Word: warhead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...strip 14 miles long and 1½ miles wide. Their concrete-and-steel silos would be hardened to a degree never before attained by engineers. The 100 holes would be spaced 1,800 ft. apart-a distance computed by Pentagon scientists as too great to permit a single Soviet warhead from knocking out more than one MX, but close enough so that the blasts from the first enemy warheads would disable those coming in behind. This Fratricide theory is untested and much debated among nuclear physicists (see box). If the theory is valid, more than half the MX missiles would...
...initial Soviet H-bombs would create powerful shock waves (throwing warhead guidance systems off course), searing temperatures (high enough on the periphery of the fireball to incinerate other warheads) and a flood of radiation (highenergy gamma and X rays, plus neutrons, which would wreck a warhead's electronics). The blast would also produce the deadly vacuum characteristic of all thermonuclear explosions, destroying almost all the atmosphere in an incoming warhead's path and effectively ending its maneuvering ability. Any warheads surviving these multiple perils would probably be burned up by frictional heat as they plunged earthward at more...
...launch of the missile with its dummy warhead went perfectly, and officials in Washington and abroad, who had been getting edgy about the misadventures of Pershing II, breathed easier. The Army has been rushing to ready the intermediate-range missile, nine of which are slated to be deployed in West Germany by December 1983, a year earlier than originally planned, as the centerpiece of the NATO arms buildup. Designed to fly 1,000 miles in six to eight minutes, the Pershing II will be the first nuclear weapon based in Western Europe capable of striking with accuracy deep inside...
Like the other two companies discussed by the Harvard Corporation this year, G.E. has ties to the Department of Defense but does most of its contracting for nuclear projects through the Department of Energy (DOE). With five major laboratories and 13 production-testing plants nation-wide, the DOE supervises warhead and material production, disposal of nuclear waste from defense activities, and a good portion of nuclear research and development...
...started throwing off burning fragments. The missile, 34½ ft. long and 40 in. in diameter, was already disintegrating when an Air Force officer pushed the emergency button to detonate the small explosive charges packed on board. The nose cone, which fell into the Atlantic, carried no nuclear warhead. At week's end officials were still trying to determine what caused the failure; preliminary blame was placed on a flaw in the first-stage rocket motor...