Word: warhead
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...good news for "rogue states" is that the easiest way past America's vaunted missile shield may be simply to release a couple of inflatable toys and tin cans along with the warhead. And that may be good news, too, for a U.S. president looking for a way out of his political dilemma over whether to green-light the system. The New York Times reported Friday that Pentagon documents reveal that the military's testing of the proposed $60 billion missile system are designed to allow the interceptor "kill vehicle" to hit its target despite a basic flaw: its inability...
Deep in some industrial warren, perhaps in Pyongyang, engineers carefully machine a nuclear bomb. On the other side of Asia, maybe in Tehran, chemists fill bomblets with deadly nerve gas. Farther west, let's say in Baghdad, scientists ladle toxins into a biological warhead. U.S. officials don't have, or at least won't reveal, the intelligence that proves such sinister work is afoot. But they believe it is happening. More important, they fear it is only a matter of time before one of those nations--North Korea, Iran or Iraq--lobs a missile toward...
...enemy missile and cue ground-based radars to find it. Data on its path would be downloaded into the interceptors before their launch from mainland Alaska bases, with updates radioed to them in flight. Four interceptors, fired two at a time, would be dedicated to each incoming warhead. If the first pair should miss, another pair would be fired...
...Pentagon is now in the midst of three tests; so far, the system is 1 for 2. The first test, over the Pacific last October, blasted a fake warhead to smithereens. But the second, in January, missed by about 150 yards when a "few molecules" of water froze inside a cooling pipe 0.0035 in. in diameter--the width of a human hair--and shut down the interceptor's heat-seeking sensors. A third test is set for late June. Officials say a 1-for-3 record will justify construction of the missiles. Previously the Pentagon had said it was aiming...
...cold war ended a decade ago, but Russia and the U.S. still have double the number of nuclear weapons that even their militaries say they now need. Last month Putin got his parliament to ratify the 1993 START II treaty, which would bring down each side's warhead count to between 3,000 and 3,500. But Moscow will not begin cutting under START II until the Senate ratifies side agreements Clinton negotiated in 1997 that strengthen the ABM treaty...