Word: icbms
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...press conference, the President left the impression that the new ABM program would be severely cut back from Johnson's blueprint. He mentioned only two proposed installations, designed to protect Minuteman ICBM sites in Montana and North Dakota-compared with 17 Sentinel bases planned by Johnson primarily to defend major U.S. cities. As it turned out, the two installations will be built first, but later, Nixon's proposal calls for 14 ABM bases in all. The system's function has been shifted from the protection of cities to the defense of the nation's nuclear deterrent...
...throwing up a variety of diversionary objects. Metallic balloons, dummy warheads, masses of tiny metal strips called chaff, can all be employed to confuse the defenders and force them to waste precious ABMs. The presumption has been all along that the Chinese, who do not yet have an ICBM force in being, could not produce so sophisticated a first-generation missile. Still, Peking will certainly develop its missiles with a broad general knowledge of U.S. defense concepts. "Their deployment," Bethe said recently, "will probably be determined by our ABM system. How long our ABM could keep ahead of them...
MINUTEMAN: the basic U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which accounts for 1,000 of the 1,054 birds now deployed. The Minuteman series, housed in underground silos to protect the missiles against damage in the event of nuclear attack, is propelled by solid fuel and can be fired 32 seconds after the GO order...
According to Pentagon estimates and private studies, Nixon's figures are correct. In the past 18 months this country, with its force of 1054 land-based missiles, has watched the Soviets climb from 340 to about 800 ICBM's. Despite official American predictions, the Soviets seem to be maintaining this pace...
...MIRV also shows that the United States is not standing still. Other American efforts include the modernization of the land-based Minuteman and the 656 sea-based Polaris and Poseidon missiles (which Nixon discounts in his calculations of nuclear superiority). The Soviets' major concern seems to be an ICBM that could follow an orbit through space to its target. Such a weapon could clude an ABMS system but would probably be quite inaccurate...