In 1967, the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recommended developing a stellar-inertial guidance system for the Poseidon force, and this was supported by the JCS and the Secretary of the Navy.

However, in his ‘Aerospace Memoirs’, Art Lowell recalls that when he was Assistant General Manager, Polaris Program…

“By Kissinger State Dept. fiat, SSPO [US Navy Strategic Systems Program office] was not permitted to have such accuracy in its FBM [Fleet Ballistic Missile], for fear the Soviets would believe that we were preparing for a first strike against them.

“By the time of Trident, however, the FBM system had been released from this restraint, its mission defined to include ”counterforce”, and SSPO was permitted to make improvements in its submarine navigation systems, and add stellar tracking to the Trident’s guidance system (we’d had a stellar observation window in Poseidon all along, but were not allowed to add the tracking components.)”

Mercurius Cantabrigiensis