Word: mx
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Without a draft, this country will have to struggle to improve its armed forces. Money now thrown away on fantasies like the MX will have to be carefully redirected toward sensible manpower needs. (And there should still be plenty left over to cut from the Pentagon budget altogether.) The alternative of mandatory conscription is wholly unacceptable...
...budget Jimmy Carter had projected for 1982, yet it charted no new directions; it merely boosted spending, item by item. If Weinberger looked like a prisoner of the generals on the budget, he appeared to be an amateur in rejecting the advice of his high command on the MX missile and vacillating on a new strategic bomber. After much public agonizing, he failed to come up with a mode for basing the MX and proposed that the U.S. develop both the B-l and Stealth bombers. In passing the Defense appropriation bill last week, the Senate accepted...
Missing from Reagan's recommendations on improving land-based forces is an effective low-cost ballistic missile defense of the 1000 Miniteman silos, a much easier job than defending 100 high-value MX silos. This defense against Soviet warheads can be achieved by the use of buried nuclear explosives to throw up debris that destroys incoming warheads, by the "SWARMJET" system of launching a shotgun blast of 10,000 small unguided raockets at each warhead as it approaches the target silo. Perhaps now that the deceptive basing scheme is out of the way, real effort can be applied to analyze...
Overall, the President deserves high marks for jettisoning the deceptive-basing Multiple Protective Shelter system for the MX missile, a bold act which opens the way to a proper assessment of the entire strategic posture. His improvement in command and control will provide the basis for a "launch under attack" capability. This will insure against some unexpected Soviet breakthrough which would imperil the other two legs of our strategic deterent, i.e., a breakthrough in anti-submarine warfare or a breakthrough that would imperil the survival of our strategic aircraft. His proposal to develop both the MX and the Trident...
...summary, I thoroughly endorse President Reagan's cancellation of the multiple-shelter system: his emphasis on improving communications and control; his decision to build the MX and to delay the deployment decision until 1984. I believe, however, that we do not need to spend $6 billion to develop the MX missile and spend $6 billion to develop the Trident-II missile. If we are going to build an ICBM compatible with the Trident submarine, then we ought to consider seriously putting that missile in silos or deploying it in aircraft, under ground, on small submarines, or the like...