1960s

196X
As a result of the development of the Soviet T-62's successor, the U.S. Army and the West German Army formulate a joint project developing a new tank that, for the United States, would give them an advantage over the T-62s (as their M60 Pattons were outclassed by the T-62's successors), and for West Germany, would serve as a suitable replacement for their aging Leopard 1 tanks. The project names are the KPz-70 and the MBT-70 for West Germany and the United States, respectively.

The West German military cancels their part of the MBT-70 project, the KPz 70 due to the project being overbudgeted.

1960
February 13th: France tests its first nuclear bomb, "Gerboise Bleue", in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert, and becomes the world's fourth nuclear power.

May: The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam is established.

May 1st: The 1960 U-2 incident. A US Lockheed U-2 spy plane enters Soviet airspace. It is shot down and crashes near Sverdlovsk, near the Ural mountains.

The Boss unofficially becomes the first person in space through the Mercury Project.

September: Two NSA codebreakers, ADAM and EVA, defect to the Soviet Union.

1961
January 3rd: The US withdraws diplomatic recognition of the Cuban government and closes its embassy in Havana. Cuban and American diplomatic relations end.

January 20th: John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States.

February: America conducts the first tests of the Minutemen ICBMs.

February 4th: The Angolan War of Independence begins.

April 12th: The Vostok 1 is launched into space, making Yuri Gagarin the first human to officially travel into space. The Russian scientist, Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov, designed the multi-engine cluster for the Vostok Program.

Sokolov begins designing the Shagohod.

April 15th until April 19th: The Bay of Pigs Invasion. The Boss takes part in the invasion. The Pentagon begins to feel threatened by the CIA's growing influence in the US's military affairs.

April 21st: The Boss is hospitalized after receiving severe injuries from an experimental launch.

President Kennedy falls into disfavor with The Philosophers.

A group of university students create the FSLN in Nicaragua. Their aim is to overthrow the Somoza regime and establish a Marxist state.

May 5th: Alan Shepard becomes the first American astronaut, piloting the first sub-orbital flight.

August 13th: The construction of the Berlin Wall begins.

September 1st: The Eritrean War of Independence begins.

September 21st: The US Army 5th Special Forces Group is activated.

October 30th: The Soviet Union tests the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon in existence, over the Arctic.

The CIA begins to sponsor and train the Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG) in the South Central Highlands of Vietnam, which is mainly composed of local defense operations, supported by a mobile support component made up primarily of Nung mercenaries called "Mike Force." Jack and Python are among the soldiers dispatched into Vietnam to participate in the mission until Python is severely wounded.

1962
January: SEAL Team 1 is commissioned in the Pacific fleet and SEAL Team 2 is commissioned in the Atlantic fleet.

February 20th: The Mercury Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) is launched, sending John Glenn into space. This is the first time an American orbits the Earth.

Late September to early October: Major Zero helps Dr. Sokolov's family defect from the Soviet Union to the West. Shortly afterwards, Sokolov himself is evacuated. After two weeks and over 600 miles of travel, Sokolov arrives in West Berlin, and is checked into a hospital due to exhaustion.

October 14th to November 20th: A US Lockheed U-2 surveillence craft discovers Soviet missiles in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The US government surrenders Sokolov to the Soviet Union. After failing to build a missile base in Cuba, the Soviet Union searches for an alternate location close to the US.

December 14th: The Mariner 2 approaches Venus and begins scanning the planet, revealing that it has cool clouds and an extremely hot surface.

The Boss carries out a covert mission in Tselinoyarsk, where she is ordered to kill The Sorrow, her former lover.

The United States begins production of the Davy Crockett nuclear missiles.

The SS-1C Scud-B missiles, designed by Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin, are deployed.

Chico is born.

The Gemini Project commences.

1963
February: The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Hotline Agreement; a direct telephone connection is set up between the US and Soviet leaders.

April 1st: Ending a 114 day strike led by Bertram A. Powers against automated typesetting, The New York Times publishes a 702 page Sunday edition.

April 8th: The movie 007: From Russia With Love is released in the US.

May: An American agent working within GRU, Oleg Penkovsky, is arrested and executed by the KGB.

June 16th: Valentina Tereshkova boards the Vostok 6 and becomes the first female cosmonaut.

July 4th: The movie The Great Escape is released.

August 5th: The United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union sign the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in the Kremlin.

November 22nd: US President Kennedy is assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th President of the United States.

1964
January 11th: The US Department of Health announces that cigarettes can cause lung cancer.

January 24th: The MACV-SOG is established. A highly classified, multi-service United States special operations unit, SOG conducts covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during the Vietnam War. The CIA is heavily involved in the unit's activities and operations.

February: The frequency of nuclear testing in Semipalatinsk increases in order to test the Shogohod.

July 2nd: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.

July: The Rhodesian Civil War begins, fought between the white minority ruling government of Rhodesia and the allied ZANU/ZAPU militant organizations.

July 24th: The Boss, using a Philosopher's Spy network, discovers that Sokolov was sent back to the OKB-754 research facility to complete the Shagohod, and that the weapon itself was nearing completion.

August 24th: Virtuous Mission. John, a.k.a. Jack, is assigned the codename Naked Snake. Snake performs the world's first ever HALO (High Altitude-Low Opening) jump and infiltrates Tselinoyarsk to rescue Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov. Snake and Ocelot meet for the first time. Sokolov divulges the existence of the Shagohod, a nuclear-equipped super-tank, to Snake. The Boss defects to the Soviet Union, kidnapping Sokolov and severely injuring Snake. Colonel Volgin fires a Davy Crockett into the OKB-754 research facility. Snake is extracted and placed in an Intensive Care Unit. The Virtuous Mission ends in failure.

August 30th: Operation Snake Eater. Naked Snake infiltrates Tselinoyarsk once again to rescue Sokolov, destroy the Shagohod, eliminate the Cobra Unit, Colonel Volgin and The Boss, and retrieve the Philosophers' Legacy. He meets up with EVA who has infiltrated Volgin's ranks, and she offers to help him out.

September 2nd: Operation Snake Eater is declared a success. The Shagohod is destroyed; the members of the Cobra Unit are dead. Colonel Volgin is killed by a bolt of lightning, and Naked Snake assassinates The Boss, recovering the Philosophers' Legacy. EVA, who was in fact an agent for the People's Republic of China, steals the microfilm and takes it back to China. It is later found to be a fake.

September: Naked Snake earns the title "Big Boss", but leaves FOX shortly thereafter.

The Philosophers' Legacy that EVA stole turns out to be a fake. The real Legacy is safely returned to the CIA, as revealed by Ocelot, who was ADAM, the real agent who had infiltrated Volgin's ranks all along.

The FARC begin an armed rebellion against the Colombian government with support from Cuba and the Soviet Union. During this time, the FARC hand over the San Hieronymo Peninsula to the Soviet Union in exchange for supplying the group with weapons. The Soviets establish an IRBM facility on the peninsula, and begin development of Metal Gear RAXA and a ballistic Metal Gear.

September 21st: The first test flight of the XB-70, a heavy bomber airplane which can fly at Mach 3 speeds.

September 25th: The Mozambican War of Independence begins. It was an armed conflict between the guerrilla forces of the Mozambique Liberation Front or FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) and Portugal.

October 12th: Three cosmonauts are sent into space aboard the Voskhod 1, becoming the first multi-man crew sent to space.

October 15th: Premier Khrushchev resigns from his position. Leonid Brezhnev becomes Party First Secretary.

October 16th: China successfully concludes its first tests of nuclear weaponry at the Lop Nur testing site, and becomes the world's fifth nuclear power.

1965
January 30th: The US officially enters the Vietnam conflict.

March 2nd: The US begins bombing North Vietnam.

SIGINT joins ARPA and takes part in the development of ARPAnet.

November 1st: The First Chadian Civil War begins.

The German MBT Leopard 1 is deployed, replacing the American-made MBT M47 and M48 Pattons.

1966
The US government conducts a study on emergency medical treatment. The Department of Transportation lays the groundwork for the creation of the EMS system.

Big Boss encounters Frank Jaeger, a child soldier, during the Mozambican War of Independence. After rescuing him, he places him into a care facility, from where he is later taken by The Philosophers for their Perfect Soldier Project.

Strasbourg University experiences a Student protest for reform.

1967
October 7th: Ernesto "Che" Guevera is captured by the Bolivian Special Forces, assisted by CIA Special Activities Division commandos.

October 9th: Ernesto "Che" Guevara is executed. He dies at the age of 39.

The Soviets begin designing an enhanced version of the T-62 tank, the T-72 Ural tank.

The United States begin deployment and launching of the Saturn V. A Soviet spy within NASA steals the blueprints of the rocket allowing the Soviet Union to develop its own version.

The Phoenix Program is initiated to attack the Viet Cong infrastructure with the rifle approach rather than the shotgun approach towards its leaders. The program is designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the Viet Cong insurgency. The program continues until 1972, with similar efforts existing both before and after this period.

1968
EVA disappears in Hanoi.

May: A strike occurs in France that nearly strikes down the French president at the time.

July 1st: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is opened for signatures.

August 21st: The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia.

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is released.

1969
January 20th: Richard Nixon becomes the 37th President of the United States.

March 21st: Konami is established.

July 20th: The Apollo Program puts the first man on the moon.

November 17th: SALT-1 negotiations are initiated, in order to limit the number of deployed US and Soviet ballistic missiles, provoking a détente era between the two countries. Construction of the secret Soviet missile base on the San Hieronymo Peninsula are abandoned, and many Russian soldiers are forced to remain stationed there.

December 5th: The US Department of Defense and ARPA establish ARPAnet, the basis for the internet.

A report assessing the situation is given: It primarily gives the level of US Involvement explaining that Phoenix was primarily South Vietnamese, but a footnote reveals that the Phoenix Program was given mixed reviews to both the CIA and the military. CIA involvement in Vietnam officially ends.