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Unter der Rakentenlücke (missile gap) verstand man in den USA im Kalten Krieg eine scheinbare Überlegenheit der Sowjetunion bei der Anzahl und Sprengkraft ihrer ballistischen Raketen, also ein militärisches Ungleichgewicht. In der Realität gab es keine solche "Lücke". Sie existierte nur auf dem Papier in Form übertriebener Schätzungen und unbegründeter Annahmen des Gaither-Kommittees 1957 sowie in den Daten der United States Air Force (USAF). Sogar die widersprüchlichen Schätzungen der CIA über die Waffensysteme der Sowjetunion, aus denen ein klarer Vorteil für die USA hervorging, bewegten sich noch weit oberhalb der tatsächlichen Zahl sowjetischer Raketen. Wie bei der "Bomberlücke" nur wenige Jahre zuvor, wurde bald nachgewiesen, dass die "Rakentenlücke" frei erfunden war.

Die Prägung des Begriffs wird John F. Kennedy im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf von 1958 zugeschrieben. Er griff das Kabinett Eisenhower unter anderem an, weil es angeblich die Landesverteidigung vernachlässige. Später wurde bekannt, dass Kennedy noch im laufenden Wahlkampf über die tatsächliche Faktenlage informiert worden war. Historiker begannen zu hinterfragen, was genau Kennedy wusste und wann er es erfuhr. Möglicherweise war Kennedy von vornherein klar, dass es sich bei der Raketenlücke um einen reinen Popanz handelte, dessen er sich aus rein politischen Gründen bediente - ein Beispiel für die Taktik der "policy by press release", also politische Einflußnahme über die Medien.

Hintergrund

Mit dem Start des ersten künstlichen Erdsatelliten Sputnik 1 am 4. Oktober 1957 unterstrich die Sowjetunion ihre technischen Errungenschaften, während sich die amerikanische Öffentlichkeit und Politik mit beunruhigenden Fragen konfrontiert sahen. Obgleich die sowjetischen Satellitenpläne nach ihrer Bekanntgabe im Rahmen des Internationalen Geophysikalischen Jahrs dem US-Militär und zivilen Stellen bestens bekannt waren, nahm die amerikanische Öffentlichkeit Päsident Dwight D. Eisenhowers Erklärung mit Skepsis auf, denn ihr Verhältnis zur Politik war noch immer durch die Verwerfungen der McCarthy-Ära beschädigt.

Für Eisenhowers politische Gegner war Sputnik auch wegen der schwachen Reaktion des Präsidenten ein gefundenes Fressen. Es schien als nehme die Regierung eine eklatante Bedrohung nicht ernst genug. Senator John F. Kennedy gab zu Protokoll, dass "das Land das Satelliten-Rennen gegen die Sowjetunion verliert, wegen überheblicher Fehleinschätzungen, überzogener Sparsamkeit, Haushaltskürzungen, unglaublich konfusem Missmanagement sowie Verschwendung aufgrund sinnloser Rivalitäten und eifersüchtiger Ränkespiele" Die Sowjets schlugen ihrerseits aus der so gestärkten Position Kapital mit übertriebenen Darstellungen ihres Raketenprogramms und behaupteten am 4. Dezember 1958, dass "die Sowjetunion Interkontinentalraketen gegenwärtig am Fließband produziert." Fünf Tage später brüstete sich der sowjetische Permierminister Nikita Sergejewitsch Chruschtschow mit dem erfolgreichen Test einer solchen Rakete mit einer eindrucksvollen Reichweite von Vorlage:Convert. Im Verbund mit dem gescheiterten Start einer Titan Interkontinentalrakete in den USA im gleichen Monat verfestigte sich der Eindruck einer drückenden sowjetischen Überlegenheit in der Raketentechnologie.

Diskrepanz zwischen Informationen der Geheimdienste und der Öffentlichkeit

Die nachrichtendienstliche Einschätzuing der USA (National Intelligence Estimate NIE 11-10-57) vom Dezember 1957 prognostizierte, dass die Sowjets "wahrscheinlich im Zeitraum von Mitte 1958 bis Mitte 1959 in Kontingent von bis zu zehn einsatzfähigen Interkontinentalraketen-Prototypen" aufbauen würden. Die Zahlen wurden danach stetig weiter aufgebläht.

Nur wenige Monate später schlussfolgerte ein ähnlicher Bericht, der im August 1958 veröffentlichte NIE 11-5-58, dass die Sowjetunion "die technischen und industriellen Kapazitäten besitzt ... bis zu 100 ICBM" bis 1960 einsatzbereit zu machen und womöglich bis zu 500 ICBM "bis 1961 oder spätestens 1962."

However, senior U.S. leadership knew these estimates of existing Soviet missile capabilities were completely inaccurate. Beginning with the collection of photo-intelligence by high-altitude U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union in 1956, the Eisenhower administration had increasingly-hard evidence that strategic weapons estimates favoring the Soviets were false. The CIA placed the number of ICBMs to be closer to a dozen. Continued sporadic flights failed to turn up any evidence of additional missiles. But the White House and the CIA wished to protect the secrecy of the source of the information--the photographs captured by the U-2 flying in illegal violation of Soviet airspace--and so they continued to hide the more accurate information that there were nearly zero Soviet ICBMs deployed. They kept the American public in the dark even though they knew from the start that the Soviets were monitoring the U-2 overflights. On the very day of the first U-2 overflight the Soviet ambassador to Washington protested the high-altitude violation of Soviet airspace, a fact denied by Washington and reported on by the press.

Curtis LeMay argued that the large stocks of missiles were in the areas not photographed by the U-2s, and arguments broke out over the Soviet factory capability, in an effort to estimate their production rate.

In a widely syndicated article in 1959, Joseph Alsop even went so far as to describe "classified intelligence" as placing the Soviet missile count as high as 1,500 by 1963, while the US would have only 130 at that time.

It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes, was 4.

Although U2 intelligence programs provided unprecedented and reassuring evidence that there was a missile gap in favor of the United States, President Eisenhower’s administration was accused of allowing the Soviet Union to accumulate a missile gap against the United States. The false claims behind a Soviet Missile gap began after CIA Director Allen W. Dulles presented new estimates of the Soviet’s nuclear program to the National Security Council on January 7, 1960. The report presented by Dulles showed the Soviet Union did not have a crash program to build ICBMs and that they only had 50 ICBMs operational. Disagreements between the future capabilities of the Soviet Union to produce ICBMs by members of the National Security Council leaked to the public causing the false notion of a missile gap. As members of the National Security Council, representatives of the U.S. Air Force pessimistically estimated that the Soviet Union could possess more than 800 ICBMs by 1963. One week after the National Security Council meeting, Washington Post reporter, John G. Norris, published an article that selectively reported and misinterpreted highly classified information that claimed the National Security Council acknowledged a missile gap with the Soviets and that they would possess over 1000 ICBMs by 1963. Later that month, The New York Times would publish an article that claimed that there was “clear evidence that the Russians [had] superiority in intercontinental ballistic missiles.” The distortions and inconsistencies caused by the inaccurate articles in the media led the public to mistrust the Eisenhower administration. Senator Symington accused the administration of “deliberately manipulating the intelligence estimate to mislead the public.” Journalists, such as Joe Alsop, charged the Eisenhower administration with “gambling the nation’s future” on questionable intelligence. Alsop’s ideas would appeal to John F. Kennedy who incorporated them in his election campaigns that criticized the Eisenhower administration for allowing a missile gap to exist.

Politik

Projected numbers of Soviet ICBM (Program A: CIA, B: USAF, C: Army&Navy)

Hawkish members of Congress, such as Senator Stuart Symington, continued to beat the drums about the alleged missile gap in an effort to pressure the president to increase spending on Wehrtechnik. President Eisenhower resented being bullied based on inaccurate information and was beginning to formulate the term "Militärisch-industrieller Komplex" to describe the close nexus between U.S. politicians and the Rüstungsindustrie.

In 1958, Kennedy was gearing up for his Senate re-election campaign and seized the issue. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term "missile gap" on 14 August 1958, when he stated, "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." According to Robert McNamara, Kennedy was leaked the inflated US Air Force estimates by Senator Stuart Symington, the former United States Secretary of the Air Force. Unaware that the report was misleading, Kennedy used the numbers in the document and based some of his 1960 election campaign platform on the Republicans being "weak on defense." The missile gap was a common theme.

Eisenhower refused to refute the claims publicly for fear that public disclosure would jeopardize the secret U-2 flights. Consequently, Eisenhower was frustrated by what he conclusively knew to be Kennedy's erroneous claims that the United States was behind the USSR in its number of missiles.

In an attempt to defuse the situation, Eisenhower arranged for Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to be apprised of the information, first with a meeting by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then Strategic Air Command, and finally with the Director of the CIA, Allen Welsh Dulles, in July 1960. Still, Kennedy continued to use the same rhetoric, which modern historians have debated as likely being so useful to the campaign that he was willing to ignore the truth.

In January 1961, McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and Roswell Gilpatric, a new deputy secretary, who strongly believed in the existence of a missile gap, personally examined photographs taken by Keyhole satellites. Although the Soviet R-7 launchers were large and would be easy to spot in Corona photographs, they did not appear in any of them. In February, McNamara stated that there was no evidence of a large-scale Soviet effort to build ICBMs. More satellite overflights continued to find no evidence, and by September 1961, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the USSR had no more than 25 ICBMs and would not possess more in the near future.

The missile gap was greatly in the US's favor. Satellite photographs showed the Soviets had 10 operational ICBMs, the US 57. According to Budiansky, the SS-6 and SS-7 missiles "took hours to fuel and had to have their unstable liquid propellant drained every thirty days to prevent them from blowing up on the launch pad; the new U.S. LGM-30 Minuteman, entering final testing, was powered by solid propellant and could be launched in minutes."

During a transition briefing, Jerome Wiesner, "a member of Eisenhower's permanent Science Advisory Committee,... explained that the missile gap was a fiction. The new president greeted the news with a single expletive "delivered more in anger than in relief"

Kennedy was later embarrassed by the whole issue; the 19 April 1962 issue of The Listener noted, "The passages on the 'missile gap' are a little dated, since Mr Kennedy has now told us that it scarcely ever existed."

During McNamara's first press conference, three weeks into his new role as Secretary of Defense, he was asked about the missile gap. According to Budiansky, McNamara replied, "Oh, I've learned there isn't any, or if there is, it's in our favor." The room promptly emptied as the Pentagon press corps rushed to break the news.

Now the president, Johnson told a gathering in 1967:Vorlage:Citation needed

Effects

Warnings and calls to address imbalances between the fighting capabilities of two forces were not new, as a "bomber gap" had exercised political concerns only a few years earlier. What was different about the missile gap was the fear that a distant country could strike without warning from far away with little damage to themselves. Concerns about missile gaps and similar fears, such as nuclear proliferation, continue.

Promotion of the missile gap had several unintended consequences. The R-7 requires as much as 20 hours to be readied for launch so they could be easily attacked by bombers before they could strike. That demanded them be based in secret locations to prevent a pre-emptive strike on them. As Corona could find the sites no matter where they were located, the Soviets decided not to build large numbers of R-7s and preferred more-advanced missiles that could be launched more quickly.

Later evidence has emerged that one consequence of Kennedy pushing the false idea that America was behind the Soviets in a missile gap was that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and senior Soviet military figures began to believe that Kennedy was a dangerous extremist, who worked with the American military to plant the idea of a Soviet first-strike capability to justify a pre-emptive American attack.Vorlage:Citation needed That belief about Kennedy as a militarist was reinforced in Soviet minds by the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis after the Soviets placed nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962.Vorlage:Citation needed

Second claim in 1970s

A second claim of a missile gap appeared in 1974. Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment in his 1974 foreign policy article, "Is There a Strategic Arms Race?" Wohlstetter concluded that the US was allowing the USSR to achieve military superiority by not closing a perceived missile gap. Many conservatives then began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat.

That led to an exercise in competitive analysis, with a group called Team B being created with the production of a highly controversial report.

According to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the USA had a six-to-one advantage in the number of nuclear warheads over the USSR by 1976.

A 1979 briefing note on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the missile gap concluded that the NIE's record on estimating the Soviet missile force in the 1970s was mixed. The NIE estimates for initial operational capability (IOC) date for MIRVed ICBMs and SLBMs were generally accurate, as were the NIE predictions on the development of Soviet strategic air defenses. However, the NIE predictions also overestimated the scope of infrastructure upgrades in the Soviet system and underestimated the speed of Soviet improvement in accuracy and proliferation of re-entry vehicles.

NIE results were regarded as improving but still vague and showed broad fluctuations and had little long-term validity.

Popular culture

The whole idea of a missile gap was parodied in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in which a doomsday device is built by the Soviets because they had read in The New York Times that the US was working along similar lines and wanted to avoid a "Doomsday Gap." As the weapon is set up to go off automatically if the USSR is attacked, which occurs as the movie progresses, the president is informed that all life on the surface will be killed off for a period of years. The only hope for survival is to select important people and place them deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation clears. The generals almost immediately begin to worry about a "mine shaft gap" between the US and Soviets. In reference to the alleged "missile gap" itself, General Turgidson mentions off-hand at one point that the United States actually has a five-to-one rate of missile superiority against the USSR. The Soviet ambassador himself also explains that one of the major reasons that the Soviets began work on the doomsday machine was that they realized that they simply could never match the rate of American military production (let alone outproduce American missile construction). The doomsday machine cost only a small fraction of what the Soviets normally spent on defense in a single year.

See also

• Bomber gap
• Cruiser gap
• Nuclear arms race