Word: warhead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...radio exchange would have been ludicrous had it not taken place between two members of an Air Force team searching frantically for a nine-megaton warhead, 450 times the yield of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The warhead was blown from the Titan II missile that exploded into flames near Damascus, Ark., two weeks ago. Despite pleas by nearby residents for reassurance that there was no danger of toxic fumes or radiation, the Air Force was determined to keep secret for a time the embarrassing fact that the warhead had been lost and then found a short time later...
...Services Committee, urged that the U.S. "seriously explore" alternatives to the Titans. But Pentagon officials maintain that the U.S. cannot afford to do so. Although the Titans are not as accurate as the country's main land-based nuclear missiles, the 1,000 solid-fuel Minutemen, a Titan warhead is about 54 times as big as one of the three warheads on a Minuteman III. Titans make up one-third of the land-based U.S. megatonnage...
...experts believe that they are aimed at Soviet nuclear missile command centers and perhaps other targets like submarine bases. Explained a defense analyst: "For example, you might know that a Soviet command and control center is in a Soviet mountain, but not exactly where. Titan II's large warhead could be used to dig up the mountain...
...friends are so skeptical that they even suggest there was no missile in the huge container, marked DO NOT DROP, that was loaded aboard a flatbed truck and driven under heavy guard from the damaged missile site. Military officials, while not actually confirming that there was a warhead in the box-or that there ever had been one on the missile-indicated that the bomb was taken to Little Rock Air Force Base and shipped by air to an Amarillo, Texas, nuclear weapons plant for disassembly...
Officials reported that no radiation leaked from the missile, which was tipped with a multimegaton nuclear warhead. But the explosion was the second accident of the week involving U.S. nuclear weapons; the first was a fire at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N. Dak., that damaged a B-52 bomber thought to be carrying 32 shortrange, nuclear missiles...