Minuteman

Minuteman (pronounced min-it-man)

(1) A member of a group of American militiamen just before and during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) who held themselves in readiness for rapid mobilization for military service (not always used with initial capital).

(2) A US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with three stages, powered by solid-propellant rocket engines.

(3) A variety of small, sometimes secretive paramilitary organizations formed in the US over many years with the aim of opposing variously defined threats (communist invasion; illegal immigration; election of Democratic Party administrations etc).

(4) Name for the Missouri Secessionist Paramilitaries, a pro-secession organization active in St Louis, Missouri, US between January-May 1861.

(5) In slang, a term used by women to describe men whose duration of activity during sex was unconscionably brief. 

1645: An Americanism predating the Revolutionary War and a compound word, the construct being minute + man.  Minute was from the Middle English minute, minut & minet, from the Old French minute, from the Medieval Latin minūta (one-sixtieth of an hour; note); doublet of menu.  Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann (human being, man), probably from the primitive Indo-European mon- (man) (men having the meaning “mind”); a doublet of manu.  The specific sense of “adult male of the human race” (distinguished from a woman or boy) was known in the Old English by circa 1000.   Old English used wer and wif to distinguish the sexes, but wer began to disappear late in the thirteenth century, replaced by mann and increasingly man.  Man also was in Old English as an indefinite pronoun (one, people, they) and used generically for "the human race, mankind" by circa 1200.  It was cognate with the West Frisian man, the Dutch man, the German Mann (man), the Norwegian mann (man), the Old Swedish maþer (man), the Swedish man, the Russian муж (muž) (husband, male person), the Avestan manš, the Sanskrit मनु (manu) (human being), the Urdu مانس‎ and Hindi मानस (mānas).   Although often thought a modern adoption, use as a word of familiar address, originally often implying impatience is attested as early as circa 1400, hence probably its use as an interjection of surprise or emphasis since Middle English.  It became especially popular from the early twentieth century.  The ICBM was deployed first in 1962 but the name may have existed as early as 1958.  All uses of minuteman are derived from the idea of civilian-soldiers, the colonial and revolutionary era militiaman who promised to be ready to fight at " one minute's notice"; as military formations, they were mobile, rapid-deployment forces.  Minuteman is a noun; the noun plural is minutemen except when speaking of objects such as missiles in which case it should be minutemans but within the US military "minutemen" seems to be preferred.

Development of the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) began in 1958, immediately after the USSR successfully launched Sputnik, the military significance of which was at the time less the satellite than the big 8K71 rocket used to launch it into orbit.  Essentially a modified Soviet ICBM, the 8K71’s success proved the Russians had the ability to deliver their nuclear weapons to the continental US.  At this point, whatever the views of the military, US strategic policy still envisaged the nuclear deterrent as a retaliatory rather than a first-strike weapon but the US missiles were liquid-fueled and thus not able to be launched in less than two hours.  The warheads from a Russian first-strike would explode in the US within thirty minutes.  The Minuteman solved the tactical problems inherent in the early US ICBMs, the big, immensely complex, liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan rockets.  The Minuteman’s missile and launch-site components used stable solid fuels, were (relatively) small and used a (relatively) simple design able (relatively) easily to be mass-produced, thus providing a quick-reacting, (relatively) cheaply produced, highly survivable component for the nuclear arsenal.  In service now for almost sixty years, they’re not scheduled wholly to be replaced until 2027.

By 1962, the Minuteman thus became the centrepiece of US nuclear strategy, part of a long struggle between the army, navy and air force, all of which wanted to assume primary responsibility for the strategic element of the arsenal.  Inevitably, it became also the focus of disputes between the Pentagon, the White House and the Congress over cost which translated into squabbles about how many were needed and depending on how this was calculated could produce a big number because the analysts in the Pentagon based their mat on a first strike destroying (the term used in close to its literal sense) not only the major cities and military installations in the Soviet Union but also those in the PRC (People's Republic of China, under the rule of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) since 1949).  Despite the scale of that ambition, graphs and charts were produced to prove the use nuclear arsenal was the cheapest was to achieve the objectives with the fewest causalities (military & civilian).  The congressional hearings gave the generals the chance to prove they were as adept as the politicians at budgetary low skullduggery.  Surprising many, the top brass were surprisingly willing to compromise on the missile count but that was because  they knew the next generation of Minuteman warheads would be Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) which meant three (later MIRVs on other platforms would have ten) warheads per missile so, even after appearing to accede to requests for restraint, the Pentagon ended up with about the same number of warheads originally requested.  The generals didn't burden the politicians with tiresome details about the engineering of MIRVs.

The Minutemen EP43 revealed Lindsay Lohan's interest in playing Batgirl in the DCEU.  The DCEU (DC Extended Universe) is a US media franchise, an ecosystem described as “a shared universe”, built on the characters in the Warner Brothers “superhero” films which were derived from those in the comic books published by DC Comics.  The DCEU is a multi-media venture which extends to comic books, films, novels, video games and, importantly, merchandize. DC is an initialism for “Detective Comics”, the first editions of which were published in 1937.