Intercontinental ballistic missile Facts for Kids

A trident missile, launched from a submarine

ICBM is an acronym. It stands for Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. It is a missile that can travel such distances so it can be used from one continent to another. The missile can then carry a bomb. This can be a conventional or nuclear warhead. Today, most of the time, it will be a nuclear warhead.It is a guided ballistic missile which follows a path and has a range of 5500 km.They are primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery but can also carry chemical and biological weapons.

Images for kids

A US Peacekeeper missile launched from a silo
An SM-65 Atlas, the first US ICBM, first launched in 1957
1965 graph of USAF Atlas and Titan ICBM launches, cumulative by month with failures highlighted (pink), showing how NASA's use of ICBM boosters for Projects Mercury and Gemini (blue) served as a visible demonstration of reliability at a time when failure rates had been substantial.
Deployment history of land-based ICBM, 1959–2014
Schematic view of a submarine-launched Trident II D5 nuclear missile system, capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads up to 8,000 km (5,000 mi)
ICBMs can be deployed from transporter erector launchers (TEL), such as the Russian RT-2PM2 Topol-M
Artist's concept of an SS-24 deployed on railway
A US Peacekeeper missile launched from a silo
Testing of the Peacekeeper re-entry vehicles at the Kwajalein Atoll. All eight fired from only one missile. Each line, if its warhead were live, represents the potential explosive power of about 300 kilotons of TNT, about nineteen times larger than the detonation of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
India's Agni-V ICBM launched from Abdul Kalam Island
A Minuteman III ICBM test launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, United States
A Soviet R-36M (SS-18 Satan), the largest ICBM in history, with a throw weight of 8,800 kg

Intercontinental ballistic missile facts for kids

Images for kids

See also