Multiple-Warhead Missile Tests

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31755, 12 August 1968, Page 13

Multiple-Warhead Missile Tests

GV Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CAPE KENNEDY (Florida). August 11

The United States Defence Department lifted a screen of secrecy from the maiden test flights of the nation's two new long-range missiles today and said the rockets capable of carrying multiple warheads would be launched next Thursday and Friday. The Navy’s new “super Polaris" submarine-launched missile, the Poseidon, is to be fired at midday on Thursday from a land pad at the Cape. The Air Force’s new Minuteman 111 "instant 1.C.8.M.” will be fired from an underground site shortly after sunset the next day.

Both missiles are designed to carry the sophisticated new “space bus”, multiple warhead assembly that will be able to shower up to 10 nuclear weapons on individual targets hundreds of miles apart. Although the Air Force, serving as Defence Department spokesman, declined to give any further details on the missions, it was believed a test version of the new multiple warhead package would be flown on the initial Minuteman.

The former Secretary of Defence, Mr Robert McNamara, told Congress earlier this year that the multiple warheads to be carried by the new missile would enhance the survivability of the nation’s strategic missile forces and greatly enhance the number of weapons that could be loosed by 1972.