Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Administration stumbled on the MX missile's most glaring weakness: after more than eight years of study, the expenditure of $4.5 billion on the missile and consideration of some 30 options, the Pentagon still lacks a politically acceptable and scientifically credible basing mode for its sophisticated bird. Reagan, Weinberger and a flurry of military papers and briefings had all failed in the rush to sell Dense Pack, the basing plan that would plant 100 of the 71-ft.-tall missiles in a 21-sq.-mi. strip of Wyoming, 14 miles long by 1.5 miles wide. Proponents argued that because...
Technically, the House did not vote on Dense Pack. It only eliminated $988 million sought by the Administration to produce the first five of the 226 MX missiles it wants to acquire in a program that would cost at least $30 billion. In fact, the House readily approved spending $2.5 billion for continued research and development of the MX and its basing system, presumably something other than Dense Pack. The House did not reject Reagan's basic argument that the 1,000 Minutemen are vulnerable to a first strike from improved Soviet ICBMs and that the MX is needed...
...York's Democratic Congressman Joseph Addabbo, 57, an obscure and almost shy eleven-term Representative from Queens, led the fight against MX production. He had heard Air Force officers briefing House members on Dense Pack. "That went over like a lead balloon," he recalled later. "The more they tried to explain Dense Pack, the less the members knew." Addabbo had also heard that not even the Joint Chiefs of Staff were wholly behind Dense Pack...
...George Bush and Weinberger. The President warned against turning the imminent Dec. 7 vote into another Pearl Harbor. Still, his enthusiasm for Dense Pack was far from contagious. He called it "the option with the least warts." Weinberger worked the telephones hard, pressing Congressmen to support all of the MX funding. He called one Representative three times, finally getting an impatient reply: "I'm a no vote. If I changemy mind, I'll call...
...President's men insisted that the issue was not Dense Pack but "modernization" of the land leg of the nation's nuclear triad. At the least, they argued, MX production should proceed as a bargaining chip in the START talks. But even Alabama Republican Jack Edwards, who directed pro-MX forces, conceded that the missile "is too expensive to use simply as a chip." The strongest argument for Reagan's position was offered by Michel, who sought to sow doubts about the ability of Congressmen to assess such technical matters. "In every age there are always well...