Word: landed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...guided by the concept that has been the basis of U.S. nuclear deterrence for more than 30 years: that enough American weapons must survive a Soviet surprise attack to guarantee a devastating retaliatory strike. Pursuing that strategy, the U.S. has built a formidable triad of strategic nuclear forces: land-based ICBMs in silos, sea- based missiles aboard submarines, and nuclear bombs carried by airplanes. But over the years, the increased accuracy of Soviet ICBMs has gradually threatened the land-based leg of the triad, which consists of 450 Minuteman IIs, each carrying a single warhead; 500 Minuteman IIIs tipped with...
...Bush makes up his mind, skeptical strategic experts are challenging the fundamental assumption: that land-based missiles are as vulnerable as some other experts fear. There is considerable doubt that the Soviets could actually attack U.S. ICBMs with impunity. Studies by the Pentagon suggest that even if the Soviets aimed two warheads at each U.S. silo, they could count on destroying only 65% to 80% of the ICBMs. That would leave at least 400 land- based U.S. warheads -- each packing about 20 times the destructive force of the Hiroshima bomb -- for a counterattack on the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Soviets...
Although many respected observers argue the case, it makes little sense to worry unduly about the vulnerability of the land-based leg of the triad when it accounts for only 20% of the 12,000 warheads in America's strategic nuclear arsenal. Even in the unlikely event that a first strike wiped out the entire American land-based missile force, the U.S. could still obliterate the Soviet % Union with a fraction of the 5,300 warheads on its modern missile submarines and the 4,700 on its bombers. Though the first operational test last week of a Trident II missile...
...choice between the two missiles must take into account the projected overall ceiling of 4,900 land- and sea-based ballistic-missile warheads that has been set in the START negotiations. With smaller numbers of warheads on both sides, there is a strategic advantage in single-warhead missiles like Midgetman. By dispersing its quota of warheads on a larger number of Midgetman missiles instead of concentrating it on a smaller number of MX's, the U.S. could greatly complicate a Soviet first strike...
...voice and a ready smile, he wears a pith helmet and has a whistle dangling around his neck to summon cabs. "There's more to life than sports," he says. "It's a hard reality." That is a lesson that Scates, and thousands of other student athletes across the land, are given a lifetime to mull over...