Word: mirved
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stalled SALT II arms limitation talks moving again. Nixon and Kissinger had hoped to negotiate another extension of SALT I's restrictions, expiring in 1977, on the number of launchers that each country can deploy. In addition, the American leaders sought to limit the development of MIRV warheads, several of which can be clustered in the tip of one missile and aimed at individual targets. The U.S. has a five-year lead over the Russians in the development and deployment of MlRVs...
...treaty as a means of buying time to catch up with the U.S. technologically. They did. To the surprise of most American experts, Russian technicians pushed ahead with the development of four new powerful missiles (permissible under SALT I), and last August they successfully tested their first MIRV...
Part of the argument in support of the five-year freeze was that given the state of their technology, the Soviets would not be able to test a MIRV before 1975 or 1976. The Soviet test suddenly moved up by two years the Russian timetable for deployment...
Last week's discussions were aimed at extending the 1972 agreement into the field of multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles - clusters of nuclear warheads that can be fired together but aimed separately. The U.S. still leads the Soviets in MIRV technology and total number of warheads, while the Soviets have a strong edge in throw weight, or the ultimate explosive force that its larger missiles can land on a target. The aim was to find a formula for what U.S. negotiators call "essential equivalence." The U.S. wants to set a limit on the total payload carried by land...
...justify the change in strategy, the Secretary of Defense argued that MIRV advances might tempt the Soviet Union to launch a limited nuclear strike against the U.S. Under MAD, the only possible U.S. nuclear response would be an all-out attack on Soviet cities. That would not only be inhumane but suicidal, because Russia would retain enough missiles?particularly those aboard submarines, which are virtually invulnerable to attack?to obliterate U.S. population centers. Consequently, the President might decide to save American lives by not retaliating, in effect acquiescing to the aggression...