Editing LGM-30 Minuteman (section)

===Counterforce===
{{main|Counterforce|Pre-emptive nuclear strike}}
Minuteman's selection as the primary Air Force ICBM was initially based on the same "[[second strike]]" logic as their earlier missiles: that the weapon was primarily one designed to survive any potential Soviet attack and ensure they would be hit in return. But Minuteman had a combination of features that led to its rapid evolution into the US's primary weapon of nuclear war.

Chief among these qualities was its digital computer, the D-17B. This could be updated in the field with new targets and better information about the flight paths with relative ease, gaining accuracy for little cost. One of the unavoidable effects on the warhead's trajectory was the mass of the Earth, which contains many [[mass concentration (astronomy)|mass concentrations]] that pull on the warhead as it passes over them. Through the 1960s, the Defense Mapping Agency (now part of [[National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency]]) mapped these with increasing accuracy, feeding that information back into the Minuteman fleet. The Minuteman was initially deployed with a [[circular error probable]] (CEP) of about {{convert|1.1|nmi}}, but this had improved to about {{convert|0.6|nmi}} by 1965.<ref name="1990_MacKenzie" />{{rp|page=166}} This was accomplished without any mechanical changes to the missile or its navigation system.<ref name="1990_MacKenzie" />{{rp|page=156}}

At those levels, the ICBM begins to approach the manned bomber in terms of accuracy; a small upgrade, roughly doubling the accuracy of the INS, would give it the same {{convert|1500|feet}} CEP as the manned bomber. Autonetics began such development even before the original Minuteman entered fleet service, and the Minuteman II had a CEP of {{convert|0.26|nmi}}. Additionally, the computers were upgraded with more memory, allowing them to store information for eight targets, which the missile crews could select among almost instantly, greatly increasing their flexibility.<ref name="1990_MacKenzie" />{{rp|page=152}} From that point, Minuteman became the US's primary deterrent weapon, until its performance was matched by the Navy's [[Trident (missile)|Trident missile]] of the 1980s.<ref name="2010_Brookings" />

Questions about the need for the manned bomber were quickly raised. The Air Force began to offer a number of reasons why the bomber offered value, in spite of costing more money to buy and being much more expensive to operate and maintain. Newer bombers with better survivability, like the [[North American XB-70 Valkyrie|B-70]], cost many times more than the Minuteman, and, in spite of great efforts through the 1960s, became increasingly vulnerable to [[surface-to-air missile]]s. The [[Rockwell B-1 Lancer|B-1]] of the early 1970s eventually emerged with a price tag around $200 million (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US-GDP|200|1980|fmt=c|r=-2}} million in {{Inflation-year|US-GDP}}){{Inflation-fn|US-GDP}} while the Minuteman IIIs built during the 1970s cost only $7 million (${{Inflation|US-GDP|7|1978|fmt=c|r=-1}} million in {{Inflation-year|US-GDP}}).{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}

The Air Force countered that having a variety of platforms complicated the defense; if the Soviets built an effective [[anti-ballistic missile]] system of some sort, the ICBM and SLBM fleet might be rendered useless, while the bombers would remain. This became the [[nuclear triad]] concept, which survives into the present. Although this argument was successful, the number of manned bombers has been repeatedly cut and the deterrent role increasingly passed to missiles.<ref name="2009_Triad" />