Word: icbms
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...world in which, as President Bush insists, the primary threat to the U.S. comes from "rogue states" engaged in regional conflicts with Washington or its allies, it's hard to imagine why an enemy looking to land a weapon of mass destruction on U.S. soil would choose an ICBM as his delivery system...
...ICBMs are essentially a weapon of the Cold War, developed in the knowledge that nuclear devices carried by bomber planes were vulnerable to being shot down. Nuclear tipped rockets fired into space, whose warheads could be more-or-less accurately targeted upon reentry gave both Washington and Moscow the means to deliver an almost instantaneous retaliation for a nuclear strike by an enemy on a different continent. Their development and maintenance cost billions of dollars and they carried a return address, but that didn?t matter in the Cold War calculation - ICBM?s were there to maintain a balance...
...they could, target the United States with weapons of mass destruction. But assume you're Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il, and you?ve managed to develop biological or nuclear weapons that you want to fire at the U.S. Why would you choose to do that via an ICBM? It's extremely expensive, hard to hide from the spying eyes of the U.S., which would probably bomb you to smithereens if it found out you were even building such a capability, and carries a return address that would see your whole country incinerated if you ever dared fire...
...spacecraft is a 3-ft. metal pod with eight 35-ft. metallic wings. Mylar petals sprout from it--though the prototype used in the April launch will have just two petals. Mounted atop a reconfigured Russian ICBM and launched from a sub in the Barents Sea, the Cosmos 1 will fly to an altitude of 260 miles, where it will deploy the wings and float for a minute or so. If all goes well, the wings will then be jettisoned and the sphere aerobraked back to Earth, its bounce-down on Russian soil cushioned by air bags...
...would anyone oppose a missile-defense system? The accidental launch of a single ICBM is reason enough to proceed with such a timely project. Go for it, America. Protect yourself without delay against all those ballistic weapons pointed at you. And if some countries object, tell them to mind their own business. EDDY A. ELIA Vancouver...