Word: minuteman
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...strategic weapons." which the Administration has so far refused to define. Presumably, they include the new weapons systems whose deployment threatens to overturn the once stable "balance of terror." The most prominent of these systems is the MIRV (Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle). Fitted to the majority of existing Minuteman and Poseidon missiles, MIRV would give the U. S. capacity to launch some 8000 nuclear warheads instead of the present 1700. Without an increase in quantity, the same number of missiles could individually pack up to nine additional warheads aimed at different targets. Faced with this multiplication...
According to Government experts, the Soviets now have in place or are preparing to deploy a total of 1,350 land-based ICBMs, for the first time putting Moscow ahead of the 1,054-missile U.S. arsenal of Minuteman and Titan II ICBMs. The new intelligence data, obtained mainly by spy satellites, also purport to show that the Soviets are testing new types of intercontinental and medium-range offensive missiles, as well as more sophisticated anti-ballistic radar missile defensive systems. What is more, the Russians are test-flying a new swing-wing bomber similar to the nearly operational...
...where they stand. In existing offensive weapons delivery systems, both sides have intercontinental bombers, land-based ICBMs and atom-powered submarines with sea-launched nuclear missiles. The U.S. has 510 B-52 and 80 B58 jet bombers as against 150 turboprop Soviet TU-95 Bears. There are 1,054 Minuteman and Titan II U.S. ICBMs, v. about 1,000 Russian ICBMs in the SS series. Undersea, the U.S. has 41 Polaris submarines, while the Soviets are adding twelve a year to their present fleet of nine; both U.S. and Soviet submarines carry 16 missiles each...
...Chicago, an articulate defender of Safeguard, disagrees. All these things are within U.S. capabilities, he argues, and to be safe, the U.S. must assume that anything it can do the Soviet Union can eventually do too. Wohlstetter questions 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...
...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...