Word: launcher
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Meanwhile, Burt and others at the State Department were pushing their own new plan for START. It came to be called the "framework approach," and it would entail keeping launcher limits along the lines of both SALT II and the Soviet proposal in Geneva, but adding limits on warheads and cruise missiles. The U.S. would be giving up, once and for all, its attempt to focus exclusively on fast flyers, particularly MlRVed ICBMs. At the same time, the Soviets would have had to accept much more severe limits on their MlRVs than under their own proposal...
...that the Soviet position should be acceptable to the U.S. in anywhere near its entirety. For example, the Soviet of fer of two years ago to reduce launcher ceilings from the SALT II levels would still permit a threatening proliferation of ICBM warheads. Further, that offer was conditioned...
...Chiefs had two reasons for wanting a low launcher ceiling. First, the fewer ICBM silos and submarine tubes the Soviets were allowed, the fewer high-priority military targets the Chiefs would have to worry about being able to hit in a nuclear...
Second, a low launcher ceiling would enhance the rationale for their cherished MX. Since a single MX will carry ten warheads, it is an efficient way of fitting many warheads under a low launcher ceiling...
Perle said that he thought the 850-launcher ceiling was "crazy," adding, "Fortunately, we can count on the Soviets to save us from the stupidity of our own proposal by never accepting it." He and other hard-liners like Rostow agreed with Democratic crit ics of the Administration such as Congressmen Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee and Les Aspin of Wisconsin that arms control should encourage "de-MlRVing," the evolution from a reliance on Hydraheaded missiles to small, mobile, single-warhead ICBMS. A de-MiRved deterrent would theoretically neither