Grand Forks ABM site

This is the MSR ( Missile Site Radar) site near Grand Forks AFB, ND. The big pyramid housed the radar that tracked incoming missiles and guided 30 Spartan missiles and about 70 Sprint missiles to intercept as many as they could hit. The high cost and the general inefectivness to stop a nuclear high noon led to the closing of the site after about a month of it becoming operational in '75. Hey that's better than the fate of our #2 ABM site in Montana, which today stands only half built.

Enter the Spartan, the bigger of these two key players. The Spartan had a 5 MT W-71 warhead and yeah that'll wreck stuff. Being that in the 70's computers were slower and bigger than they are now, it was quite a challenge to ram one missile into another at supersonic speeds. So the alternative was to get as close as possible and hopefully the nuclear payload would down it's intended target in space before it re-entered the atmosphere. This missile had a range of 465 mi. and weighed 28,700 lbs. It was 55 ft. in length and soild fueled. If these guys couldn't do it, the job was given to the more numerous Sprints.

These little guys were the last ditch effort to save the Grand Forks Minuteman forces. The Sprints carried a low yield nuclear warhead to destroy inside the atmosphere, what eluded Spartan. They were 27 ft. long and weighed in at a whopping 7500 lbs. They had a 25 mi. range and were soild fueled like the Spartans. These missiles were fired after they left their silos. A powder gas generator propeled a piston that Sprint rested on inside the silo and pushed it up through a foam membrane cover. The piston stopped when it hit the top of the silo and the missile ignited a few feet above the ground. The missile had a ceiling of 100,000 ft. just slightly higher than the SR-71 / A-12 spyplanes of the era.