Word: icbms
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...announcement caused little surprise in the West. U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird told Congress in February that the Chinese would "attempt to test-launch their first ICBM or space booster in the near future." The Pentagon added last week that the launching "obviously reflects the significant technological progress which is being made in that country." More precisely, it appeared to demonstrate that the Chinese were advancing toward an important goal: the building of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to U.S. and European targets as early as 1973. The news might well affect U.S. Congressional action on a proposed expansion...
...halt in the development of nuclear weaponry before one side or the other achieves another technical breakthrough that will start a new spiral in the arms race. Both are now working on MIRVs, missiles carrying clusters of independently targetable warheads, which would multiply the destructive ability of each ICBM. The U.S. is probably ahead in MIRV development and could deploy the weapon by late 1970. In ABM, on the other hand, the Soviet Union has ringed Moscow with some missiles, while the U.S. is still in the research stage on its Safeguard ABM system...
...Russians vastly more difficult. The Soviets will almost surely want to delay serious dealings until they have caught up with the U.S. MIRV as an accomplished fact also complicates inspection of the opponent's arsenal, since there is no way that a spy satellite can tell whether an ICBM in its concrete silo is MIRVed or not. As Averell Harriman recently noted, "It is more difficult for us to come to an understanding this year than it was a year...
Some of the opposition believe that Safeguard could be shelved by substantially hardening ICBM sites at a smaller cost ($6 billion to $7 billion). The Pentagon wants to do that in addition to Safeguard; the Air Force is already seeking out "hard rock" silo locations that would make ICBMs more resistant even to multimegaton near misses. Wiesner, Rathjens and Weinberg suggest that the number of ICBMs could be doubled for the price of Safeguard, which would mean that more than 1,000 missiles would survive an attack by the 420 SS-9s that the Pentagon's Foster hypothesized. Wohlstetter...
There is another view, however. By protecting the ICBM sites, while the Soviets thus far have set up only a primitive ABM defense in the Moscow region, the U.S. may encourage the U.S.S.R. to develop vastly more effective offensive weapons-such as MIRVs, Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles-to overcome the U.S. ABM defense. The Soviets may also feel compelled to deploy a more sophisticated ABM system themselves. The U.S. has already tested MIRVs of its own, although they will not be operational for several years. If the cycle of ABM-MIRV goes on unabated, both nations will...