Word: underground
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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McNamara, while admitting that the treaty, by barring atmospheric testing, would prevent the U.S. from developing a 100-megaton bomb, told the Senators that without any testing the U.S. "can develop a warhead with a yield of 50 to 60 megatons for a B-52 delivery," and with underground tests could develop "a 35-megaton warhead for Titan...
...McNamara admitted there are "uncertainties" in the design. But if the silos did survive the crushing pressures and ground fires of a first strike, the Minutemen would blast off with a combined power of hundreds of megatons. Already, they are aimed (by special tapes at SAC's underground command post near Omaha) at Russian and Chinese Communist targets, over 5,000 miles away...
...said, work on most of these problems could be carried out without the atmospheric atomic tests that would be banned by the treaty. Atmospheric tests would surely be useful in perfecting a warhead for an antimissile missile, but McNamara insisted that satisfactory progress could also be achieved with the underground tests that the treaty permits. As for solving the blackout problem, which cannot be duplicated without actual atmospheric testing, McNamara only said lamely: "We will be able to design around the remaining uncertainties...
...crusher, however, was the revelation that the significance of previous underground tests was the opposite of what the treaty's critics claimed. The Administration asserts that since the U.S. has done more testing underground, it knows better how to do it and can actually increase its superiority in this category of devices suitable for such testing...
...anti-treaty senator has taken public issue with this argument. The incidence of references to underground testing has simply quietly dropped off. The facts have been kinder to supporters, who are multiplying dangerously...