Word: icbms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Vladivostok by Brezhnev and Gerald Ford and imposes equal numerical limits on the two strategic arsenals. Using weapon launchers as the basis for measuring these arsenals (it would be almost impossible to identify each warhead accurately), the treaty will limit each side to a combined total of 2,250 ICBM launchers, long-range bombers and submarine tubes capable of firing strategic ballistic missiles by the start...
Some types of MlRVs face special restrictions. For example, MlRVed ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles together cannot exceed 1,200. And under that ceiling, MlRVed ICBMs are limited to 820. The reason for this stricter limit is that the land-based ICBMs, by combining enormous thrust with deadly accuracy, pose an especially great threat to the U.S.-Soviet balance. Neither side, moreover, can test or deploy an ICBM armed with more than ten MIRVs or a submarine-launched missile with more than 14 MIRVs. To prevent several missiles from being fired from the same launcher, the treaty forbids testing...
...Director Stansfield Turner took a hard line at a number of meetings of the Special Coordination Committee: SALT II should forbid the Russians to engage in any encryption whatsoever in their ICBM tests. Vance and Warnke felt Turner went too far. After all, they reasoned, SALT entitles the U.S. to some but not all information about Soviet missile tests. For instance, the number of warheads on a rocket and its payload or throw weight would be governed by SALT II, but not the nature of the guidance system. Therefore encryption should be constrained but not banned altogether...
...most serious sticking point during the first two days of the talks concerned how much smaller the Soviets could make a modified version of an existing type of ICBM without that modification being classified as the one "new type" that each side was to be allowed under the treaty. In April 1978 the U.S. had proposed a limit of plus or minus 5% on any change in the length of the rocket booster, the diameter, the weight of the rocket at launch and the throw weight of an existing type of ICBM. The U.S. proposed some additional parameters as well...
...allowing improving accuracies and yields in ICBMs, SALT does not solve the long-term problem of vulnerability of land-based systems. This is a goal for SALT III. It also will not limit military spending and may very well increase it. The U.S., in not atypical fashion of "negotiating through strength," is deploying the new Trident submarine; the projected ten Tridents will cost the taxpayer about $20 billion. Additional systems, under consideration as "bargaining chips" to obtain Senate ratification of SALT, are the MX ICBM at $30-50 billion, and several thousand air-launched cruise missiles at $30 billion...