Word: warheads
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...latest U.S. nuclear showdown doesn't involve a foreign enemy. Instead it pits President Barack Obama against his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and concerns the question of whether America needs a new generation of nuclear warheads. While serving under former President George W. Bush, Gates had repeatedly called for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program to be put into operation, because the nation's current nukes - mostly produced in the 1970s and '80s - are growing so old that their destructive power may be in question...
...increased to reach targets not just in Poland, but in the Czech Republic as well. This precision weapon can easily avoid enemy radars and carries a payload of 480 kg. Russia will fit its Iskander arsenal with cluster, blast-fragmentation, penetration, and possibly even, thermobaric warheads. A tactical nuclear warhead could also be an option, though Medvedev pointedly refrained from mentioning that...
Beyond picking off terrorists and nuclear warheads stuck at border crossings, the report cites a couple of potentially cataclysmic events where a conventional strike from out of the blue could save the day. The system would be perfect for destroying an enemy missile carrying a nuclear warhead on its launch pad (apparently, the NRC has some doubts about the effectiveness of the nation's "Star Wars" missile shield and the utility of hundreds of warplanes). It would also be ideal for taking out an unexplained super-weapon (perhaps an electro-magnetic pulse nuclear bomb) that could lead to the "loss...
...stability and the quest for arms control. Today the stockpiles of the superpowers are roughly comparable in overall size, and the U.S. has an edge in some weapons (such as cruise missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). But the Soviets have an advantage in a key category: accurate, destructive warheads on ICBMs. They have more than 6,000, compared with some 2,000 for the U.S. Those are the ''silo busters,'' the instruments of a hypothetical first-strike threat against America's 1,000 ICBM launchers. This Soviet preponderance in ICBM warheads contributed to Reagan's disenchantment with Strategic Arms...
...Soviet nuclear attack on the U.S. could entail an intercontinental blitzkrieg: thousands of missiles launched from enemy territory, letting loose tens of thousands of deadly warheads surrounded by a nebula of hurtling decoys and debris. In half an hour, this lethal ''threat cloud'' would be over the U.S., raining destruction on cities and military targets alike. Trying to stop this deluge would require enormous technological breakthroughs in at least four areas: sensors, lasers, particle beams and computer programming. Should such advances occur, SDI proponents argue, a reasonably effective Star Wars defense would reduce to virtually zero the number of Soviet...