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(More customer reviews)I was a Sonar Technician on a Franklin Class Polaris boat armed with A-3's from '69-'71. The essential FBM systems were reasonably mature by the time of my arrival. Although Sub School and quals included an essential understanding of each important system, in those days hardly anything was discussed at my level about the overall FBM development process. The author offers a spinning coin having on one side the political matters and on the other side some moderate-depth technical details.
While explaining the FBM programme in the first eight fascinating chapters, complete with British spellings, the author sets the stage for his ninth chapter thesis in two particular areas. One is to point out (at every opportunity) mission conflicts, not the least of which is perceived competition with the Air Force's land- and airplane-based weapons. The Special Projects Office successfully deflected that one early on by giving its FBM fleet what was to be perceived as a "different" mission. My boat's stated mission was very specific: deterrence through assured retaliatory destruction. The first-generation Polaris boats assured destruction of enemy cities by a general blanket of bombs having only modest accuracy. Over the years, the author points out, various interests sought to increase payloads, range and/or accuracy. These included military leaders from the Navy and other services; Defense Department and other civilian leaders; and Presidents. However, too large a leap in accuracy would lead to the emergence of a "hard target," pre-emptive strike capability, which some factions sought and others resisted because of its potentially destabilizing impact. Second, he explains the long term position taken by the Special Projects Office in persistently refusing to commit to potentially unachievable results. The SPO instead converted those parameters to reasonable "goals" to keep the FBM program on track and consistently "successful."
On the technical front, the overall FBM development plan had to meet challenges in a broad range of disciplines. The subs themselves are nearly taken for granted and discussed very generically except where the discussion ties in directly to a weapon system development. The nuclear power plants are only lightly touched upon, and then, principally to explain how Admiral Rickover's influence over the program was minimized to the extent possible. Most "auxiliary" and electrical systems are not discussed at all. But many worthwhile discussions include the search for reliable and secure navigation systems; position-keeping with SINS; satellite support and vulnerabilities; radio communications; fire control; guidance systems; computers (or rather, meeting goals in spite of a lack of computer power); launch tube structure and development; the rockets themselves; their fuels, control mechanisms and safety problems; re-entry vehicles; their evolving payloads; MRV and MIRV deployment; and the quest for increasing range and accuracy. Some of these systems I haven't seen in print since I turned in my piping manual. The impacts of some scientific and geologic discoveries are explained including the non-spherical shape of the earth and the influence of gravitational variations on gyro-stabilized platforms for both navigation and guidance. Some of the aspects I found most interesting were the payload configurations including re-entry vehicles; bomb composition and yields; MIRV's and the avoidance of fratricide; effects of EMP; decoy methods; industrial competition in inertial navigation systems, especially in gyroscope development; and a few other unexpected matters having a significant influence on target accuracy. While some of the payload configurations and a few of the numbers don't agree exactly with what I thought we had on board, I found no discrepancies to complain about.
In spite of an occasional redundancy I completely savored the main course - the first eight chapters. The ninth chapter, entitled "Understanding Technical Change in Weaponry," opens in a different mood, apparently intending to be a discussion over dessert. It's nearly free standing, written in a much more difficult style and fraught with complex sentences. I toughed that one out anyway so as not to risk missing any tasty tidbits that could have been embedded.
The extensive footnotes contain many interesting comments and point to numerous resources including interviews, although I fear some references might be beyond practical access for further study.
"From Polaris to Trident..." is a very worthwhile read especially if you're interested in the subsystems mentioned above. I particularly recommend it to new active duty submariners because it contains information I now wish I knew when I was there. It could spark an interest in a particular rating.
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From Polaris to Trident: The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)
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