Word: silos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During the debate, anti-Dense Pack Congressmen had a field day ridiculing the unproven "fratricide" and silo-hardening theories. "Pearl Harbor was the original Dense Pack," said California Democrat John Burton, reversing Reagan's argument. Iowa Republican James Leach called the attempts to harden silos beyond anything ever achieved "a public works project for the cement industry...
...they were aimed Wind and the electromagnetic effects of nuclear explosions will cause an unknown but significant amount of deflection. There is no military point in having five nuclear missiles land all together half a mile from their target. They would annihilate the neighborhood but leave a properly "hardened" silo intact...
Missiles might not destroy a silo even if they hit it dead-on. Destroying the silo requires the combined explosive force of all of the missiles. But if one of them explodes first, the resulting blast will destroy or at least deflect all the others. This "fratricide" theory remains unproven, but it forms the core of the justification for the "dense pack" basing mode proposed for the MX. If it will work for the MX, as the Administration claims, then it should work for the existing Minuteman silos, which can be hardened relatively cheaply...
...Soviets are cranking out new, more powerful models-or "generations"-of missiles and honing their accuracy all the time. So there is certainly a need for the U.S. to modernize its deterrent. But it can do that without Dense Pack, leaving the job of attacking silos to the Trident II and the most accurate, multiple-warhead version of the Minuteman. Perhaps at some point in the future, a portion of those Minuteman missiles could be replaced by MXs-in existing silos, rather than in some elaborate "protective/deceptive" basing plan. That might be necessary if the Soviets have...
...million farmers are struggling to survive the worst slump since the Depression, caught in a vise of rising costs and falling prices. Though they are expected to chalk up near record crops of wheat (73.8 million metric tons) and corn (208 million metric tons) this year, the silo-busting harvests will only push low prices even lower. Since 1975, as farm expenses have nearly doubled (from $75.9 billion to $141.5 billion), net farm income has fallen. Profits, which declined from $32.7 billion in 1979 to $22.9 billion last year, may dip as low as $16 billion this year, making...