Word: warheads
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Nike-Zeus rocket, "interception" does not necessarily mean "a hit.'" Scientists calculate that with a one-kiloton warhead the rocket could either neutralize or destroy a multimegaton monster from a distance of a mile or more. The theory has yet to be tested, but it has silenced critics who originally scorned the plan as a foolhardy attempt to "hit a bullet with a bullet." Says an official of Douglas Aircraft, one of the major contractors for the program: "It's like hitting a bullet with a couple of football stadiums...
Seeking alternatives, he turned to "Project Defender," a $100 million-a-year operation under Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, now has 200 civilian contractors at work exploring other anti-missile possibilities. Among them: spraying the path of a missile with pellets to damage the warhead, or putting into orbit anti-missile stations that would detect and kill ICBMs as they leave their launching pads...
...most serious military effect probably concerns radar-particularly the powerful radars that are being developed to spot ballistic missiles plunging down from space. A high-altitude nuclear explosion, the AEC explains, acts like an enormous, radar-blinding smoke screen. Radar beams that search the sky for invading warheads may be either absorbed or totally reflected by bomb-ionized air. An enemy hoping to hit a target defended by radar-guided anti-missile missiles might well explode a warhead several hundred miles up to create an electronic smoke screen that would blind defensive radars to other warheads racing toward their targets...
...last week, cried Washington Democratic Senator "Scoop" Jackson. The cause of his elation: he had just heard of the on-target success of the first U.S. attempt to fire a Polaris missile with a live nuclear warhead from a submarine...
...Polaris blast from the submerged submarine Ethan Allen that excited Washington. It proved that the U.S. has a nuclear warhead that can survive re-entry into the atmosphere, that a regular submarine crew (previous non-nuclear Polaris firings have been by specialists nicknamed "Ph.D. crews") on virtually undetectable routine patrol could receive sudden orders to fire, send its birds 1,400 miles across the water and hit on target with a force of 500 kilotons...