Word: packed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reassuring. "Our children should not grow up frightened," Ronald Reagan said. "They should not fear the future." But the President's approach to preventing nuclear war was of itself, and necessarily, a frightening thing: he urged deployment of 100 huge new MX intercontinental ballistics missiles in a Dense Pack cluster near Cheyenne...
Many critics question Reagan's assertions of Soviet nuclear superiority, believe the disadvantages of MX deployment outweigh the benefits, and have grave doubts about the feasibility of the Dense Pack basing mode (see following stories). It is roughly the 30th option considered by the Air Force, which long favored the "racetrack" system supported in 1979 by President Carter. This involved shuttling 200 MX missiles on flatbed trailers among 4,600 shelters in Utah and Nevada. That $34 billion plan was buried under a barrage of environmental and political opposition, including that of Presidential Candidate Reagan...
...conceivably wipe the MX out. The lawmakers threatened to cut off further funding (some $4.5 billion has been spent on the missile to date) unless the Administration presented a permanent basing plan by Dec. 1 of this year. The Air Force was ordered to restudy its basing choices. Dense Pack was one of them. National Security Adviser William Clark backed it strongly, and Weinberger agreed to make it the Pentagon's preferred option. After studying a series of one-page memos on the subject, Reagan approved the Dense Pack idea in a 15-min. conversation with Clark last week...
...Dense Pack plan calls for the missiles to be implanted along a strip 14 miles long and 1½ miles wide. Their concrete-and-steel silos would be hardened to a degree never before attained by engineers. The 100 holes would be spaced 1,800 ft. apart-a distance computed by Pentagon scientists as too great to permit a single Soviet warhead from knocking out more than one MX, but close enough so that the blasts from the first enemy warheads would disable those coming in behind. This Fratricide theory is untested and much debated among nuclear physicists...
...That's what materity will do for you." said a becoming Coach Billy Cleary. "Greg [Olson] and Jimmy [Turner] and Scotty [Fusen] can throw that pock around so well. They can throw that pack around so well. They can improvise. Now if the other team overplays, we know enough to work around...