Word: icbms
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...proliferation of land-based warheads aimed at the U.S. is the cutting edge of the "clear and present danger" of which Paul Nitze and other SALT critics warn. They fear that the increase in the accuracy, payload and number of Soviet MIRVed. ICBMs will soon threaten the U.S.'s own Minuteman ICBMS with a first strike. Such a capability could be an instrument of political blackmail such as in some future replay of the Cuban missile crisis, or perhaps over Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet in SALT II, the Carter Administration would have blunted that threat somewhat by limiting...
...Soviets' Strategic Rocket Forces have been converting single-warhead ICBM launchers into multiple-warhead ones so rapidly that the weapons will soon be approaching the SALT II ceiling of 820 MIRVed ICBMs. As early as this summer the Kremlin may face a decision whether to pull back or proceed in that conversion. Also, the Soviets might any day test an SS-18 heavy missile with 20 or more warheads. For them to do so would not only make a mockery out of the SALT II freeze on MIRVing, it would also jeopardize the U.S. mobile MX missile -which...
...take only 7% of the defense budget. As Jones put it, "The strategic balance sets the tone for what goes on in the rest of the world." The Administration has just taken an important step in this area by approving a $33 billion, ten-year program for the MX ICBM. The movable MX is theoretically invulnerable to surprise attack, so when the Pentagon starts deploying the first of these missiles in Utah and Nevada in 1986, the window of vulnerability will begin closing. The U.S. has also been moving ahead with the $4.4 billion air-launched cruise missile program...
...Jones touch was also evident in a successful campaign against the Office of Management and Budget; OMB wanted to limit military pay raises to 5%, but Jones got 7%. He has been equally persuasive at the White House, where he helped sell Jimmy Carter on the MX mobile ICBM...
...case, Kissinger said, the American strategic deterrent is now obsolescent because it has been neutralized by the Soviets' own first-strike capability, and it will soon be obsolete altogether as they improve the pinpoint accuracy with which they could knock out Minuteman ICBM silos in the U.S. Consequently, in the very next three or four years, he warned, Western Europe must make a greater commitment to its safety on its own ground, with stronger conventional forces and improved "theater" nuclear weapons. For its part, the U.S. had better develop a new "counterforce capability" aimed at Soviet military targets...