Nation: A History Of U.S. Testing

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If the efficiency of the Minuteman's warhead, for example, were to be doubled, the missile could be rigged to deliver a bigger bang; a decrease in weight of the current-strength warhead would allow an increase in the missile's range. The same effect would show up all along the line; a B-52 could carry twice as many improved 20-megaton bombs. The U.S. has many new weapons systems with nuclear warheads that have yet to be explosively tested. No ICBM, for instance, has carried a nuclear warhead out of the atmosphere and back again and demonstrated that after its high ride the warhead will still explode. No antimissile nuclear weapon has been tested in space against an incoming missile. U.S. military authorities attach much importance to improved tactical nuclear weapons that are small, light, dependable, and so "clean" that they do not contaminate a battlefield with deadly radioactivity. Such clean weapons are not in hand, and they cannot be developed without many more tests. Even farther away is the much-discussed neutron bomb, which promises to be a small, short-range H-bomb exploded by some other means than the usual "dirty" fission detonator. Its proponents believe that it will kill people by neutrons while its feeble blast and heat will do little damage to property. But before it can be added to the U.S. arsenal, the neutron bomb will require a long and intensive series of tests.

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