Project Thumper

Project Thumper was a USAF Cold War anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system contracted to General Electric in March 1946. Due to funding problems within the newly created United States Air Force, the original Thumper work was cancelled in 1949 and its funds were redirected to the GAPA anti-aircraft project. When that program ran into technical problems, it was merged with Project Wizard to produce the CIM-10 Bomarc missile.

Background
On June 20, 1945, the Army Ground Forces Equipment review listed the requirement for "High velocity guided missiles...capable of...destroying missiles of the V-­2 type, should be developed at the earliest practicable date" and in January 1946 the Commanding General of the Army Ground Forces (AGF) established a requirement for a study program on the V-2 problem. In early February, the Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment, the Stilwell Board, restated the antimissile requirement in its report on a Proposed National Program for Guided Missiles and at the end of May, the board published a requirement for an antimissile with a 100,000 yard range.

Program
Military Experimental program 795 (MX-795) was started in March 1946 for the Thumper program to consider the problem of defending against ballistic missiles using the "collision intercept" method, the first known ABM effort. In the summer of 1947 both Thumper and Wizard were turned into long-term studies, with General Electric receiving $500,000 a year.

Thumper and Wizard were initially based on a similar missile design, 60 ft long and 6 ft in diameter, with a range of 550 mi. In the spring of 1947, it was estimated that it would be ten years "before the necessary long-range ground radar, long-range and highly accurate guidance systems and long-­range radar seekers could be developed for the test support of any antimissile missile devised by General Electric or the University of Michigan". On 30 June 1949 the Joint Chiefs of Staff allowed the Thumper contract to lapse, and redirected those funds to the Boeing Ground-to-Air Pilotless Aircraft program.

(On 16 January 1958, the new Secretary of Defense redirected Wizard solely to radar research—the USAF had concluded that "the proposed Wizard system, advocated as an alternative to Nike Zeus was...not cost effective.''