Word: warheaded
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...President consider that a "surgical, Limited strike" and respond accordingly? Or would he order a devastating retaliation from his missile-firing submarines? At least 15 of those boats would be untouched and undetectable, deep at sea, each carrying at least 16 missiles, each missile tipped with eight to ten warheads, each warhead almost four times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Two of those American subs could destroy every major city in the U.S.S.R...
...Administration is on a buying binge. Last month it was disclosed that the President planned to add 17,000 nuclear explosive devices to the existing arsenal of 25,000 (which includes armaments for shorter-range missiles, as well as artillery shells, demolition mines and torpedoes). This kind of warhead inflation, seemingly far in excess of what the U.S. should need to deter the Soviets, tends to justify the question asked by those who want a weapons freeze: "How much is enough?" Too often the Administration's answer seems to be simply: "More, much more, as much as possible...
...late April, a cloudless Thursday evening in Detroit. Assume further that there is no advance warning. Shortly after 8:30, the lone warhead of a Soviet SS-13 missile comes swooping down. Six thousand feet, directly above the intersection of Interstate Highways 94 and 75, the 1-megaton bomb-only a fiftieth as large as the Soviets' largest warhead-explodes with the force of 1 million tons...
With an average of 15 Ibs. of the silver-white, highly toxic metal needed for each warhead, the Reagan plan will require upwards of 130 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to build the 17,000 or so new warheads that defense specialists estimate will be added to the U.S. nuclear arsenal by the mid-1990s. But according to congressional testimony earlier this year by F. Charles Gilbert, an Energy Department nuclear expert, the lack not only of plutonium but also of tritium, an associated radioactive gas, threatens eventually to present "a serious problem...
...Administration cannot make up its mind about how to base the MX missile, but the Air Force has successfully staged the first test launching of a dummy MX at a site near Las Vegas. The projectile had no propellants, electronics or warhead, but was the same size, shape and weight as an actual MX. At left, the missile is ejected from a canister by steam and gas pressure, a system adapted from submarine missile-launching devices. As the mock-up rises into the air, some of the rectangular plastic pads, designed to steady the missile until it leaves the canister...