Word: spartanly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Spartan's explosion. Within an area of a few miles, the X rays would penetrate the incoming warhead's heat shield, wreck its circuitry and defuse its trigger mechanism...
Some areas, including PAR sites that must be kept intact to maintain defenses, would also be protected by Sprints. These sharp-nosed, two-stage missiles, with a payload of a few kilotons (equal to thousands of tons of TNT instead of Spartan's millions), are aimed at warheads that have eluded Spartan. By this time the attacking vehicle has passed into the atmosphere and is traveling at about 18,000 miles per hour. To kill it before it explodes near the earth, Sprint must travel at fantastic speed. Its exact acceleration ability is secret, but the Army talks of Sprint...
...last week before the Senate Disarmament Subcommittee, they did not attack Sentinel's basic hardware. Bethe, in fact, called the components "well designed" and said he went along with the idea that Sprints should be used to protect Minuteman sites. Both Ruina and Bethe, however, were particularly critical of Spartan's role...
Like McNamara and others, Bethe has long doubted that any defense system can effectively discriminate between real warheads and a variety of decoys and "penetration aids" that the offense is likely to use. Spartan, operating in space, faces a handicap in this area because it is only after the real birds
Army planners took the probability of Chinese technological improvement into consideration. Sentinel's original configuration put Spartan and MSR sites close to population centers with the idea of thickening the defenses later by adding Sprints, which must be near the points they defend. To move the installations away from densely populated areas would reduce the popular and political opposition to Sentinel, but would also deprive the major cities of the second line of defense that Sprint represents...