Word: mx
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Subterranean shock waves came last week from the secret and cheerless Room 31074 in the Pentagon. There Richard D. DeLauer, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, revealed a new plan to the special committee, headed by Nobel Physicist Charles Townes, that is assigned to find a satisfactory MX launching system. The session was chaotic. Most of the committee's 14 members find the air-launch idea doubtful because of structural and guidance problems, as well as the cost, which could reach $125 billion. But because DeLauer spoke for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and because Weinberger...
DeLauer proposed that the MX first be carried by C-5A Galaxy transports, redesigned and shielded against nuclear-attack radiation. But by 1990 they would be moved to radically new planes that would have structural materials and wing configurations permitting them to stay aloft for as long as a week. Until that airborne MX system is in place, DeLauer suggested, the U.S. could rely on antiballistic missiles to protect its aging Minutemen...
...that depth a missile is totally protected from any explosion, though clearing surface debris for a launch after a nuclear blast (which can turn sand to stone) remains an unsolved technical problem. Supplementing the missiles would be a new B-1 bomber and existing cruise missiles. Ideas for putting MX missiles on new submarines or surface ships were brushed aside...
Lost in the planning turmoil was the original MX design, with its 4,600 shelters scattered across the deserts of Utah and Nevada. Three billion dollars has already been invested in that system, but it is opposed by powerful Republican Senators Jake Garn of Utah and Paul Laxalt of Nevada. There is little question that Reagan wants to avoid crossing his powerful political friends. White House Counsellor Ed Meese is believed to feel that the original MX system was devised to fit Jimmy Carter's failed hopes for a nuclear arms limitation treaty and, thus, the multiple-shelters idea...
...this issue Reagan, who has slain the congressional dragons one after another, will face another kind of beast. The Air Force, which will run any new MX system, is dubious that the technical problems of an air-launch system can be solved in the time available. Texas Senator John Tower, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is expressing his concern around Washington that each air-launched missile could cost $1 billion. He favors a variant of the land-based plan, which actually was begun under Republican Gerald Ford...