the time production ended in 1975. The Boeing Company sub-contracted with the Lockheed Propulsion Company for the propellants, which subsequently closed with the end of the SRAM program. AGM-69B SRAM An upgraded AGM-69B SRAM was proposed in the late 1970s, with an upgraded motor to be built by Thiokol and a W80 warhead, but it was cancelled by President Jimmy Carter (along with the B-1A) in 1978. Various plans for alternative guidance schemes, including an anti-radar seeker for use against air defense installations and even a possible air-to-air missile version, came to nothing. AGM-131 SRAM II A new weapon, the AGM-131 SRAM II, began development in 1981, intended to arm the resurrected B-1B, but it was cancelled in 1991 by President George Bush, along with most of the U.S. Strategic Modernization effort (including Peacekeeper Mobile (Rail) Garrison, Midgetman small ICBM and Minuteman III modernization) in an effort by the U.S. to ease nuclear pressure on the disintegrating Soviet Union. 1990s In June 1990, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered the missiles removed from bombers on alert pending a safety inquiry. A decade earlier in September 1980, A B-52H on alert status at Grand Forks AFB in northeastern North Dakota experienced a wing fire that burned for three hours, fanned by evening winds of . The wind direction was parallel to the fuselage, which likely had SRAMs in the main bay. Eight years later, weapons expert Roger Batzel testified to a closed U.S. Senate hearing that a change of wind direction could have led to a conventional explosion and a widespread scattering of radioactive plutonium. The AGM-69A was retired in 1993 over growing concerns about the safety of its warhead and rocket motor. There were serious concerns about the solid rocket motor, when several motors suffered cracking of the propellant, thought to occur due to the hot/cold cycling year after year. Cracks in the propellant could cause catastrophic failure once ignited. Specifications Length: with tail fairing, without tail fairing Diameter: . Wing span: . Launch weight: . Maximum speed: Mach 3.5 Maximum range: depending on flight profile Powerplant: 1 × Lockheed SR75-LP-1 two stage solid-fuel rocket motor Guidance: General Precision/Kearfott KT-76 IMU and Stewart-Warner radar altimeter CEP: Warhead: W69 thermonuclear References General Gunston, Bill (1979). Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Rockets & Missiles. London: Salamander Books. External links Air University and the 42nd Air Base Wing Strategic Air Command Cold War nuclear