Word: abm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...only a fraction of that sum was at issue right now: $759.1 million for the first steps in deployment of the Nixon Administration's Safeguard anti-ballistic-missile defense system. After months of inconclusive hearings and angry debate, and publication of a spate of weighty books on ABM by civilian defense scholars,* the Senate settled in for its toughest fight over a military bill in memory...
Each side was claiming victory, but only by the narrowest of margins; neither advocates nor opponents were confident of success. Leading for the ABM's supporters was Mississippi Democrat John Stennis, a respected Senate leader and military-oriented chairman of its Committee on Armed Services. The opposition leadership, more diffuse, fell to two men as widely esteemed within the Senate as Stennis: Republican John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky and Democrat Philip Hart of Michigan. Senator Edward Kennedy, originally among ABM's most vocal critics, was persuaded to mute his opposition in order not to offend colleagues jealous...
Another point is that the system requires the most complicated assemblage of sophisticated computers and other electronic gear ever put together, which raises doubts about its reliability-especially since by its nature it can never be tested under conditions accurately simulating a nuclear attack. Wiesner also contends that any ABM is limited by the defender's guessing about the technology of the weapons it is designed to intercept. The attacker can add chaff and decoys as "penetration aids" to confuse the defender's radar and exhaust the supply of ABMs. Says Wiesner: "I do not think the defender...
...site system the Administration has proposed, Laird estimates the price at $10.8 billion. Officials point out that annual review of the need for the program could cut the project off long before that much is spent. ABM critics argue, however, that the final cost will turn out to be much higher. They fear that Safeguard may be only the first segment of a greatly expanded "thick" deployment. Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, a former Secretary of the Air Force, has put the cost of such a system as high as $400 billion, although even many of Safeguard's detractors...
There is another view, however. By protecting the ICBM sites, while the Soviets thus far have set up only a primitive ABM defense in the Moscow region, the U.S. may encourage the U.S.S.R. to develop vastly more effective offensive weapons-such as MIRVs, Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles-to overcome the U.S. ABM defense. The Soviets may also feel compelled to deploy a more sophisticated ABM system themselves. The U.S. has already tested MIRVs of its own, although they will not be operational for several years. If the cycle of ABM-MIRV goes on unabated, both nations will...