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LIM-49 Nike Zeus
Nike Zeus was an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system developed by the US Army during the late 1950s and early 1960s, designed to destroy Soviet Intercontinental ballistic missile warheads before they could hit targets in the United States. It was designed by Bell's Nike team, and was initially based on the earlier Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile. The original Zeus A, given the tri-service identifier XLIM-49, was designed to intercept warheads in the upper atmosphere, mounting a 25 kiloton W31 nuclear warhead to guarantee a kill. During development it was greatly enlarged and extended into a totally new design, Zeus B, intended to intercept warheads over a much larger area, and mounting a 400 kiloton W50 warhead. In several successful tests, the B model proved itself able to intercept warheads, and even satellites.
The nature of the strategic threat changed dramatically during the period that Zeus was being developed. Originally expected to face only a few dozen ICBMs, a nationwide defense was feasible, although expensive. In 1957, growing fears of a Soviet sneak attack led it to be repositioned as a way to protect Strategic Air Command's bomber bases, ensuring a retaliatory strike force would survive. But when the Soviets claimed to be building hundreds of missiles, the US faced the problem of building enough Zeus missiles to match them. The Air Force suggested they close this missile gap by building more ICBMs of their own instead. Adding to the debate, a number of technical problems emerged that suggested Zeus would have little capability against any sort of sophisticated attack.
The system was the topic of intense inter-service rivalry throughout its lifetime. When the ABM role was given to the Army in 1958, the United States Air Force began a long series of critiques on Zeus, both within defense circles and in the press. The Army returned these attacks in kind, taking out full page advertisements in popular mass market news magazines to promote Zeus, as well as spreading development contracts across many states in order to garner the maximum political support. As deployment neared in the early 1960s, the debate became a major political issue. The question ultimately became whether or not a system with limited effectiveness would be better than nothing at all.
The decision whether to proceed with Zeus eventually fell to President John F. Kennedy, who became fascinated by the indecision surrounding the ABM system. In 1963, the United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, decided to cancel Zeus as it would be ineffective. McNamara directed funding towards studies of new ABM concepts being considered by ARPA, selecting the Nike-X concept, a layered system with more than one type of missile. To Zeus, Nike-X added a short range missile, the Sprint, along with greatly improved radars and computer systems that provided defense over a wide area. The Zeus test site at Kwajalein was briefly used as an anti-satellite weapon.
==History==
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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