January 11, 1957. Resolution of the Government of the USSR N° 61-39 on creation missile bases code - named "Angara" near Plesetsk and "Volga" near Salekhard.  July 12. Firstlaunch of R-12 missile.  October 15. Russian and China sign New Defense Technical Accord, where by Russia will supply China with two R-2 missiles, and related technical data. December 6. An agreement was signed to license production of the R-2 to China. A huge team of Russian rocket engineers and technicians went to Beijing to set up the production line. This rocket provided the technological base for the subsequent Chinese rocket programs.

The controversy known as the "missile gap" extended from 1957 to 1961. The gap refers to the difference between estimates of how many ICBMs the Soviets would deploy during the late 1950s and early 1960s versus how many the U.S. really would have. The question was a major one. The U.S., during this period, relied exclusively on bombers. (Both ICBMs and shorter range IRBMs were in the early test phase.) Although the U.S. bomber force was massive (214 B-52s,  1,650 B-47s,  and 150 B-36s in 1957), it was concentrated at comparatively few bases, and it would take 2 hours for only 134 of the bombers to take off.  An ICBM would have a flight time of only 30 minutes, and the U.S. Strategic Air Command was simply not organized for such a short reaction time. If the Soviets built a massive ICBM force before the U.S. equivalent was ready, the Russians would be in a position to destroy most of the U.S. nuclear forces on the ground. The U.S. would be unable to launch a counter-strike. Its bombers would be charred rubble. Accordingly, the ability of the U.S. to deter the Soviets from making such an attack in the first place was in doubt.

The missile gap controversy pitted the U.S. Air Force against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Army and Navy intelligence played more limited supporting roles. The controversy can be said to have started with the Gaither Report in late 1957. The Gaither committee (named for H. Rowan Gaither, its chairman) was originally organized in April 1957 to evaluate the feasibility of civil defense. Slowly, however, the committee broadened its examination into the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear forces. What it found was frightening. Although the CIA had predicted the Soviets would have an operational ICBMs it was the "Gaither report" that first brought to light how vulnerable the U.S. was to an ICBM attack - in particular, the lack of a fast reaction bomber force and the complete inability of the U.S. to detect an ICBM attack before the warheads exploded on their targets. The report itself and leaks about its conclusions generated a considerable amount of concern in Congress and with the public.

The concern centered on the Soviet Union production rate of the ICBMs and how soon the missiles would be operational. The CIA estimated, in November 1957, that the Soviet Union might have perhaps 10 rockets on their pads by early 1959, based on the Soviet Union pressing development at the maximum rate and there being no technical problems. The CIA further projected that the Soviet Union might have 100 ICBMs by early 1960 and perhaps 500 by early 1961. The Air Force estimates were for a large number of ICBMs operational by the end of 1959, 500 by mid-1960, and 1,000 by mid-1961, with this 500-per-year rate to continue into the 1960s. The normal procedure for estimating a weapon's production rate is to identify the factories being used. Their floor space would be measured and estimates made about each shift's productivity using U.S. examples. The number of shifts (a normal 8-hour day versus a three-shift, 24-hour effort) could be deter mined from such factors as housing in the area, transportation, and stockpiled materials. For the missile gap controversy, this estimating procedure was not possible, since the U.S. did not know where the Soviet factories were.

The Western world's lack of information did not end here. Also unknown was whether or not the Soviet Union had the capacity to produce the high-temperature alloys and precision electronics in the amount and on the same scale needed to support a massive effort. Faced with a dangerous unknown, one tends to fear the worst. The fear was reinforced by the "Sputnik", the surprise development of which showed a Western tendency to underestimate Soviet technology. Estimates became subjective and institutional demands and forces came to the forefront.