Word: mirved
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They are also working on an SS-18 missile that can deliver up to eight individual warheads. The U.S. now has a huge advantage in MIRV missiles. By next year it will have deployed 1,046 MIRVS, including 550 Minuteman III missiles and 496 Poseidon missiles in 31 submarines. It should approach the 1,300 limit when ten new Trident submarines, each carrying 24 MIRV missiles, are completed in the mid-1980s...
...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...
...Russian lead in offensive missiles-a lead of 2,358 to 1,710-with the 3-to-l American advantage in warheads, counting the MIR vs. The Russians' nightmare was their conviction that the U.S. is far stronger than they are today, largely because of its lead in MIRV technology; the Americans' fear was that the Soviets, catching up in MlRVs and with more launchers to mount them on, could surge ahead in the future. Brezhnev refused every mix of launchers and warheads proposed by Nixon, insisting that he would accept no proposal that in his view locked...
...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...