Word: warhead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...must choose a multibillion-dollar plan for modernizing the nation's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Though dozens of basing modes and several new missiles have been considered, only two expensive mobile missile systems are really in the running: the rail-carried, multiwarhead MX and the truck-transported, single- warhead Midgetman. Bush's wisest course might be to deploy neither...
...strategic nuclear forces: land-based ICBMs in silos, sea- based missiles aboard submarines, and nuclear bombs carried by airplanes. But over the years, the increased accuracy of Soviet ICBMs has gradually threatened the land-based leg of the triad, which consists of 450 Minuteman IIs, each carrying a single warhead; 500 Minuteman IIIs tipped with three warheads; and 50 more modern MX's, each with ten warheads. The Administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan considered 30 or so ideas for rendering U.S. ICBMs less vulnerable to Soviet attack. But as a report co- authored by former Defense...
Although many respected observers argue the case, it makes little sense to worry unduly about the vulnerability of the land-based leg of the triad when it accounts for only 20% of the 12,000 warheads in America's strategic nuclear arsenal. Even in the unlikely event that a first strike wiped out the entire American land-based missile force, the U.S. could still obliterate the Soviet % Union with a fraction of the 5,300 warheads on its modern missile submarines and the 4,700 on its bombers. Though the first operational test last week of a Trident II missile...
...critical question thus becomes which of the missiles to buy. The ten- warhead MX, which Reagan dubbed the Peacekeeper, is a proven, highly accurate ICBM. In one option, the 50 MX's already deployed in ICBM silos would be supplemented by another 50 "garrisoned" on special railroad cars stationed on military bases. If a U.S.-Soviet confrontation loomed, the missiles would be moved out on 180,000 miles of railway across the nation. The main advantage of this scheme is its relatively low price tag: an estimated $12 billion for 50 missiles carrying 500 warheads. A somewhat cheaper option...
...clashed repeatedly with President Reagan over specific weapons systems. He didn't then, and still doesn't, think there is "anything magical" in the Navy's desire for 15 aircraft-carrier battle groups. He engineered the MX compromise, cut back Reagan's grandiose plans and today favors the single-warhead Midgetman over a rail-based MX. He described as "fantasy" Reagan's dream of a nationwide Star Wars shield and fought the former President's insistence that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty permitted the expanded testing and development of a space-based strategic defense system...