Word: mx
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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...
...additional safeguard, every shelter will contain 96 tons of weights (about equal to the MX), which the TEL would pick up when it drops off a real missile. This would prevent Soviet sensors from discerning the change in the TEL's rumble that would be caused if it no longer carried a load. If the TEL suddenly seemed lighter, for instance, Moscow could conclude that it had deposited an MX at its last stop. The TEL would also carry equipment constantly emitting the same amount of gamma rays and heat as would be given off by an MX...
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...