Question: What was the MX Missile System?

Introduction to Question

During the 1970s and early 80s (near the end of the Cold War), the United States Department of Defense at the behest of the Jimmy Carter administration wished to create a field of missile silos and MX missiles in order to counteract a growing fear of American vulnerability to Soviet nuclear attacks. The missile system would have consisted of about 200 MX missiles and housing silos and it would have been constructed in western Utah and eastern Nevada.

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then consisting of President Spencer W. Kimball, President N. Eldon Tanner, and President Marion G. Romney, officially opposed the construction of the MX missiles on May 5, 1981. The statement was republished in the June 1981 edition of the Ensign, the official magazine of the Church. Support for construction of the MX was very high up to that point among members of the Church and elsewhere. It had received bipartisan support in the United States congress, would have brought a huge spur to the local economies, and would have aided in quelling fears regarding Soviet attack. The First Presidency garnered much criticism from supporters of the MX.

The First Presidency's statement reads as follows:

We have received many inquiries concerning our feelings on the proposed basing of the MX missile system in Utah and Nevada. After assessing in great detail information recently available, and after the most careful and prayerful consideration, we make the following statement, aware of the response our words are likely to evoke from both proponents and opponents of the system.

First, by way of general observation we repeat our warnings against the terrifying arms race in which the nations of the earth are presently engaged. We deplore in particular the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry. We are advised that there is already enough such weaponry to destroy in large measure our civilization, with consequent suffering and misery of incalculable extent.
Secondly, with reference to the presently proposed MX basing in Utah and Nevada, we are told that if this goes forward as planned, it will involve the construction of thousands of miles of heavy-duty roads, with the building of some 4,600 shelters in which will be hidden some 200 missiles, each armed with ten warheads. Each one of these ten nuclear warheads will have far greater destructive potential than did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We understand that this concept is based on the provisions of a treaty which has never been ratified, and that absent such a treaty, the proposed installation could be expanded indefinitely. Its planners state that the system is strictly defensive in concept and that the chances are extremely remote that it will ever be actually employed. However, history indicates that men have seldom created armaments that eventually were not put to use.
We are most gravely concerned over the proposed concentration in a relatively restricted area of the West. Our feelings would be the same about concentration in any part of the nation, just as we assume those in any other area so selected would have similar feelings. With such concentration, one segment of the population would bear a highly disproportionate share of the burden, in lives lost and property destroyed, in case of an attack, particularly if such were to be a saturation attack.
Such concentration, we are informed, may even invite attack under a first-strike strategy on the part of an aggressor. If such occurred the result would be near annihilation of most of what we have striven to build since our pioneer forebears first came to these western valleys.
Furthermore, we are told that in the event of a first-strike attack, deadly fallout would be carried by prevailing winds across much of the nation, maiming and destroying wherever its pervasive cloud touched.
Inevitably so large a construction project would have an adverse impact on water resources, as well as sociological and ecological factors in the area. Water has always been woefully short in this part of the West. We might expect that in meeting this additional demand for water there could be serious long term consequences.
We are not adverse to consistent and stable population growth, but the influx of tens of thousands of temporary workers and their families, together with those involved in support services, would create grave sociological problems, particularly when coupled with an influx incident to the anticipated emphasis on energy development.
Published studies indicate that the fragile ecology of the area would likewise be adversely affected.
We may predict that with so many billions of dollars at stake we will hear much talk designed to minimize the problems that might be expected and to maximize the economic benefits that might accrue. The reasons for such portrayals will be obvious.
Our fathers came to this western area to establish a base from which to carry the gospel of peace to the peoples of the earth. It is ironic, and a denial of the very essence of that gospel, that in this same general area there should be constructed a mammoth weapons system potentially capable of destroying much of civilization.
With the most serious concern over the pressing moral question of possible nuclear conflict, we plead with our national leaders to marshal the genius of the nation to find viable alternatives which will secure at an earlier date and with fewer hazards the protection from possible enemy aggression, which is our common concern.

The Reagan Administration cancelled the MX project.

Reflections on the entire episode were published by the Latter-day Saint academic journal BYU Studies in late 2022 by Paul A. Cox. BYU Studies' bio of him reads as follows:

Paul Alan Cox was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of the Environment, and was named one of TIME magazine’s eleven “Heroes of Medicine.” His conservation foundation, Seacology, has set aside over 1.5 million acres of rain forest and coral reef in sixty-six countries around the world. After serving as professor and dean at Brigham Young University, he became the first King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Science in Sweden. Currently, he serves as director of the Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This article is based on a talk presented at BYU’s David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies on January 18, 2017.

We strongly encourage those interested in this episode including criticisms of the Church to read Dr. Cox's article. It is a testament to the Church's wisdom in opposing the MX and the duty we have as Latter-day Saints to deescalate war efforts and protect our environment with the stewardship over the earth that God has granted us.

BYU Studies, "The Orchid and the Missile: Reflections on the MX"

Paul A. Cox, BYU Studies 61/2 (2022)

As Latter-day Saints, we are fortunate to have the Book of Mormon, which consists of writings of prophets from around 600 BC to AD 400 and of Christ’s teachings to inhabitants of the New World. The last of these New World prophets was named Moroni. As the lone faithful Nephite survivor of a genocidal war, Moroni spoke directly to us in our day, prophesying the conditions that would ultimately prevail: “Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands; And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places. Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth” (Morm. 8:29–31). Our days and times are truly marked by wars, rumors of wars, vapors of smoke, and great pollutions. It is interesting that Moroni links smoke, fire, and pollution to warfare in these verses, because modern warfare has serious environmental consequences. Although climate change, rain forest destruction, species extinction, and degradation of clean air and clean water all represent formidable environmental challenges, these threats pale compared to the environmental consequences of modern warfare in its most vicious and destructive form—detonation of nuclear weapons.

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Notes

Question: What was the MX Missile System?