In the mid-1960s, senior Pentagon officials became concerned about the state of the US nuclear deterrent force. The Soviet Union for years had been churning out more and more heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles—long-range, fast-flying, silo-based nuclear weapons. At the same time, the Soviet Union had begun building anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense systems around important homeland targets. The two developments, either singly or in combination, had the potential to alter the strategic superpower balance. The problems were fundamental ones. First, increasingly numerous ICBMs posed a threat to America’s own weapons. How could the US maximize the portion of the nuclear arsenal...