Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...myriad problems and risks posed by the nuclear age, none weighs so heavily on the strategist, politician and scientist as the need to anticipate the military balance five and ten years hence. Such foresight is a necessity because of the long lead time required to perfect weapons systems. The difficulty of reading the tarot cards of Atomic Age technology and rival nations' intentions is at the heart of the anti-ballistic-missile dispute...
Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had staked the Administration's case on the contention that the Russians aim to achieve nuclear supremacy. He maintained that they will have the capability by the mid-'70s to jeopardize the American power to retaliate against a first strike. If that forecast proves accurate, the foundation of U.S. nuclear strategy could disintegrate. There would be no capability to inflict "assured destruction" on the attacker...
...President John Kennedy's science adviser, flatly denies that thesis. Utilizing the same basic data that went into Laird's projection, he sketched five scenarios of possible Russian attacks some time between 1975 and 1980. Depending on the situation, the U.S. would still retain a very powerful nuclear counterpunch by Wiesner's calculations: between 2,500 and 7,500 deliverable nuclear weapons. The launching of only a few hundred warheads would be necessary to devastate the Soviet Union...
...American Security Council is not that generous. Its study concludes that the Russians are already surpassing the U.S. in every important nuclear category, offensive and defensive. The figures are far more alarming than any put out by the Pentagon; yet the council, too, works with the same basic data that have been generally available. By ascribing more importance than most strategists give to Soviet middle-range bombers, missiles and conventionally powered submarines, it concludes that the U.S. is already behind in the missile race by 2,750 to 1,710, and in bombers as well...
...reusable three-stage booster whose stages are mounted side by side instead of atop each other); Dixie Cup (with a low-cost, discardable, solid-fuel first stage), and the Big Dumb Booster (so called because it has neither guidance equipment nor complicated fuel pumps and plumbing). A Nerva nuclear engine, which will be used only after a rocket has left the atmosphere, is being test-fired at Jackass Flats, Nev. When perfected, the engines could generate 75,000 Ibs. of thrust with half the fuel that a conventional rocket would...