. A year later the Strategic Defense Initiative was established, followed soon after by the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). The SDIO was tasked with the development and coordination of missile technologies designed for the strategic defense against civilization’s most dangerous invention, one that carried with it the threat of nuclear destruction―intercontinental ballistic missiles.In The Last Thirty Seconds: A Brief History of the Evolution of Hit-to-Kill Technology, David K. Stumpf details the development of one of many possible solutions for ballistic missile defense commonly known as hit-to-kill. Hit-to-kill is a nonnuclear technique using kinetic energy, rather than explosives, to destroy reentry vehicles carrying chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. It is the centerpiece of the United States’ current ballistic missile defense systems and has proven invaluable in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as well as in the ongoing conflict with the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. While much of the subject remains classified, this detailed study will be welcomed for its substantial references and the inclusion of newly declassified material.

Book details the Regulus Program, initiated by Chance Vought Aircraft corporation, already famous for the F4U Corsair , which paved the way for inertial navigation and subsequently the guided missile program.