Word: abm
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Even some of the most energetic enemies of Sentinel deployment say that they would subscribe to a comprehensive ABM program, notwithstanding the cost, if only they could be persuaded that it would provide an impermeable shield. Says Physics Professor Alvin Saperstein of Wayne State University: "It is not a question of trusting the Russians or the Chinese. You can't trust them. But I don't trust our own military not to lead us to disaster either. If I felt the ABM were effective, I'd live with the damn thing in my back yard. But it isn't." Thus...
...Administration is what effect a deployed ABM system would have on U.S.-Soviet nuclear competition or possible cooperation. In the past, the "action-reaction phenomenon" has been the controlling factor. Each side, responding to traditional military prudence, has sought to counter real or prospective advances by the other. The result has been an enormous overkill capacity beyond "mutual assured destruction...
...ABM, the Russians have a lead in deployment if not in technology. They have installed a thicket of one-or two-megaton Galosh missiles?perhaps 75?around Moscow after giving up on an earlier defense ring in the Leningrad area, presumably because of obsolescence. Although no one can be sure of its intent, the Kremlin has reportedly planned a $25 billion program that would buy more than 5,000 Galoshes. U.S. intelligence has assumed that Galosh is an inferior missile supported by relatively old-fashioned mechanical radars and hence of no major concern to the West at present. Recently, though...
...does ABM enter into that equation? Again, there is wide disagreement. Says Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper: "This is a moment when negotiations are possible, a moment that should not be lost." George Rathjens, a former disarmament agency official now at M.I.T., argues that the simultaneous deployment of ABMs and MIRVs would destabilize the present equation by increasing the temptation to make a first, or preemptive, strike. The Administration has argued that the ABM could be a bargaining counter with the Soviets. "We must have both offensive and defensive missiles...
SPARTAN: the big-punch, long-range missile in the overall anti-missile defense system called Sentinel. Spartan would be installed at most of the ABM sites as the first line of defense, its mission being to intercept attacking RVs (reentry vehicles, or warheads) while they are still above the atmosphere, hundreds of miles from their targets. Spartan performs a regional, or "area-defense," role...