Word: intercepter
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...some time after it has been launched, calculates its path, and then passes the missile track along to the less powerful but much more complex MSR (missile site radar). MSR then directs two types of ABMs against the incoming warheads. The long-range Spartan is designed to make an intercept above the atmosphere, at altitudes between 200 and 400 mi. The smaller Sprint would seek out and destroy warheads that penetrated the Spartan screen by intercepting them within 40 miles of the target...
Cornell Physicist Hans Bethe, a Nobel laureate who believes Safeguard to be sound in principle but not yet necessary to U.S. defense, replies that it is possible to intercept the enemy warheads with Sprints at altitudes below 30 miles, where radar blackout is not a serious problem. Further, the PAR installations are designed to overlap enough for one to take over the functions of another -at least in theory-if the second is blacked out or even physically destroyed by a missile that penetrates the ABM defenses...
...press handled Nixon's ABM announcement routinely, there was anxiety and outrage in Canada. Since the first Safeguard bases would be a few miles south of the Canadian border, and since Chinese or Soviet ICBMs would come in over the North Pole, the nuclear-armed ABMs sent to intercept them would probably be detonated over Canada. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was kept posted of Lyndon Johnson's Sentinel plans, but he was not informed in advance of President Nixon's switch to Safeguard. In an emergency debate in Ottawa, Socialist Leader Tommy Douglas protested: "Canada...
...differences between the Johnson Administration's Sentinel program and Nixon's Safeguard are more in emphasis than in scale. Johnson's 17 Sentinel sites would have covered all the continental U.S., Hawaii and Alaska with Spartan rockets designed to intercept incoming missiles up to 400 miles above target, backed up by shorter-range Sprints to knock down any ICBMs that penetrated the Spartan screen. Nixon's plan, while providing extensive area defense, will concentrate not only on Minuteman ICBMs in their concrete silos, but also on bomber bases, Washington, and the Charleston base for Polaris submarines...
...President explained it, the aims of his program are threefold. One is "protection of our land-based retaliatory forces against a direct attack by the Soviet Union." This is the strongest reason. The system could probably intercept a significant part of a massive Russian first strike against U.S. missile sites. The weakness of the argument, as critics point out, is that protection of the U.S.-based deterrent is not really necessary, because with its seaborne Polaris missiles and foreign-based bombers carrying H-bombs, the U.S. would retain a sufficient retaliatory strike force...