1982
NATO new nightmares.
By 1967 courtesy of McNamara the US government had essentially settled on a thousand of Minuteman in silos: and nothing else outside a handful of Titan IIs. Crucially, mobile ballistic missiles had always been stillborn, and remained so for the immediate future. Things like Minuteman on trains, or a smaller Minuteman on trucks.
The Soviets however had gone the opposite way.
Starting very late with solid-fuel, the RT-1 and RT-2 had been half baked failures - from the classic rocket OKBs like Korolev's OKB-1. Things started to change after 1966 when Nadiradze entered the picture. By 1969 he essentially restarted solid-fuel missile design from a clean sheet of paper - and was tremendously successful.
Within the span of the 1970's he created an entire family of road and rail mobile ballistic missiles: called by NATO SS-16, SS-20 and SS-25. The former and the latter were ICBMs, and SS-20 was intermediate range. By 1979 SALT-II treaty successfully eliminated SS-16 - except the Soviets just recycled the technology for the other two. SS-20 used a loophole to evade any treaty; SS-25 essentially was an upgraded SS-16 for the 1980's, after SALT-II was left to die by Reagan and Andropov. And as if that wasn't enough, the former Yangel design bureau in Ukraine created its own, mostly similar family of solid-fuel ballistic missiles: although only the SS-24 made it to service. It was yet another rail-based mobile ICBM, complementary of the SS-25 and just like it, thrieving on SALT-II expiration.
And thus by the early 1980's the Soviets had three, if not four, mobile ballistic missiles.
This send NATO scrambling for an answer: two answers, actually. They were the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Pershing II ballistic missile.
A teething issue however would be how to pin down the many SS-20, SS-24 and SS-25 mobile missiles so that the new B-2 bomber could nuke them before they nuked NATO. Later in the decade LACROSSE radarsats provided a partial answer, with a ground resolution of 1 m to 0.3 m. But they covered broad swath of Eurasia: way too much for even a squadron of B-2s to digest. Plus the satellites sped out in orbit, and they had to contend with Earth rotation moving the targets away.
Bottom line: some kind of intermediate system would be needed, akind to a loitering U-2... but much less vulnerable as it needed to loiter above the Warsaw Pact if not USSR proper: to hunt the SS-20, SS-24 and SS-25 playing hide and seek. This was a return to pre-spysat era overflights of the U-2, something abandonned for two reasons: provocation and spysats. Except with the twin revolutions of drones and stealth. The Ryan COMPASS ARROW however could not accomplish the mission, but it showed the way nonetheless: stealth included.
In the end the NRO and Air Force realized they needed the bastard child of a COMPASS ARROW and a B-2 to do the job. That is: a giant flying wing, stealth drone flying at a minimum of 80 000 ft if not outright 100 000 ft. A drone that could receive large amounts of LACROSSE data it would then thin, pinning down the elusive Soviet missiles whatever their moves. After what it would beam back its finding to Milstar relay satellites, in turn feeding B-2s coming for the fight just after WWIII broke out.
That was the plan, and it was no picnic: but there no other way around. The Soviet mobile missiles had severely disturbed the precarious nuclear balance in central Europe and in case of war they would have to be nuked first: before they could cripple NATO.
The plan however had major issues, one of them being cost. B-2 and Milstar promised to be eye-watering expensive, and the big stealth drone would be no cheaper. It was soon codenamed QUARTZ: also AARS - Advanced Airborne Reconnaissance System. It started with DARPA, then NRO got involved, and then the Air Force Strategic Air Command. In passing, AARS also become the SR-71 successor. Speed was no longer a shield against the colossal Soviet networked air defense system; the one and only way to penetrate Soviet airspace was full blown stealth. Not even F-117 faceted shape but B-2 with curves. AARS had its own weird shape called the flying clam. It looked like an half of a flying saucer in the front with an immense straight wing in the back: and no surfaces control whatsoever.
The B-2 and AARS would fly symbiotically, talking to each other via Milstar. Unfortunately they had a common issue: they were subsonic, with severe basing issues.
It was quite a vexing problem with no clear-cut answer.
If based in the USA, they could be kept absolutely secret far more easily: at well guarded places like Groom Lake or Area 51. Unfortunately the Warsaw pact and USSR would be a very long way around, wasting precious loitering time and fuel during transits. But if based in, say, Great Britain (as were U-2s and SR-71s) the risk of being unmasked were just too strong. B-2 and AARS technological packages were by far the most advanced in the entire world... and keeping them secret was paramount.
Overall, it was a quixotic choice. To solve the issue and also to save some precious time early in WWIII, the AARS studies also considered an ultra high speed platform. In that regard, Vandenberg AFB multiple secret squadrons of spaceplanes came in handily.
