Word: mirvs
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Dates: during 1968-1968
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Nixon also considers an extensive Anti-Ballistic Missile System, which would cost at least 40 billion dollars, crucial for American defense. However, the United States has found it easy to develop missiles with multiple, independent warheads (MIRV) and decoy systems to fool the Russian ABMS. The Soviet Union would have little trouble finding similar ways to overcome any ABMS the Pentagon could build...
Nixon's emphasis on defense improvement is misplaced. Developments like MIRV indicate that the real problem in nuclear strategy is technological progress, but MIRV also shows that the United States is not standing still. Other American efforts include the modernization of the land-based Minuteman and the 656 sea-based Polaris and Poseidon missiles (which Nixon discounts in his calculations of nuclear superiority). The Soviets' major concern seems to be an ICBM that could follow an orbit through space to its target. Such a weapon could clude an ABMS system but would probably be quite inaccurate...
...ICBM, both on their maiden tests, winged like homing pigeons to their targets from two launching areas at Cape Kennedy. Their dual success was remarkable, but what distinguished the solid-fuel missiles even more was their potential. Each is designed to carry Multiple Individually-Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV), comprising as many as ten separate nuclear warheads ticketed for preselected targets...
These figures suggest a vast overkill potential. Therefore, are such new weapons really necessary? A number of scientists and other experts doubt it, and consider MIRV as superfluous and dangerous as the proposed "thin" anti-ballistic missile system. The critics argue that both unnecessarily super-intensify an arms race that ought rather to be slowing down. On the other hand, some disarmament specialists agree with Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who maintains that developments like MIRV are necessary for the U.S. to "negotiate from strength, not weakness." The Soviets themselves are currently pushing ahead with an ABM system, their...