... fearing the Soviet's rapid advancement's in rocketry; the American military vowed a speeded-up development process for our own missile force during the mid and late 1950's.
Amazing to think that Atlas, Titan and then Minuteman all came into operation within a 3-4 year period. Each one had several follow on developments and all augmented and then improved upon the previous programs. Together with bomber development, submarine launched ICBM's and the growth and complexity of a gigantic infrastructure of command and control; the size of the effort was nothing short of titanic!