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Alternate Name:	Spartan, Sprint
Country:	USA
Basing:	Land

Details

Safeguard was the first operational U.S. anti-ballistic missile system. A two-tiered system, it consisted of long-range Spartan and short-range Sprint missiles, all nuclear-armed, designed to protect the ICMB silos in North Dakota. Shortly after its 1975 deployment, however, Congress canceled Safeguard due to concerns over its capability and effectiveness.(1)

 

In January 1969, the Nixon administration took office, and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird suspended the existing Sentinel deployment program. In March of that same year, President Nixon announced plans to deploy a new anti-ballistic missile system, to be called Safeguard. Unlike Sentinel, which was designed to protect U.S. cities against a limited Chinese attack, Safeguard was designed to defend the U.S. ICBM silos, in particular the Minuteman sites, thus protecting the nation’s second-strike capability. A two-tiered system, Safeguard would deploy two new interceptor missiles, the long-range Spartan and the short-range Sprint.(2)

 

The Spartan, which had been under development since 1965 and was initially part of the Sentinel project, was designed to detonate a nuclear warhead above the atmosphere, where it would generate intense X-rays that would be able to knock out several incoming reentry vehicles simultaneously. As the first line of defense, it had an effective range of 600 to 800 km, and could intercept incoming ballistic missiles at altitudes above 100 km during the last few minutes of their midcourse phase. The interceptor missile itself, built by McDonnell Douglas, was a three-stage, solid-propellant rocket, 16.8 m long and weighing 14,045 kg.(3)

 

The Sprint, by contrast, was designed to destroy incoming missiles during their terminal phase, i.e. within the earth’s atmosphere during the last moments of descent. An offshoot of the Nike-X, Sprint’s advantage was that it could use the atmosphere to filter out countermeasures and decoys, although its battle space was compressed into the last few seconds before the incoming missile detonated. The Sprint interceptor, built by Martin Marietta, was a two-stage, solid-propellant rocket, 8.2 m long and weighing 3,409 kg, with a range of 40 km.(4) Like the Spartan, it was armed with a nuclear warhead designed to obliterate any incoming ballistic missiles within its blast radius.(5)

 

In August 1969, the Senate approved, by one vote, the first phase of the Safeguard deployment, thus authorizing construction of the first Safeguard site, which would protect 150 Minuteman ICBMs deployed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. The following year, construction began at what became known as the Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Antiballistic Missile Complex in Nekoma, North Dakota, approximately 100 miles north of Grand Forks. The site was named after the Army Air Defense Command’s third commanding general, Lt. Gen. Stanley R. Mickelsen.(6)

 

At Mickelsen, construction began on the 24-m-tall pyramid-shaped Missile Site Radar (MSR), designed to track incoming warheads and guide the interceptors to their assigned targets. The MSR’s four faces allowed it to search for targets in all directions at a range of 480 km. The MSR was supported by the Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR), located 25 miles northeast in Cavalier, North Dakota. The PAR, which faced north, was designed to detect incoming Soviet missiles at a range of 800 miles, just as they were passing over the North Pole, and then determine their trajectory and impact point. Thirty Spartan and 16 Sprint missiles were deployed in underground launchers. An addition 50 Sprint missiles were deployed at four remote launch sites.(7)

 

On October 1, 1975, the Safeguard complex became operational, making it the first operational anti-ballistic missile system deployed by the U.S. Many referred to the system as a technological marvel. Others were quick to point out its three main drawbacks: (1) the electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of the nuclear warheads on Spartan and Sprint would blind its phased-array radars, making impossible to detect additional incoming enemy missiles; (2) the system could be overwhelmed by a large Soviet attack, thus bringing to question the system cost-effectiveness; (3) the 1972 ABM Treaty restricted the U.S. and the Soviet Union to only one missile defense site, thus again raising the issue of the system’s cost-effectiveness.(8)

 

Several members of Congress were among Safeguard’s most outspoken critics. Senator George McGovern described Safeguard as “the most blatant boondoggle ever pawned off in the name of national defense.” Even Senator Henry Jackson asked: “Assuming that the system’s 100 rockets were successful in destroying the first 100 enemy warheads, what would happen if the Soviets launched more?” Donald Baucom notes that Pentagon support for the system diminished as well, due to the fact that the Army was shifting its resources from developing deployable systems to research and development aimed at maintaining a technological edge in missile defense and to hedge against a possible Soviet breakthrough. Total funding for the program reflected this change. In 1972, the Pentagon requested $1.4 billion for Safeguard; in 1975 it asked for only $440 million.(9)

 

On October 2, 1975, Congress decided to shut the program down, deeming it militarily ineffective. In November, the Senate passed a bill that allowed operation and testing of the facility’s PAR, but terminated the remainder of Safeguard.(10) In February 1976, five months after its initial deployment, the Army began dismembering Safeguard. That spring, technology funding was reduced from $110 million, to $100 million, to $75 million. Site technicians cut off power from the radars, removed the warheads and missile from their underground silos, and transferred personnel to other locations. The Safeguard project was over.(11)

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

 

1. Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944-1983 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 34-52.
2. Council on Foreign Relations, “The Missile Defense Debate, A-to-Z Encyclopedia of National Missile Defense,” available at http://www.cfr.org/virtualbooks/reference/glossary/glossary_s_z.html, accessed on 10 January 2005; James T. Hackett, “Don’t Count Out Missile Defense,” The Wall Street Journal (21 January 2000); GlobalSecurity.org, “Safeguard,” available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/safeguard.htm, accessed on 10 January 2005.
3. Stephen P. Moeller, “Vigilant and Invincible,” Air Defense Artillery Magazine (May-June 1995); Lester W. Grau and Jacob W. Kipp, “Maintaining Friendly Skies: Rediscovering Theater Aerospace Defense,” Aerospace Power Journal (1 July 2002).
4. The Brookings Institution, “Spartan and Sprint Antiballistic Missiles,” available at http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/sprint.htm, accessed on 10 January 2005.
5. Moeller, “Vigilant and Invincible.”
6. The Brookings Institution, “Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Antiballistic Missile Complex,” available at http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/safeguard.htm, accessed on 10 January 2005.
7. Moeller, “Vigilant and Invincible.”
8. Gregory H. Canavan, Missile Defense for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 2003); Bradley Graham, Hit to Kill: The New Battle Over Shielding America from Missile Attack (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 11-12; U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, OTA-ISC-254 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1985).
9. Baucom, 97-98.
10. Moeller, “Vigilant and Invincible.”
11. Baucom, 91-113; Graham, 207; Moeller, “Vigilant and Invincible;” Council on Foreign Relations, “The Missile Defense Debate, Chronology of National Missile Defense Programs,” available at http://www.cfr.org/virtualbooks/reference/timeline.html, accessed on 10 January 2005; David Pugliese, “The First U.S. Plan for Missile Defence: David Pugliese Looks Back at a Nixon-era Continental Shield,” The Ottawa Citizen (20 October 2003).