Editing GAM-87 Skybolt (section)

===Background===
The [[US Air Force]] had built up an enormous fleet of [[strategic bomber]]s during the 1950s, only to see them threatened by the possibility of a surprise attack by Soviet [[ICBM]]s. As the US bombers were located at only a small number of air bases, a relatively small fleet of missiles could attack all of them at once. The US had been developing its own ICBMs as well, but early models, like the [[SM-65 Atlas]], required some time to prepare to launch from their surface launchers and were vulnerable to sneak air attack. A carefully timed attack from Soviet bombers against US missiles and their ICBMs against US bomber fields could inflict serious damage.<ref name=wizards>{{cite book |first=Fred |last=Kaplan |title= The Wizards of Armageddon |publisher= Stanford University Press  |date = 1991 |pages=237–238}}</ref>

The one weapon system that was not open to attack was the [[US Navy]]'s [[Polaris missile]] system. The Polaris equipped submarines could cruise in large areas of the Atlantic or Pacific where the Soviet fleet was unable to find them, and launch their missiles with impunity. If the goal of the nuclear force was to maintain deterrence by ensuring that a counterstrike would be launched, Polaris met this goal in a way the existing Air Force fleet could not. This fact was more worrying to the Air Force than the Soviet arsenal and generated a number of internal reports on how to deal with this threat to their dominance in the strategic field.<ref name=wizards/>