Word: icbms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...pending agreements from the SALT talks, ongoing now for a decade, will limit for the first time all strategic nuclear delivery vehicles--ICBM and SLBM launchers, heavy bombers, and long-range air-to-surface ballistic missiles--to 2400, eventually to 2250. The U.S. currently possesses about 2100 such systems, the Soviets about 2500; it will thus require the Soviets to reduce by about 250 missile launchers...
...arms race. It allows both the Soviets and Americans to continue to modernize and replace their current weapons with more powerful ones. Therefore SALT partially funnels strategic competition from quantitative to qualitative grounds. SALT will allow both sides to deploy on new land-based system such as the MX ICBM in the U.S.; it will also allow those systems to be mobile, although the U.S. wrote in the 1972 SALT I agreements that mobile systems would violate the spirit of the negotiations...
...install considerably more electronic gear in ground listening posts than can be carried by satellites. This is especially important in monitoring missile launchings and impacts. The sensitive equipment, like sophisticated radar, can calculate an ICBM's length and diameter and thus contribute significantly to SALT II verification. Reason: under the expected terms of the accord, if such dimensions are increased or decreased by more than 5%, the weapon would have to be designated as a "new type" of missile and be subject to a sharp limitation on deployment. (Some critics of SALT caution that the margin of error...
Glenn urges instead-as he was going to tell the Groton audience-that the U.S. put "the decision directly up to the Soviets." He wants Washington to press Moscow for advance notice of missile tests and permission for U.S. flights "along an agreed-upon track, parallel to [the Soviet] ICBM test-launch range, and over Soviet territory." According to Glenn, the Soviets "must either accommodate to this new and unforeseen intelligence situation or be branded before the world as the party preventing a SALT agreement for reasons of their own secrecy...
...that even professional strategists can be overtaken by events. The book assumes, for example, that Iran, led by the Shah, would support NATO strongly.) As this history develops, open revolt among the satellite nations and within the Soviet Union splits the country into republics, but not before an ICBM destroys Birmingham, England, and a counter-strike obliterates Minsk. The realignment after the war leaves Moscow's former do main Balkanized and at peace, but Africa remains tumultuous. Depending on what course China-Japan takes, say the generals, it seems likely that the conflict leading to World...