Word: abm
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...face of it, this sounded eminently reasonable. Yet Kosygin must know that the implications of either a Russian or American ABM buildup cannot so easily be brushed aside...
...engineers have built a practically perfect defense so that he will not be wiped out by a retaliatory attack? This would obviously disturb the "balance of terror" that has preserved an uneasy nuclear peace for the past two decades. Some American military men argue that any "defensive" Russian ABM system may actually be a sign of belligerence, a signal that its builders are preparing to make the first strike, while getting ready to ride out the U.S. response. Besides, the cold logic of deterrence works only when the opponent is capable of understanding it. What if the uneasy ruler...
...sounds formidable; yet even the Pentagon admits that the costliest contemplated ABM system cannot buy complete security. Why not? Because scientists have already learned a great deal about how to penetrate an ABM system...
...whole catalogue of ingenious "penetration aids" to baffle enemy defense (see diagram above). Dummy missiles may be employed or missiles releasing decoys that defending radar has difficulty differentiating from authentic warheads. A single missile can suddenly eject multiple warheads that separate widely enough so that even a well-aimed ABM will destroy only one of them. An advance high-altitude nuclear explosion can temporarily blind a city's radar defenses or attackers can simply saturate a city with more ICBMs than there are defending missiles...
...ABM system thus cannot really assure adequate protection, why should the Russians bother to deploy one? One possible answer is that their definition of "adequate" may be flexible. Conceivably, Russian strategists may argue that even if an ABM system could not keep out all U.S. missiles, it could keep out enough to give the nation a fighting chance to survive and rebuild. The other and more unsettling possibility is that Russian scientists are on to a better defense system than the U.S. so far contemplates. U.S. military planners remain haunted by the frightening possibility that the Russians have actually developed...