Word: mx
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...volatile and dangerous substance scrapped by the U.S. decades ago. By comparison, American technology has in the last 15 years alone produced the multiple warheads reentry vehicle, the Trident submarine-launched missile, the air-launched Cruise missile and Mark 12 and 12A warheads (to be placed on the MX missile). And reliance on the much chastised B-52 intercontinental bomber ignores Soviet reliance on the Bear plane, which is also propeller-driven and just...
Reagan's professed adherence to the ABM pact rings a little hollow when examined against the backdrop of his Administration's overall attitude toward, and record in, arms control and defense. In looking for a way to protect the planned MX from Soviet pre-emptive attack, civilian and military officials of the Pentagon have seriously considered various schemes for ballistic missile defenses, or BMD, a land-based system of antimissile missiles that would require drastic renegotiation if not abrogation of the 1972 treaty...
...that cost too much to buy in sufficient quantities, and instead to concentrate on small, reliable, and cheap weapons. Applying this principle, Hart recently proposed a defense budget that would save more than $100 billion in spending authority over the next five years by eliminating useless gadgets like the MX, the B-1B, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and AH-64 attack helicopter, and the F-18 fighter. Hart, incidentally, supports the nuclear weapons freeze...
Similarly, why should a Soviet counterforce capability-as now exists-be treated as consistent with strategic stability, while our attempt, represented by the MX, to provide a much smaller means to respond is considered as somehow destabilizing? If the U.S., by its abdication, guarantees the invulnerability of Soviet missile forces while the Soviets keep ours exposed, any Soviet incentive for serious negotiation will vanish. A secure Soviet first-strike capability poses an unprecedented danger-ultimately that it may some day be used, in the near term that it may increase Soviet willingness to run risks in regional crises...
Whatever level of MX deployment is recommended by the Scowcroft Commission should be strategically meaningful beyond a mere token deployment. At the same time, the MX, like the new single-warhead missile, should be an organic part of an arms-control strategy. To this end, we should offer to postpone MX deployment if the Soviets agree to destroy MIRVed null (their heavy missiles) over three years starting in 1986, and to abandon MX altogether once the SS-18s are dismantled...