Word: sentinels
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...would be a few miles south of the Canadian border, and since Chinese or Soviet ICBMs would come in over the North Pole, the nuclear-armed ABMs sent to intercept them would probably be detonated over Canada. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was kept posted of Lyndon Johnson's Sentinel plans, but he was not informed in advance of President Nixon's switch to Safeguard. In an emergency debate in Ottawa, Socialist Leader Tommy Douglas protested: "Canada is not a banana republic...
...could expand Sentinel massively to protect major cities against all-out attack, which he dismissed because such protection is virtually impossible anyway...
...could modify Sentinel in a way that would make it more palatable to its political opponents as well as more defensible on strategic grounds...
...press conference, the President left the impression that the new ABM program would be severely cut back from Johnson's blueprint. He mentioned only two proposed installations, designed to protect Minuteman ICBM sites in Montana and North Dakota-compared with 17 Sentinel bases planned by Johnson primarily to defend major U.S. cities. As it turned out, the two installations will be built first, but later, Nixon's proposal calls for 14 ABM bases in all. The system's function has been shifted from the protection of cities to the defense of the nation's nuclear deterrent...
...differences between the Johnson Administration's Sentinel program and Nixon's Safeguard are more in emphasis than in scale. Johnson's 17 Sentinel sites would have covered all the continental U.S., Hawaii and Alaska with Spartan rockets designed to intercept incoming missiles up to 400 miles above target, backed up by shorter-range Sprints to knock down any ICBMs that penetrated the Spartan screen. Nixon's plan, while providing extensive area defense, will concentrate not only on Minuteman ICBMs in their concrete silos, but also on bomber bases, Washington, and the Charleston base for Polaris submarines...