Word: icbms
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Liberal and conservative experts alike criticized the high ratio of warheads to launchers that the proposal would produce. Each side would end up with an ICBM force made up largely of stationary multiple-warhead missiles such as the MX and SS-18. While in their silos, they would be sitting ducks, vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike; once in the air, they might be first-strike weapons. Therefore the incentive of each side to shoot first in a crisis would be increased, and the stability of the nuclear balance would be upset...
...while START was in tended to enhance the case for the MX by increasing the ratio of warheads to launchers and by putting a premium on large MlRVed missiles, it inadvertently increased opposition to the big missile in Congress and instead spurred development of the "Midgetman": an entirely new ICBM, a small, single-warhead alternative to the large MlRVed...
...Kremlin then made a counterproposal, offering to lower the ceilings on strategic launchers (ICBM silos, submarine tubes and intercontinental bombers) from the level of 2,250 established by SALT II to 1,800. The Soviets indicated they might accept some limits on warheads, or what they called "nuclear charges," as long as the U.S. was willing to include bomber armaments, particularly cruise missiles, as well as ballistic-missile warheads. But the Americans...
...ICBM: Intercontinental ballistic missile, a rocket usually intended to be fired from an underground silo in the U.S. or U.S.S.R. that can reach the territory of the other superpower. It is the most destructive of strategic weapons, but also the most vulnerable, since until it is fired, it is stationary and can be fairly easily targeted by the other side. The principal American ICBM is the Minuteman III, with three warheads; the main Soviet ones are the SS-18, with ten warheads, and the SS-19, with...
...Missile-experimental," a large, ten-warhead ICBM that the U.S. is developing as an eventual successor to the Minuteman and as a counter to the Soviet...