Word: abm
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...Reagan Administration contends the station is meant to close a gap in the Soviets' early-warning radar network. To prevent longer-range tracking of missiles, the ABM treaty requires that such stations be on the perimeter of the U.S.S.R. Krasnoyarsk is 480 miles inland. This location and the type of radar under construction, says the Pentagon, would be suitable for a Soviet Star Wars system in which the station could direct interception of incoming missiles. The Soviets have claimed the radar would be used only to track satellites in deep space, which would not violate any treaties...
Battista also found Krasnoyarsk ineffective as an ABM site: it is poorly constructed and not hardened against shock waves or electromagnetic pulse effects. "If this radar were turned on today," he said, "it would be an early-warning radar -- not a very good one." Yet it cannot be switched on soon, the U.S. visitors concluded, because the facility lacks essential electronic equipment. They predicted it will take two years to complete...
...Administration rejected the legislators' contention that the station violates only the "letter of the treaty -- not its purpose." Frank Gaffney, acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, insisted that the radar is a "significant military project which fundamentally undercuts the ABM treaty." If the Soviets want to convey a new openness on verification, said Gaffney, the proper signal would be the "total dismantling of the illegal installation...
...domain of arms control, we have repudiated the SALT II understanding and flirted with questionable interpretations of the ABM treaty...
Attention is likely to remain focused on Sofaer, if only because in arguing the ABM case he has raised an unprecedented challenge to the Senate. Sofaer has claimed that nothing the Administration tells the Senate during the & ratification process is binding, a view that Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School says "would give the Senate a meaningless role in treaty ratification." When Biden sputtered, "That's incredible. That's absolutely staggering," Sofaer mumbled, "I'd like to talk to you about that." Thundered Biden: "We will...