Word: silos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...glitches that have dogged the MX for more than a dozen years have occurred in just about everything except its basic technology. The weapon was conceived as a counter to the new generation of Soviet missiles whose accuracy rendered the silo-based U.S. Minuteman increasingly vulnerable. But the MX until 1983 was a missile in search of a home, or basing mode. In an effort to make it "survivable," or impervious to a Soviet first strike, Pentagon planners studied at least 37 basing ideas, including one that would have kept the MX arsenal permanently airborne and another that would have...
...research program cannot be predicted, the problems being faced and some of the ways in which they might be overcome are reasonably clear. Every proposal for a missile defense system begins with a profile of an enemy nuclear attack. In its roughly 30-minute flight from a silo in Siberia to detonation on top of a Minuteman silo in North Dakota--or above the White House--a Soviet warhead would go through four well-marked stages: 1) Boost. The rocket engines of, say, an SS-18 missile push it up through the atmosphere and into space. 2) Post-boost...
...what they include, but Reagan gave a hint at his news conference. The President recalled that in START the U.S. initially proposed extra-deep cuts in heavy land-based missiles and the U.S.S.R. refused because those silo-fired behemoths constitute a much bigger part of the Soviet than of the U.S. arsenal. Now, said the President, "one of the things that we've made clear to the Soviets is that we recognize there may be differences with regard to the mix of weapons on both sides and we're prepared to deal with that problem, and where perhaps we have...
...giggles and had to ask the chair for an extension of time to compose herself and go on. With an eye to conservatives at home, she has consistently opposed large cuts in the military. When Carter favored a mobile MX missile, she voted for it; when Reagan backed a silo-based MX, she voted against it. In the past year, as her political ambition widened, she has tried to plug the gaps in her knowledge, visiting Central America and the Middle East. In a remark that revealed both her naiveté and directness, she once exclaimed: "I didn...
...ICBM: Intercontinental ballistic missile, a rocket usually intended to be fired from an underground silo in the U.S. or U.S.S.R. that can reach the territory of the other superpower. It is the most destructive of strategic weapons, but also the most vulnerable, since until it is fired, it is stationary and can be fairly easily targeted by the other side. The principal American ICBM is the Minuteman III, with three warheads; the main Soviet ones are the SS-18, with ten warheads, and the SS-19, with...