MGM-134 Midgetman

The MGM-134 Midgetman, officially the Small Intercontinental Ballistic Missile or SICBM, was an American single-warhead, road-mobile ICBM developed in the 1980s and never deployed. It grew out of the 1983 recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission, which proposed a light missile carrying one reentry vehicle because that design could survive a first strike by dispersing on roads and, with a single warhead, made a less valuable target. Early designs weighed about 30,000 pounds, and studies of a 37,000 pound version began in January 1986. The mobile launcher was a blast-hardened eight-wheeled tractor weighing 239,000 pounds that could travel up to 55 miles per hour; an engineering model was delivered to the Air Force in December 1988 and tested until 1991 at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. President Reagan authorized full-scale development in December 1986, and the program narrowly survived budget cuts in 1988. The first fully successful flight test took place on 18 April 1991 from Vandenberg, but President Bush canceled the program in January 1992 as Cold War tensions eased.