Arms control and the MX
By 1969, Soviet ballistic missile deployments led the United States to project the vulnerability of Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silos along with an imbalance in ICBM capabilities. The Nixon Administration planned two simultaneous responses: strategic arms negotiations, to limit the threat through mutually agreed restraints; and the Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile defense program, to defend, as necessary, the threatened ICBM force. The US succeeded in neither. The planned defense did not materialize, even though SALT failed to limit the growth of the Soviet threat. In the years after SALT I, the US planned, but again did not carry through, ICBM programs to enhance ICBM survivability and at the same time to approach essential equivalence with Soviet capabilities. This dissertation examines the relationship of the two US responses and how arms control affected the MX ICBM system. First, the effects of US arms control objectives and optimism on the MX are analyzed from the first MX systems study in 1974, supporting the new Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, to the deployment of MX in current Minuteman silos, supporting the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. Here US arms control contributed to MX delays and highlighted ICBM capability over ICBM survivability. Second, the effect of specific arms control provisions are addressed topically for each strategic arms agreement. The framework they establish allowed ICBM capabilities to increase, but constrained ICBM survivability.
- Research Organization:
- University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6090812
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
450202 -- Explosions & Explosives-- Nuclear-- Weaponry-- (-1989)
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990100* -- Management
AGREEMENTS
ARMS CONTROL
ASIA
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE
EASTERN EUROPE
EUROPE
MISSILES
NATIONAL DEFENSE
NORTH AMERICA
SALT TALKS
USA
USSR
VULNERABILITY