Harold Brown, the MIRV-maker

Brown helped make the SSBN the go-to element of the nuclear triad and went on to become the 8th Secretary of the Air Force and 14th Secretary of Defense.

One of the most interesting SECDEFs to ever hold the position, Harold Brown, has passed away. A nuclear physicist, he joined the team (and later became the director at) what is now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1952 and led the group that created a smaller nuclear reentry vehicle for the Polaris missile and its replacements. To have a grasp on what this meant, the follow-on Poseidon could carry as many as 14 367-pound W68 warheads, each capable of 50 kilo-tons, whereas a MIRV’d Polaris could only carry 3 W58 warheads with a yield of 200 kilotons each. A lot more bang for the buck.

Brown was tapped by McNamara to become DoD’s Director of Defense Research and Engineering in…