Word: megatons
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...weapons in an attempt to gain a "favorable position" at SALT. The Kremlin, for that matter, has done exactly the same thing. Only two weeks ago, the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces completed the latest tests in the northwest Pacific on the huge S59 rocket, which can carry three five-megaton warheads (making them perhaps 25 times more powerful than those carried by the American Minuteman...
...prone region. Though each blast was followed by countless small aftershocks, none reached quake proportions and all were substantially weaker than the original explosion. The AEC is convinced that there is little risk in conducting such tests. It plans to follow up its recent controversial detonation of a 1.2 megaton H-bomb on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians, another major quake zone, with more powerful underground blasts. To the dismay of scientists, however, these explosions are designed by the AEC not for such peaceful purposes as quake control but only to test new military weapons...
...distinction is important, because a crucial point in the argument is just how many deliverable H-bombs the U.S really needs to make retaliation a sufficiently convincing threat to the Russians. The "optimum" retaliatory force, according to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, consists of 400 one-megaton warheads delivered to their assigned targets, destroying an estimated 30% of Russia's population and 76% of its industry. The U.S. now has 1,000 Minuteman and 54 Titan II ICBMs, each with a single warhead; 656 submarine-launched Polaris missiles, some of them already fitted with multiple warheads; and hundreds...
...Rathjens' conclusion that, at worst, "a quarter of our Minuteman force could be expected to survive a Soviet pre-emptive S59 attack." Wohlstetter complains that Rathjens overestimates by two-thirds the blast resistance of U.S. silos and unjustifiably assumes that the Soviet multiple warheads would carry only one-megaton payloads. "Where scientists differ," he concedes, "laymen may be tempted to throw up their hands and choose to rely on the authority of those scientists they favor...
Wohlstetter's own calculations agree with those of John Foster, the Pentagon's Director of Research and Engineering. Foster says that the Russians would need only 420 SS-9s to attack 1,000 U.S. silos-assuming that the SS-9s would each carry three separate five-megaton warheads. Foster concludes: "About 95% of the silos could be destroyed. This would mean 50 of the 1,000 Minuteman missiles would survive...