Word: warhead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What was so disturbing, then, about the MX vote was the Reagan Administration's success in persuading a majority of lawmakers to pursue the goal of a strong defense blindly. The faults of this particular multiple warhead system are many and well-documented, chief among them being its vulnerability to a knock out strike. But the President made clear through his no-holds-barred lobbying effort that he was less concerned with the quality of the system deployed than just deploying something to demonstrate firmness to Moscow and its Geneva delegation. Similarly, a refusal to undermine our negotiators at arms...
Dole and the rest of the Senate provided a lot more than that. Late that afternoon they gave approval of the new ten-warhead missiles by the surprisingly wide vote of 55 to 45, a crucial boost for Reagan's campaign to double the size of the nation's MX arsenal. It was a reluctant majority; although most Senators have qualms about the MX, many feared that a vote against it would jeopardize the newly restarted arms talks in Geneva. In part the vote reflected U.S. concerns that two Soviet missiles believed to be mobile, the MX-size...
...stored their SS-X-24s in "garages" easily detectable by U.S. spy satellites, they are experimenting with a mobile version that can be raised and fired from a railway launcher disguised to look like part of an ordinary freight train. The smaller SS-X-25, which has a single warhead comparable to the proposed U.S. Midgetman, will be transported and launched from flatbed trucks...
KINETIC-ENERGY WEAPONS. They are simply objects like rockets, homing vehicles or even pellets fired at a missile, bus or warhead to destroy it by sheer impact. They are potentially effective at any stage from boost to re-entry, and can be fired either from the ground or from space. Their technology is well enough developed to make them available by the 1990s, much earlier than any of the beam weapons. Indeed, a terminal defense of sorts could be put into place right now. Main drawbacks: the range of kinetic-energy weapons is measured in hundreds rather than thousands...
...rifle bullet from the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago. The sensors also would have to flash back instantaneous assessments of what targets had been hit, so that a battle station would not waste vital seconds aiming a laser or particle beam at a missile or warhead already destroyed...