Word: chaff
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...research and development, the Soviets now spend $16 billion v. the U.S.'s $13 billion. Much of this effort is defensive. To blind American radar, the Soviets have developed a metallic radar chaff that forms an impenetrable curtain in the air. When the invasion of Czechoslovakia began, the Russians used this "metallic mist" to blind Western radar while Soviet transports swept into Prague airport. The Soviets are working on an anti-satellite that can examine U.S. spies-in-the-sky and knock them down. They are putting into service a Mach 3 twin-finned MIG-23, primarily a bomber...
...that have long divided the country into what Disraeli called two nations of the privileged and the people. Many children in England and Wales still take a rigorous exam around the age of eleven that funnels the gifted minority into grammar schools, which prepare them for universities. The academic chaff is relegated to so-called secondary modern schools that tend to brand their graduates as lifetime "duds." Reform has centered on the establishment of comprehensive schools, their version of U.S. public high schools, which teach all things to all children...
...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 is ever going to know really what to expect; the variety of techniques available to a nation planning an offensive system is great enough...
...Minuteman version, with a range of 7,500 miles, carries up to three warheads (each under one megaton) and some chaff that is released to confuse enemy anti-ballistic missile radar. Present plans call for deployment of 500 MIRVed Minuteman Ill's, in addition to 500 Minuteman II's with single warheads. All would be housed in 90-ft.-deep silos, located at least seven miles apart to prevent an enemy warhead from destroying two sites...
Russia and the U.S. are both capable of throwing up a variety of diversionary objects. Metallic balloons, dummy warheads, masses of tiny metal strips called chaff, can all be employed to confuse the defenders and force them to waste precious ABMs. The presumption has been all along that the Chinese, who do not yet have an ICBM force in being, could not produce so sophisticated a first-generation missile. Still, Peking will certainly develop its missiles with a broad general knowledge of U.S. defense concepts. "Their deployment," Bethe said recently, "will probably be determined by our ABM system. How long...