Gallia- wrote:TBF, all of those dumb exotic basing methods were invented simply to make the Racetrack look good in comparison, rather than any practical security or engineering concerns.
Yeah the report this is from is explicitly designed to explain why they went with racetrack for MX. It's peppered with proposals that are clearly BS and seem like they were thrown in as filler. I think the only one that had seen any serious work done at the time besides race track was burying the missiles in deep underground tunnels (which got at least as far as the USAF playing with a tunnel boring machine). Off road trucks and Midgetman are both mentioned but they're listed separately from each other, so I think the report predates Midgetman becoming a serious project fielded in such a manner.