Video: Networked Army Radar Destroys 2 Maneuvering Cruise Missiles
By Peter Huessy, President of GeoStrategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland – Senior Warrior Maven Columnist
Whenever the United States modernizes its nuclear deterrent there is considerable debate within Congress often led by outside disarmament interests and like-minded elements of academia, Hollywood, religious establishments, and the media, about whether certain aspects of that modernization are worthwhile or necessary.
This accelerated in the 1970s over how to deploy the proposed MX missile in a survivable basing mode in the face of a Soviet build-up of strategic nuclear weapons from less than over 11,000 nuclear warheads allowed under the 1972 SALT treaty.
This Soviet growing nuclear posture gave rise to concerns within the USA security community that a window of vulnerability was opening up against the United States.
Specifically, the concern was the Soviets could eliminate in a first strike all of US ICBM silos which contained the USA ballistic missiles with the highest accuracy with the capability of holding at risk the most accurate and most deadly Soviet ICBMs.
This fight accelerated with the advent of the nuclear freeze and the wholesale campaign against the Reagan administration’s strategic modernization efforts, including the changed strategy to not contain the USSR but to end the Soviet empire. The fight continued even after the collapse of the Soviet empire when Congress was facing a decision as to whether to deploy the Peacekeeper missile in a rail garrison mode and continue with a complementary small ICBM on a hard mobile launcher.
