Word: kiloton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mobile, which makes it harder to find and destroy. Each has its own launcher, and Western intelligence experts suspect there is room for a second reload missile inside; the launcher runs under its own power on tank treads or tires. The missile is MIRVed, carrying three 150-kiloton warheads, each with its programmed target. The SS-20 is a replacement for the antiquated SS-4 and SS-5, which nevertheless remain deployed and are under negotiation in Geneva. The Soviets have deployed some 340 SS-20s in the past six years-a rate of more than one a week-scattered...
...timing was both fitting and macabre. Last Thursday the U.S. detonated a nuclear bomb in the 20-to 150-kiloton class under the desert of Yucca Flat, Nev. The test blast was the eleventh this year, but it came on the eve of the 37th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and on the day the U.S. grass-roots nuclear-freeze movement faced its first real test of political strength...
...symbols appear over enemy outposts. Artillery fire slashes across the screen like a laser sword. The flight time the shells is preprogrammed to the millisecond; even reloading is figured in. The computer, executing 2 million programming instructions per second, takes 20 seconds to analyze the effects of a ten-kiloton blast. Towns are reduced to rubble. Forests erupt in flames, represented by flickering red dots. Temperature, humidity and wind speed must be reckoned with; they affect the way fallout will blow and how fast a fireball will spread. "You get a real feeling for the dynamics and time pressures...
There is no doubt why the Soviets are so alarmed by the prospect of new U.S. missiles in Europe. A Pershing II based in West Germany could drop a 20-kiloton warhead within 80 ft. of a target in the Soviet Union some 1,000 miles away just eight minutes after firing. The ground-launched cruise missile, or GLCM, is even more accurate, and able to avoid radar by hugging the terrain, following maps in its internal guidance system...
...range of 1,200 miles and a single, one-megaton warhead. The obsolescent SS-5 can throw its megaton warhead some 2,500 miles. But the SS-20, with its 3,000-mile range, is a formidable weapon. Each of its three, separately targetable 150-kiloton warheads is accurate within...