Two for the Arsenal

In a near-flawless display of precision rocketry, the U.S. last week added two formidable new weapons systems to its nuclear arsenal. The Navy's fleet ballistic missile Poseidon and the Air Force's powerful Minuteman III ICBM, both on their maiden tests, winged like homing pigeons to their targets from two launching areas at Cape Kennedy. Their dual success was remarkable, but what distinguished the solid-fuel missiles even more was their potential. Each is designed to carry Multiple Individually-Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV), comprising as many as ten separate nuclear warheads ticketed for preselected targets.

The 38-ton, two-stage Poseidon was first to lift off, at 6:30 a.m. Roaring up from darkness into the Florida dawn, the missile was illuminated by the rays of the rising sun. Leaving a psychedelic trail of ionized gases, it streaked away. Barely 10 minutes had elapsed after lift-off when it was announced that Poseidon had sped to a perfect splashdown, 1,150 miles away down the Atlantic missile range. Then came the taller, three-stage Minuteman III. Launched at 4:30 p.m. in a geyser of orange flame, it raced 5,000 miles to another brilliant on-target splashdown near Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.

After further testing, the 2,800-mile-range Poseidon will go into 31 of the nation's fleet of 41 ballistic-missile sub marines, which now carry the Polaris. Minuteman III will replace 700 Minuteman I's (currently operational along with Minuteman II and Titan II) in hardened silos. Poseidon may carry as many as ten separately targetable warheads, and Minuteman perhaps three, along with decoy chaff and penetration devices to fool enemy anti-ballistic mis sile systems. Together, they could raise the U.S. single-strike capability to a formidable maximum of 7,500 nuclear warheads.

These figures suggest a vast overkill potential. Therefore, are such new weapons really necessary? A number of scientists and other experts doubt it, and consider MIRV as superfluous and dangerous as the proposed "thin" anti-ballistic missile system. The critics argue that both unnecessarily super-intensify an arms race that ought rather to be slowing down. On the other hand, some disarmament specialists agree with Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who maintains that developments like MIRV are necessary for the U.S. to "negotiate from strength, not weakness." The Soviets themselves are currently pushing ahead with an ABM system, their own as yet undeveloped MIRVs, an orbiting missile system, and a version of Polaris. Moscow and Washington have agreed to discuss limitations on all such weapons systems. Meanwhile, Russia's missile installations are being developed so rapidly that they may well pass the current U.S. lead by mid-1969.

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