Spinardi, Graham. "Why the US Navy went for Hard-Target Counterforce in Trident II (And Why it Didn’t Get There Sooner)". International Security, Vol.15, No.2 (1990): 147-190.

Spinardi, Graham. "Why the US Navy went for Hard-Target Counterforce in Trident II (And Why it Didn’t Get There Sooner)". International Security, Vol.15, No.2 (1990): 147-190.

• The deployment of the Trident II submarine missile system marks a major transition towards a counterforce nuclear stance in the US Navy. Whereas naval nuclear assets were previously on the untrackable and secure but inaccurate Polaris system and predicated on massive counter-value targeting of Soviet cities, the enhanced accuracy of Trident II makes a transition to counterforce possible (147).
• The development of new weapons systems can be seen either as a result of external factors, often triggered as a rational response to the actions of adversaries, or as a result of internal factors like bureaucratic factions and technological determinism (147-148). 
• In the case of weapons systems, bureaucratic internal factors provide the best explanation, as external factors cannot explain the range of technical decisions being made and technological determinism does not explain the abandonment or promotion of similar systems. The development of weapons systems must thus be considered to be the result of social relationships, mediated through the organization of hierarchical bureaucracies (148-149).
• Bureaucratic politics are not always the best explanation for political events, but they fit weapons development and procurement well because that process takes place within one bureaucracy over the course of years and is thus heavily subject to those bureaucratic impulses (188-189).
• In the case of the Trident system, technological determinism cannot provide an answer because when the Air Force and Navy were presented with the same technical capabilities, the Navy resisted developing counterforce capabilities for decades. Bureaucratic politics is a good explanation, as it is supported by the repeated desire of the Navy to preserve its organizational integrity by differentiating its mission from that of the Air Force (188).
• This bureaucratic explanation is not complete either, however, as the eventual shift towards a counterforce system in the Trident II missile was not the result of internal bureaucratic politics but a result of larger changes in defense community (189).
• The Navy had difficulty adopting ballistic missiles to naval use or convincing anyone to command to do so, since early tests with captured German V2 missiles failed and demonstrated the danger of liquid fuel on surface ships (150).
• The adaption of a naval ballistic missile system was made possible through the approval of intermediate-range ballistic missiles [IRBMs] by the Killian Committee n 1955. Navy leadership, however, was loath to adopt IRBMs for naval use because this was seen as competed with funds for the Triton cruise missile program that was believed to offer greater accuracy. Moreover, Navy leadership was opposed to the countervalue bombing strategy advocated by the Air Force in which the IRBM would be used (150-151).
• This dissent against the IRBM program was quelled by Admiral Arleigh Burke, appointed Chief of Naval Operations in August 1955. Admiral Burke secured assurance that IRBM funds would be allocated separated from the main naval budget (151).
• The Naval IRBM program still had issues, however, as President Eisenhower was unwilling to approve funding for a third ballistic missile program in addition to the Army's Jupiter and the Air Force's Thor system, so the Navy was forced to adapt the Jupiter IRBM system for naval use. They encountered a number of difficulties in this due to its use of liquid fuel (151).
• In December 1956, the Navy received permission to abandon its failed joint Jupiter project with the Army and instead pursue the development of its own Polaris system, now feasible due to advances in solid fuels (151).
• The Navy tried to avoid interference in the Polaris program by the Air Force by stressing that the Polaris IRBM would serve a tactical role in attack naval targets, distinct from the strategic role of Air Force missile systems (151-152).
• By 1957, the Navy changed its tune and discussed the Polaris system as a strategic weapon. However, it argued that it still served a different role because it supported 'finite deterrence' based on a small defensible force in contrast to Air Force emphasis on 'over-kill' (152).
• The Polaris system was intended to be accurate enough to hit Soviet cities, but not accurate enough to pursue a counterforce mission and therefore keep the system out of competition with the Air Force (152).
• The Polaris system was placed into active duty on 15 November 1960 when it was placed on the USS George Washington and send to patrol off the Norwegian coast (153).
• When deployed, the missiles had neither the desired range nor yield, but its deployed was pushed ahead to fuck over the Air Force. This pattern was considered by the Navy's Special Projects Office, as it viewed accuracy and yield objectives as goals rather than requirements for deployment (153).
• The Polaris A1 variety deployed in 1960 was unreliable due to a lack of testing and the likelihood of electrical failures that could not be repaired on-ship. It was in response to these deficiencies that the Polaris A2 missile was issued, being deployed on 23 October 1961 on the USS Ethan Allan and replacing the A1 in June 1962 (154).
• A Polaris A3 missile was designed to improve on previous designs with a longer range and higher yield. These changes were particularly desired by Naval officers who wanted to compete with the Air Force for possession of strategic arms (154-155).
• These initial plans to turn the Polaris A3 into a strategic weapon were scrapped due to a moratorium on nuclear tests and fears that the existing system would be unable to penetrate new Soviet anti-ballistic missile systems (155).
• The Navy responded to these challenges while still meeting its goal of increasing yield by developing a multiple re-entry vehicle system [MRV]. The spacing of the separate warheads was designed to avoid negation by Soviet anti-ballistic missile systems (155-156).
• In November 1963, the Navy mission to redesign the Polaris system was turned into a joint project with the Navy to develop and improve the multiple re-entry vehicle system to better penetrate defended and hardened urban targets (157-159).
• The development of more advanced capabilities in these systems, particularly through the multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicle system [MIRV], allowed the Navy to hit multiple cities with the sample missile. This excited advocates of counterforce in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, namely Rear Admiral George Miller and Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze, who both believed that this innovation could allow them to edge out the Air Force from its predominant role in counterforce operations (159-160).
• In November 1964, the Department of Defense approved the development of a Polaris B3 missile equipped with a MIRV system and with great improvements in accuracy to facilitate attacks against hardened targets or multiple soft targets. In January 1965, President Johnson approved this development under the name Poseidon C3 (160).
• The first issue encountered in the development of the Poseidon C3 system was what re-entry vehicle to use. They ended up selecting the smaller Mk3 vehicle to guarantee reliability against anti-ballistic missile systems at the cost of payload, although this was also to avoid using the Mk12 or Mk17 systems, which were used by the Air Force (160-161).
• This decision received criticism from parts of the Navy that wanted more competition with the Air Force through the development of counterforce capabilities, which were limited with the Mk3, but more extensive with the other systems (161).
• Navy contractor Kearfott tried to convince the Navy to adopt the superior stellar-inertial guidance system to its Poseidon missile program, but the Navy was initially skeptical of additional cost and complexity. They still wanted to maintain a primarily countervalue strategy that did not require major improvements in accuracy and only adopted the stellar-inertial guidance system under pressure from the Department of Defense who desired additional accuracy (164-165).
• The adoption of the stellar-inertial guidance system also improved accuracy enough that the Mk3 system was no longer deficient in its capacity to strike hard targets. This meant that suggestions to use the Mk17 vehicle were again disregarded (165-166).
• Initially, the new guidance system and its Mk4 vehicle were championed by the Nixon administration as a cost-cutting measure, but this public debate ended up torpedoing the project by opening up the desirability of increased accuracy to congressional review. The Mk4 vehicle and stellar-inertial guidance system was canceled in December 1969 due to concerns that it would jeopardize MAD by being too good at its counterforce mission (166-167).
• The Navy leadership really didn't seem to care that the stellar-inertial guidance system was canceled, since it and its accuracy enhancements had been demanded by the Department of Defense not requested from within the Navy (167).
• Trident was the victor of the 1966 'Strat-X' study to determine the most cost-effective strategic weapon that was still able to assure destructure against anti-ballistic missile systems (168).
• There was an idea to build a larger submarine to carry and larger version of the Trident system, as supported by Admiral Hyman Rickover, head of the Navy Nuclear Power Directorate. However, there was pushback over the development of a new submarine and instead Trident was developed as compatible with existing Poseidon submarines (168).
• Although Trident was still primarily imagined as a countervalue weapon, there were some groups, particularly around John Brett, Undersecretary for Strategic Systems in the White House, who thought that Trident was a great opportunity to pursue counterforce under the guise of improving the range and accuracy of naval ballistic missiles thereby avoiding congressional scrutiny (168-169).
• The Navy Special Projects Office still opposed the expansion of missile range or yield, attempting to continue using the Mk3 vehicle and keep the design virtually unchanged and thus costs lower (169-170).
• There was heavy pressure from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to create a new delivery vehicle with a new warhead, so eventually the Navy agreed to develop a larger warhead and a new larger re-entry vehicle for the Trident system (170-171).
• In 1973, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger again began hounding the Navy for increased missile accuracy, especially because not only were missile inaccurate but also the Navy lacked the statistical models to explain flight pattern deviations or failures (173).
• Conversations about these issues between Secretary Schlesinger and Admiral Levering Smith developed into a broader program to enhance accuracy models for the Navy, with a commitment from the Navy to serious attempt to increase missile accuracy. The Department of Defense did not, however, impose any requirements of accuracy for Navy systems being developed (173-175).
• The Improved Accuracy Program developed in 1974 considered three main ways to improve missile accuracy: GPS tracking, homing missile technologies, and stellar-inertial guidance. Seeking to stick to something that they understood, the Navy decided to pursue stellar-inertial guidance (175-176).
• The Navy had resisted adopting counterforce doctrines for decades on the basis that this was an Air Force project. Instead, the Navy focused on retaliatory deterrence capabilities. This began to change by 1976, as attention to the vulnerabilities of land-based ICBMs created a need for other naval and air-based systems to be capable to striking hard targets (177).
• This change in Navy attitudes towards counterforce was not the result of internal politics, as interest in counterforce remained limited during the 1970s, but because of a broader shift towards counterforce in response to Soviet nuclear parity (178-179).
• The idea of shifting counterforce responsibilities to the Navy resulted from the Air Force's development of the MX missile, which it argued would greatly enhance counterforce capabilities. Its land-basing posed issues of vulnerability, however, leading to a shift of its responsibilities onto the newly accurate Trident II system to ensure survivability. This also meant that Trident II now had an explicitly counterforce mission (179-180).
• This transition from the MX system to the Trident II system was also a political move as opposition to counterforce in Congress was primarily directed against the MX system and many were willing to support the Trident II as an alternative (180).
• In November 1987, Congress selected the Trident II system to replace MX as the primary counterforce missile system. In doing so, however, opposition to counterforce shifted from the MX to the Trident II system, which was targetted as a weapon that soured relations with the USSR because of its usability in a first strike (185-186).
• The Navy justified its development of a new submarine on the basis that this was necessary to store Trident II missiles with a longer range and greater accuracy, and thus wanted to support the project (172-173).
• The counterforce demands that increasingly shifted from the MX system to the Trident II missile meant that it had to be radically increased in yield (182).
• The Trident II system also sought to improve upon stellar-inertial guidance by incorporating a gravity sensor system that would allow the system to select targets based on gravitational data collected by the Navy (183-184).
• The benefits of the Trident II program are increasingly being called into question as the system is large, complex, threatening, and expensive during a period of thaw in the Cold War when counterforce capabilities are seen as increasingly undesirable (187).
• There was an essential dispute within the Navy about the seriousness of the rivalry with the Air Force. The strongest advocates of competition with the Air Force were organized into the 'great circle group', which was formalized into the Office of Strategic Offensive and Defensive Systems in 1967. They took the stance that the Navy must be able to perform all tasks that the Air Force was capable of performing (161).