Word: icbms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...compromise to break the deadlock. Vance told Dobrynin that the U.S. would agree to ban the testing of multiple-warhead cruise missiles if the Soviets would return to their original acceptance of plus or minus 5% as the permissible change in the size and weight of an existing ICBM...
That left Vance and Dobrynin faced with only a pair of mostly symbolic problems involving the American Minuteman ICBM: a loophole in the warhead freeze that would have left the U.S. free to increase the Minuteman's MIRV load from three to seven, and the lingering Soviet complaint about the protective shelters over the Minuteman silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which the Soviets claimed blinded their spy satellites. Vance and Dobrynin might have announced an agreement two weeks ago. But the Soviets were not yet ready to commit themselves to a time and date for the Carter-Brezhnev summit...
...their delivery systems were most powerful and accurate. Soviet land-based missiles, or ICBMS, fall into "heavy" and "light" categories. The 1972 SALT I agreement left the Russians with more than 300 heavies, much bigger than anything the U.S. has or, under the interim agreement, would be allowed to have. The remainder of the Soviet ICBM force is made up of many rockets classified as light, but still bigger than the mainstay of the U.S. deterrent, the Minuteman ICBM...
...finally giving up on cuts in the Soviet heavy force. But it also meant, if it were accepted, that the Russians would have less "freedom to mix" between land-based and submarine-launched MIRVs. Aaron and Hyland first sounded out the Soviets on the possibility of a MIRVed ICBM subceiling at a lunch in the Russian embassy in late August. The Russians were noncommittal but seemed interested...
During the summer and early fall of 1977 there was a heated, secrecy-shrouded debate over how to verify the number of Russian MIRVed ICBMS. The debate went on at the negotiating table in Geneva and within the Carter Administration. At issue were two ICBM fields near the Ukrainian towns of Derazhnya and Pervomaisk. American officials dubbed both the towns and the issue...