Word: warhead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What if the warhead had been nuclear? Then, says the Pentagon soothingly, the accidental launch could never have occurred; safety procedures for nuclear-armed missiles are much more complex. Happily, St. Croix has no early warning system to alert it to a missile attack, and presumably no second-strike capability if it thinks it is being attacked. What if the errant missile had been fired across, say, the Soviet border? The Pentagon trusts no missile would ever be so unguided...
...communications-intelligence network, designed to control military maeuvers from a central point, which works, under ideal conditions, 38 per cent of the time; the TOW missile, launched by a soldier, which demands that he stand absolutely still in the middle of a battlefield for ten seconds while guiding his warhead at a far-off tank; missiles guided by t.v. cameras that destroy fenceposts as often as enemy targets; and even an Air Force flashlight so electronically sophisticated that almost every pilot bypasses it for $1.50 Japanese models that have the advantage of fitting inside their flight suits. Again and again...
Mulcahy finally decided his partners were acting on their own, not for the agency, when they directed him to arrange for purchase of a Redeye ground-to-air missile for Gaddafi. Mulcahy feared Gaddafi might be planning to arm a Redeye with a nuclear warhead. Alarmed, he searched through his company's files, found documents he had never seen-and reported his findings to both...
...having it land within a millimeter of its target. With the Trident I, II, and the MX missiles Draper will reduce Circular Error Probability (CEP) to 300 feet. For the purposes of missile accuracy, this amounts to what the Real Paper described as the ability to "land a warhead in stall three of the men's room at the Kremlin." Clearly Draper Lab is very skillful at what it does...
Weinberger, who has a lot to learn about the subtleties of diplomatic discourse, has a tendency to make casual and imprecise pronouncements that later have to be corrected by others. In his first press conference, he said that the U.S. might decide to deploy the enhanced-radiation warhead known as the neutron bomb. Haig quickly sent out cables saying that no such decision had been made. Discussing the presence of U.S. trainers in El Salvador, Weinberger offhandedly referred to them as "advisers"-a red-nag word with disturbing echoes of Viet Nam. This tendency to shoot from...