Word: minuteman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Carter originally proposed shuttling 200 giant MX missiles among 4600 shelters burrowed into the deserts of Utah and Nevada. The rationale for this nuclear shell game went something like this: The Russians now have enough warheads to destroy our 1000 land-based Minuteman missiles in a nuclear first strike. With the MX system, the Russians would have to hit 4600 targets to ensure the destruction of all the mobile missiles. Thus, our land-based nuclear deterrant would remain intact, and everyone could rest easier...
...preposterous idea, a "mass transit system for missiles" that would use resources on an unprecedented scale and destroy vast areas of the desert. But more disturbingly, the need for a mobile missile is based on an unsound premise. That the Soviet Union can destroy all our Minuteman silos in a first strike is a highly suspect assumption, based on as-yet unproven theories of missile trajectory and accuracy. (Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has ever test-fired a missile on a North-South route, similar to that which both countries' bombs would have to follow.) If enough...
...land-based Minuteman force constitutes only one leg of the nation's so-called strategic triad. In addition, there are fleets of nuclear-armed bombers and submarines that, between them, carry more than 8,000 warheads, vs. only 1,600 for Soviet bombers and submarines. So why not plan on absorbing a Soviet first strike against Minuteman and hitting back with the two other legs of the triad? Brown thinks that would be a mistake too: "If we abandon the first leg of our triad as soon as it gets into trouble, we'd be encouraging the Soviets...
...Soviet perception of the Minuteman debate, at least as expressed by official spokesmen in a series of interviews in Moscow, is a mixture of righteous indignation, countercharges and carefully reasoned assurances. "These wild scenarios by American armchair strategists breed suspicion and paranoia and serve to justify the arms race," says Georgi Arbatov, the director of the Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada and a member of the Communist Party Central Committee...
...silos or were part of an all-out attack. Our government could never exclude the possibility of launch on warning. Besides, the notion of a surgical strike against land-based missiles is a fantasy. One of the more popular scenarios in the U.S. stipulates that to knock out Minuteman, we would have to use 2,000 megatons [the equivalent of 2 billion tons of TNT]. That's about ten tons for every inhabitant of the U.S. That would not be a 'surgical strike' at all. It would...