I read Kipling because I love the poetry of empire and war. So if the fusion of art and war worked through the medium of rhythm and rhyme, why not extend it to say — hauntingly beautiful photos of the US strategic arsenal? Enter Martin Miller’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, a Visual Perspective –
Although the term, WMD, has become a part of our daily lexicon, it remains very much an abstraction for most of us. This series of images offers a retrospective look at some of these weapons. Most of my subjects are drawn from the Cold War period during which there was a very real threat to the survival of civilization itself. The last sixty years has seen a frenzied tango between strategy and technology that has left us with the chilling array of doomsday machines seen here.
The shot above is of the now-canceled “Midgetman” ICBM, one of the Reagan procurements that never survived the fall of the USSR. Check out the rest of Mr. Miller’s gorgeous (and chilling) collection here.
–John Noonan
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Heh. I was just having a chat today with a younger coworker who crew-chiefed A-10s in OIF and didn’t see why the next nuclear bomber shouldn’t be unmanned. The discussion evolved into a discussion of eras and how perspectives are shaped by experience. He had never heard of the Palomares episode. I was surprised (considering the WMD angles) to find out that in preparation he didn’t have to do gas chamber drills, and had little experience above MOPP 0. He had never heard of the kind of full blown shelter and force reconstitution exercises we used to go through regularly, much less working a full day at MOPP 4 like we regularly did in the 70s-80s. I suspect this probably varies much by unit and mission these days.
I think the midgetman launcher lives in the outdoor museum at Hill AF base north of Salt Lake. It’s a pretty nice museum, though the midgetman TEL wasn’t in great shape in 2001.
Kipling was never pro-war – and was scathing abut it after his son was killed in WWI. It would also be misleading to describe him as an imperialist, though he was adopted by the Empire.
“Four things greater than all things are;
Women and horses and power and war.”
~The Ballad of the King’s Jest
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 1/18/2009, at The Unreligious Right