According to aviation author Tony Moore, the concept of the "zero-length launch system" became popular amongst military planners and strategists during the early years of what is now known the Cold War. Conventional aircraft, reliant on large and well-established airbases, were thought to be too easily knocked out in the opening hours of a major conflict between the superpowers, thus the ability to remove this dependence upon lengthy runways and airbases was highly attractive. During the 1950s, various powers began experimenting with a diverse range of methods to launch armed fighter jets, typically using some arrangement of rocket motors. In some concepts, such a fighter could be launched from a trailer from virtually any location, including those that could be camouflaged or otherwise concealed up until the moment of launch.