Word: minuteman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Preserving parity will be difficult enough. The balance of strategic forces is already being eroded, principally by the U.S.S.R.'s ongoing ICBM buildup. For some years Western experts have been concerned that the land-based portion of the American strategic deterrent-1,052 Minuteman and Titan II missiles in underground silos-might soon be susceptible to a surprise first strike by the Soviet Union's own increasingly accurate, destructive and numerous land-based warheads. Such a pre-emptive blow, if successful, would seriously weaken the ability of the U.S. to retaliate with iCBMs against Soviet military targets...
...cope with the total collapse of the SALT ceilings, the Soviets could easily increase both the number of launchers and the number of warheads per missile, thus tripling the present threat against Minuteman...
...part of its effort to make SALT II politically palatable, the Carter Administration ordered the development of the mobile MX, a ten-warhead successor to the three-warhead Minuteman, which would move around in a giant shell game to foil Soviet targeting. The trouble with MX is its mobile-basing mode. The system is hugely expensive (possibly as much as $100 billion) and terribly destructive of both the natural and social environment in which it would exist. More troublesome still are its military ramifications. If the U.S. goes ahead with a mobile MX, the Soviets may try to disguise...
There are cheaper, more sensible alternatives. One would be a stationary MX. Because the missile has more warheads than the Minuteman, fewer would have to survive a surprise attack for the U.S. to retaliate with "assured destruction" of Soviet military targets. Another possibility is to rely more on submarines, which are virtually invulnerable to pre-emptive strikes, and on aircraft (including perhaps a new supersonic bomber), which can scramble quickly the moment that the U.S. appears to be under attack. Because of improvements in satellite-guidance systems for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and in the technology of slow, low-flying...
Brian Baer momentarily stemmed the Minuteman advance with a hard-fought 9-6 decision at 150 during which he twice escaped pinning combinations...