Word: mx
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...threat to the nation's land-based strategic arsenal: the possibility of a surprise Soviet attack obliterating nearly all of the 1,054 U.S. Minuteman and Titan iCBMs. Pentagon strategists have long believed that the best antidote to this vulnerability would be a mobile ICBM known as the MX. They had considered underground trenches, which proved vulnerable, and special planes, which proved very expensive...
...Pentagon's new proposal calls for 23 underground shelters to be connected by ramps to each track. Only one MX missile would be based on each oval. The missile would be moved from shelter to shelter by a TEL, for transporter-erector-launcher. Each one would be 180 ft. long, 13 ft. wide and 13.5 ft. high, roll on 24 huge tires and have a 3,250 h.p. engine. The total weight of a TEL and its missile would be 335 tons...
...critical moment would come when the TEL moved to the end of a ramp and stopped at a shelter entrance. There it could: 1) deposit an MX in the shelter; or 2) remove one; or 3) do neither, but deceptively remain at the entrance for the time it would take to load or unload a missile. To prevent Soviet spy satellites from detecting what was going on, the TEL's actions would be completely shrouded by the "shield vehicle," another truck that straddles the TEL much as a turtle is covered by its shell...
Today's neo-rightists want more spending on arms, including $30 billion for the MX missile. Yet these same people are calling for a constitutional convention to balance the budget, presumably by cutting social programs. They apparently put more value on the instruments of global death than they do on the instruments of hope for America's needy...
Baker seemed to be suggesting that the U.S. might offer to sacrifice its planned mobile MX missile for a Soviet agreement to give up the SS-18s. That would be a bad deal because the 200 superaccurate mobile MXs that the U.S. plans to build would have up to ten warheads each and would be more than a match for the stationary...