On 18 Oct 2003 21:48:20 -0700, (Chris
Manteuffel) wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...

And that means that warhead yield can be lowered, which means less
fallout after a nuclear war...

Lessened yield was pretty much inevitable as a result of American
paranoia. MIRV's came about to counter a percieved Soviet ABM
deployment and because of that you started seeing major benefits from
making warheads smaller and renetry vehicles more accurate.

And besides, size of bomb does not scale lineraly with environmental
effects. Far more important is what you are targeting and what type of
detonation you are using. (Airburst produces less fallout then
groundburst, targeting carbon sinks like flammable cities, petroleum
storage facilities etc. creates more winter-like effects.) Size of
bomb scales pretty lineraly with amount of fissile material used but
not so closely with much else (all other things being equal, e.g. not
comparing a fission bomb with a fission-fusion-fission of equivalent
size).

which in turn means that a nuclear war
becomes more survivable, and that screws up MAD badly.

Can everyone please stop bringing up MAD? The US has not really
closely followed MAD since the late 1960's. The development of the
MIRV and ABM technology pretty much killed off any chance of MAD being
a truly stable system. In a highly MIRV'd environment the rewards for
a first strike are simply to great for MAD alone to be reliable.

This is especially true from the Soviet point of view, without the
assured retaliation of the 41 for Freedom or the Tridents, or even a
reliable bomber force capable of assuredly gutting the US. For the
Soviets only one leg of the Triad was reliable, the land based silo's,
and that leg is the one that is most vulnerable in a MIRV heavy world.
The others might get off some weapons, but even going under the ice
wasn't enough to guarentee protection for Soviet boomers, and the US
spent a lot on Continental Air Defense for just that reason.



The Peacekeeper ICBM will be a thing of the past after 2005.

In following the Salt I treaty, since 1991 the U.S. has reduced the
Minuteman force from 950 Minuteman II and III ICBM's at six bases,
to 500 Minuteman III ICBM's at three bases. 450 silos and the
associated Missile Control Facilities have been destroyed at Ellsworth
AFB, S.D., Whiteman AFB, MO and Grand Forks AFB, N.D.

To comply with Salt 2 treaty terms, the remaining Minutman III force
will have it's three MIRV'ed RV's replaced with a single RV for each
missile by 2005. This will be a mixture of 350 Mk.21/W87 350-kt
Warheads and 150 Mk.12A/W78 370-kt warheads..

The Peacekeeper force of 50 missiles with 10 MIRV'ed warheads each,
has been reduced to 30 missiles since November 2002. One Peacekeeper
is being removed from service about every three weeks until all will
be deactivated in 2005. The 50 silos will not be destroyed and may be
refilled with single warhead Minuteman III's in the future if needed.

The more advanced Mk.21 MIRV'ed RV's that are being removed from the
Peacekeepers are being re-installed as a single warhead on 350 of the
remaining 500 Minuteman III ICBM's.

The 500 Minuteman III's are also being reurbished and refueled to
allow their use unitl 2020. The last one came off the assembly line in
1977.

The guidance systems of the Minuteman III missiles have been upgraded
to allow a CEP of 120-meters (matching the accuracy of the
Peacekeeper). The old CEP was 220-meters for the Minuteman III.




--
Rusty Barton - Antelope, California |
E-mail - |
Visit my Minuteman ICBM website at: |
http://www.geocities.com/minuteman_missile |