Aloysius Casey was a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Air Force Systems Command, and the director and commander of the Ballistic Missile Office. In the interview he describes the development of the MX Missile in response to the Soviets hardening of their silos. He explains the debate over basing modes for the MX Missile under both the Carter and Reagan Administrations, noting that the Air Force reviewed over 30 possibilities in order to assure the public of their determination to find the best option. The modes included a tunnel system, hardened silos, proliferated silos, dense pack, and ultimately the Minuteman silos. Gen. Casey explains various technical aspects of the issue, including the differences between horizontal and vertical basing, and states that the governments aim was simply to find the best mode that was also politically acceptable, which he notes was especially difficult considering the amount of land some of the basing modes would require. Ironically, the approach backfired to a degree, as the public began to think of the MX as a missile the Air Force had no idea what to do with. He lays out the current deterrence situation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and believes that survivability, using whatever basing mode ultimately gets chosen, is key to maintaining deterrence.
