ICBM in the context of Chemical weapon

The PGM-17A Thor was the first operative ballistic missile of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was named after the Norse god of thunder. It was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was 65 feet (20 m) in height and 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter.

The first generation of Thor missiles were rushed into service, and design mistakes resulted in a 24% launch failure rate. The competing PGM-19 Jupiter missile saw more use, but both were quickly eclipsed by the Air Force's long range ICBM program, which could be fired from U.S. soil. By 1959, with the Atlas missile well on its way to operational status, both Thor and Jupiter programs became obsolete as delivery vehicles, yet continued to be built and deployed until 1963 for political reasons and to maintain aerospace industry employment.

John von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/ von NOY-mən; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, integrating pure and applied sciences and making major contributions to many fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, computing, and statistics. He was a pioneer in building the mathematical framework of quantum physics, in the development of functional analysis, and in game theory, introducing or codifying concepts including cellular automata, the universal constructor and the digital computer. His analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.

During World War II, von Neumann worked on the Manhattan Project. He developed the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type nuclear weapon. Before and after the war, he consulted for many organizations including the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At the peak of his influence in the 1950s, he chaired a number of Defense Department committees including the Strategic Missile Evaluation Committee and the ICBM Scientific Advisory Committee. He was also a member of the influential Atomic Energy Commission in charge of all atomic energy development in the country. He played a key role alongside Bernard Schriever and Trevor Gardner in the design and development of the United States' first ICBM programs. At that time he was considered the nation's foremost expert on nuclear weaponry and the leading defense scientist at the U.S. Department of Defense.

TRW Inc., or Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, electronics, automotive, and credit reporting. The company was founded in 1901 and lasted for just over a century until being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002. It spawned a variety of corporations, including Pacific Semiconductors, The Aerospace Corporation, Bunker-Ramo and Experian. TRW was instrumental in the development of spacecraft during the Space Race, including Pioneer 1, Pioneer 10, and the Apollo program. TRW also played a significant role in the US defense industry, leading the development of the United States' first ICBM and later the Titan missile. The corporation was listed as #57 on the 1986 Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees in 2000.

Fort Greely is a United States Army launch site for anti-ballistic missiles located about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. It is also the home of the Cold Regions Test Center (CRTC), as Fort Greely is one of the coldest areas in Alaska, and can accommodate cold, extreme-cold, and temperate-weather tests depending on the season. It is named in honor of Major General Adolphus Greely.

There was an earlier Fort Greely on Kodiak Island.

Proton (Russian: протон) ('proton') was a Soviet series of four cosmic ray and elementary particle detecting satellites. Orbited 1965–68, three on test flights of the UR-500 ICBM and one on a Proton-K rocket, all four satellites completed their missions successfully, the last reentering the Earth's atmosphere in 1969.

The Voskhod rocket (Russian: Восход, lit. 'ascent/dawn') was Soviet medium-lift launch vehicle, a derivative of the R-7, an ICBM. The Voskhod rocket was designed for the human spaceflight programme but later used for launching Zenit reconnaissance satellites. It was essentially an 8K78/8K78M minus the Blok L stage and spec-wise was a halfway between the two boosters, with the former's older, lower-spec engines and the latter's improved Blok I design. Its first flight was on 16 November 1963 when it successfully launched a Zenit satellite from LC-1/5 at Baikonur. Boosters used in the Voskhod program had a man-rated version of the RD-0107 engine; this version was known as the RD-0108.

Starting in 1966, the 11A57 adopted the standardized 11A511 core with the more powerful 8D74M first stage engines, however the Blok I stage continued using the RD-0107 engine rather than the RD-0110. Around 300 were flown from Baikonur and Plesetsk through 1976, almost all of them used to launch Zenit reconnaissance satellites (one exception was the Intercosmos 6 satellite in 1973).

Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomey or Chelomei (Russian: Влади́мир Никола́евич Челоме́й, Ukrainian: Володи́мир Микола́йович Челоме́й; 30 June 1914 – 8 December 1984) was a Soviet engineer and designer in the missile program of the former Soviet Union. He invented the first Soviet pulse jet engine and was responsible for developing the world's first anti-ship cruise missiles and the ICBM program of the Soviet Union such as the UR-100, UR-200, UR-500 and UR-700.

Soviet rocketry commenced in 1921 with development of Solid-fuel rockets, which resulted in the development of the Katyusha rocket launcher. Rocket scientists and engineers, particularly Valentin Glushko and Sergei Korolev, contributed to the development of Liquid-fuel rockets, which were first used for fighter aircraft. Developments continued in the late 1940s and 1950s with a variety of ballistic missiles and ICBMs, and later for space exploration which resulted in the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite ever launched.

Vostok (Russian: Восток, lit. 'East') was a family of rockets derived from the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM and was designed for the human spaceflight programme. This family of rockets launched the first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) and the first crewed spacecraft (Vostok) in human history. It was a subset of the R-7 family of rockets.

Jericho (Hebrew: יריחו, romanized: Yericho) is a general designation given to a loosely related family of deployed ballistic missiles developed by Israel since the 1960s. The name is taken from the first development contract for the Jericho I signed between Israel and Dassault in 1963, with the codename as a reference to the Biblical city of Jericho. As with some other Israeli high tech weapons systems, exact details are classified, though there are observed test data, public statements by government officials, and details in open literature especially about the Shavit satellite launch vehicle.

The later Jericho family development is related to the Shavit and Shavit II space launch vehicles believed to be derivatives of the Jericho II MRBM and that preceded the development of the Jericho III ICBM. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US concluded that the Shavit could be adapted as an ICBM carrying a 500 kg warhead over 7,500 km. Additional insight into the Jericho program was revealed by the South African series of missiles, of which the RSA-3 are believed to be licensed copies of the Jericho II/Shavit, and the RSA-4 that used part of these systems in their stack with a heavy first stage. Subsequent to the declaration and disarming of the South African nuclear program, the RSA series missiles were offered commercially as satellite launch vehicles, resulting in the advertised specifications becoming public knowledge.

Trevor Gardner (24 August 1915 - 28 September 1963) was U. S. Assistant Secretary of the Air force for Research and Development during the early 1950s. Together with Bernard Schriever, the Air Staff's Assistant for Development Planning, Gardner was one of the prime movers of the U.S. ICBM program and was instrumental to the U-2 program.