Word: warheaded
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...different purposes. Some are aimed at improving existing nuclear weapons. Designers need to know accurately how much smaller a weapon can be made without loss of punch, how much of a scarce ingredient can be safely omitted, or whether the weapon can be changed in shape to fit another warhead. Most of the answers can be worked out in theory on complex computers, but the history of weapons is full of embarrassing surprises, and scientists can never be sure until the modified weapon has been exploded and its performance has been measured. New and radical kinds of nuclear explosives need...
...megaton horror mentioned by Khrushchev, because the damage the monsters could do would not increase in proportion to their weight. At any rate, a single 20-megaton bomb is enough to destroy any modern city. In its present H-bomb arsenal, the U.S. has reliable 2-megaton warheads for the Titan I missile, and 500-kiloton warheads for the Navy's Polaris and the Air Force's Minuteman. In an age of megaton H-bombs, mere kilotons sound strangely small, but the Minuteman warhead explodes with 20 times the force of the primitive, 20-kiloton A-bomb that...
...detect an incoming missile while it is still high in space. As soon as the missile has been "acquired," another radar (Zeus Discrimination Radar) will zero in and decide whether the approaching object is actually an enemy warhead, or a decoy, or a bit of space flotsam. If it is a warhead, the missile will be turned over to a third radar, which will track it until the time comes to shoot it down with a three-stage Nike Zeus rocket. All this will be automatic, and it will happen too quickly for human hand or brain to follow...
...engineers for developing a nuclear explosive that has yet to be tested as a weapon. Robert M. Schwartz got $15,000 from the Secretary of the Army, and Milton E. Epton and Mrs. Irving Mayer, representing her late husband, got $5,000 each for the construction of an atomic warhead light enough for the infantry's one-man Davy Crockett rocket...
...first there was good reason for the Russian lead. In 1954, when the Soviets began work on their intercontinental ballistic missiles, they needed an engine powerful enough to lift their outsize nuclear warheads. They gave top priority to that goal and developed the 800,000-lb.-thrust, liquid-fueled booster engine that has since provided the power for their spectacular out-space shots as well as their ICBMs. The U.S., with a smaller warhead, did not require such massive power, settled on the 360,000-lb.-thrust Atlas engine, still the biggest in the U.S. space arsenal...