Word: mirved
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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...
...their own MiRVed missiles. The U.S. had thought the Russians were five years away from developing MIRV. Despite the tests, Schlesinger does not expect Russia to finish development of MIRV technology before 1976?and, more important, does not expect the Soviets to match U.S. inventory before the mid-1980s. Still, the tests were a disquieting sign that the relentless Soviet momentum in weapons research is closing the technology...
...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...
...unimportant, reverted to Stalinist methods of marshaling opinion, and openly challenged the West as to how firmly it is prepared to stand by its humanist beliefs. Soviet suppression of dissenting opinion, in short, has become as much of a challenge to the West as the recent Soviet MIRV (multiple targetable re-entry vehicles) tests that violated the spirit of the SALT talks and of Nixon-Brezhnev summitry...
Warhead Gap. There is not, however, any limitation on improving existing ICBMS under the executive agreement. Thus the arms race is expected to turn to qualitative rather than quantitative efforts. U.S. experts estimate that it will take the Russians until the late '70s to develop and deploy MIRV missiles and thus close the warhead gap -if the U.S. stops further MIRV deployment. The U.S., meanwhile, is free to go ahead with advances like its ULMS longer-range submarine-launched missile system, which involves at least ten advanced subs with 24 missiles each. Both sides are expected to spend heavily...