Word: safeguard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...S.2546, "authorizing appropriations for fiscal year 1970 for military procurement, research and development." The total amount involved was more than $20 billion, but only a fraction of that sum was at issue right now: $759.1 million for the first steps in deployment of the Nixon Administration's Safeguard anti-ballistic-missile defense system. After months of inconclusive hearings and angry debate, and publication of a spate of weighty books on ABM by civilian defense scholars,* the Senate settled in for its toughest fight over a military bill in memory...
Cornell Physicist Hans Bethe, a Nobel laureate who believes Safeguard to be sound in principle but not yet necessary to U.S. defense, replies that it is possible to intercept the enemy warheads with Sprints at altitudes below 30 miles, where radar blackout is not a serious problem. Further, the PAR installations are designed to overlap enough for one to take over the functions of another -at least in theory-if the second is blacked out or even physically destroyed by a missile that penetrates the ABM defenses...
...proposed, Laird estimates the price at $10.8 billion. Officials point out that annual review of the need for the program could cut the project off long before that much is spent. ABM critics argue, however, that the final cost will turn out to be much higher. They fear that Safeguard may be only the first segment of a greatly expanded "thick" deployment. Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, a former Secretary of the Air Force, has put the cost of such a system as high as $400 billion, although even many of Safeguard's detractors find that figure outlandish...
Some of the opposition believe that Safeguard could be shelved by substantially hardening ICBM sites at a smaller cost ($6 billion to $7 billion). The Pentagon wants to do that in addition to Safeguard; the Air Force is already seeking out "hard rock" silo locations that would make ICBMs more resistant even to multimegaton near misses. Wiesner, Rathjens and Weinberg suggest that the number of ICBMs could be doubled for the price of Safeguard, which would mean that more than 1,000 missiles would survive an attack by the 420 SS-9s that the Pentagon's Foster hypothesized. Wohlstetter...
...diminish safety. The prospect of a new lap in the arms race could also decrease the chances for serious agreement during the strategic arms-limitation talks that the U.S. hopes to begin with the U.S.S.R. next month. ABM development has not yet done that. The Soviets have not interpreted Safeguard as sufficiently hostile to keep them from taking part in the discussions...