This site suggests Poseiden accuracy could have been far better, how true is the suggestion?
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-73.html
The low-yield warheads were deliberately chosen so that Poseidon was not suitable as a first-strike weapon against Soviet hardened strategic targets, but very effective as a retaliation weapon against “soft” targets (like cities). Because it was feared at the time, that an effectively invulnerable high-precision high-power SLBM would destablize the nuclear balance of deterrance, the development of a new stellar-inertial guidance system and high-yield warhead was not approved by the Department of Defense.
By: Mercurius - 3rd November 2007 at 14:58
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
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October 10, 2007 at 3:20 pm