Pershing II Missile

The Pershing II is an American solid-fueled, two-stage medium-range ballistic missile built by Martin Marietta for the United States Army, developed from 1973 to 1981 to replace the earlier Pershing 1a and first deployed to West Germany in November 1983 as part of NATO's response to Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Equipped with a maneuverable, radar-guided reentry vehicle that gave it unusually high accuracy for a ballistic missile of its era and a variable-yield nuclear warhead, the Pershing II could strike targets roughly 1,770 kilometers away, a range and precision that alarmed Soviet planners and triggered large protests across Western Europe during the so-called Euromissile crisis. Its 1987 elimination, alongside the Soviet Union's intermediate-range missiles, under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty made the Pershing II one of the most consequential weapons of the late Cold War, with the last missiles destroyed by 1991.