The United States emerged from World War II with a strong economy and a sense of weapons superiority. However the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949 and tested the hydrogen bomb only a year after the United States. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served as Allied Supreme Commander during World War II, was elected president in 1952 when defense spending represented 70 percent of the national budget. Eisenhower trimmed military costs until the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik sent American insecurities into orbit. Liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, like that used to launch Sputnik, could also carry nuclear warheads toward the United States or its allies. The race was on: to mine and mill uranium, to build nuclear weaponry, and to develop missiles with an intercontinental range. Schilling AFB missile silo near Salina, Kansas, circa 1960