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‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?/ That’s not my department!’ says Wernher von Braun.
TOM LEHRER’S satirical ditty on the Nazi-turned-American rocketeer was faithful to the essence of early missile development, whose principal challenge was hoisting the weapons into the sky. Gravity did most of the rest.
They combine the speed of intercontinental ballistic missiles with the accuracy of cruise missiles. The first warheads capable of steering on descent did not arrive until the 1980s. Even they were limited in how much they could move around, making it pretty easy to predict their target area.