Missile gap

The Missile Gap was a term popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It was the fear that the Soviet Union had more nuclear missiles than the United States. People were worried that the Soviet Union could target the United States with these missiles, and the United States wouldn't be able to defend itself. To check if there was a Missile Gap, the United States used spy planes to take pictures of the Soviet Union and count the number of missiles they had. It turned out that there was no Missile Gap, and the United States and Soviet Union had about the same number of missiles.