Word: icbm
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...government spokesman, but Kapralov demonstrated a disdain for factual clarity that was truly remarkable. His claim that the United States had been the first to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and missile launching submarines, thereby forcing the Soviet Union to respond, is simply not true. The Soviets first tested an ICBM in 1957, well before the first U.S. test firing in November 1958. Soviet missile submarines, though markedly inferior to the American Polaris system, appeared earlier. And the Soviet nuclear weapons program, which included organized espionage within the Manhattan project, began no later than 1943, well before Hiroshima. Again, how many...
...forgiven for some confusion over why President Reagan-and Jimmy Carter before him-decided that the U.S. needs an MX system in the first place. There is a one-word answer: vulnerability. In the opinion of many U.S. arms experts, Minuteman, the principal American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) since the mid-1960s, has become an exposed target-and therefore conceivably a temptation-for a pre-emptive Soviet attack. And if the 1,000 Minuteman missiles are no longer safe, the nation may not be either. In the jargon of nuclear deterrence, Minuteman is believed to have lost the vital requirement...
...that both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have virtually eliminated the problem of bias. Among other things, the Soviets can launch satellites over the pole into orbit, measure the geodetic forces, and program their missiles accordingly. That is exactly what the U.S. does to complement its own east-to-west ICBM test shots from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands. Furthermore, says Harold Brown, Defense Secretary in the Carter Administration and now visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington: "Since Soviet warheads are considerably more destructive than...
...Amax spends large amounts of money trying to find new uses for molybdenum (adequate supplies of which are available elsewhere). Part of what is produced in the U.S. goes to the Soviet Union. Should a beautiful part of America be torn up to guarantee that the steel in Soviet ICBM warheads is adequately hardened...
...another option for protecting American ICBMS, the U.S. could resurrect and expand an antiballistic missile (ABM) system. The 1972 treaty limiting ABMs-the only strategic arms limitation agreement that is still formally in force-might be renegotiated so as to permit selective ABM protection of U.S. missile silos. Tampering with the present ABM treaty, however, should be considered strictly as a last resort. If such renegotiation of the 1972 treaty failed, the result might be an ABM race. That would surely accelerate the ICBM competition. It is only logical that more and better offensive weapons would be necessary to penetrate...