Missile Gap - Introduction

Introduction

The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957 highlighted the technological achievements of the Soviets and sparked some worrying questions for the politicians and general public of the USA. Although US military and civilian agencies were well aware of Soviet satellite plans, as they were publicly announced as part of the International Geophysical Year, Eisenhower's announcements that the event was unsurprising found little support among a US public still struggling with McCarthyism.

Political opponents seized on the event, and Eisenhower's ineffectual response, as further proof that the US was "fiddling as Rome burned." John F. Kennedy stated "the nation was losing the satellite-missile race with the Soviet Union because of ... complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies."

Kennedy, and other officials, stated claims that exaggerated Soviet missile counts by as much as 1,000 times what actually existed. Instead of having thousands of functioning missiles, the Soviets actually only had four prototypes. The fear generated by these false claims allowed a massive expansion of spending and authoritarian cold war measures that may otherwise have been impossible to justify to the voters.