Testing may increase

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33588, 17 July 1974, Page 16

Testing may increase

(By

FRED HOFFMAN.

of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

WASHINGTON. Most Pentagon research specialists are satisfied that the United States can adequately test several important new nuclear weapons, including bigger multiple warheads, before a limit on underground testing takes effect. “We can do what we want to do in that time frame,” said one official referring to the more than 20 months remaining of unrestricted nuclear testing below ground.

This confidence probably is based largely on an expectation that the pace of testing will be increased significantly. The Atomic Energy Commission is reported to have asked for another $B9 mil-, lion for this purpose this year. A new United StatesSoviet treaty bans all underground nuclear bomb explosions greater than 150 kilotons, the equivalent of 150,000 tons of T.N.T.. after March 31, 1976. A previous treaty has forbidden all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water since 1963.

Both the United States and Russia conducted nuclear weapons tests last week, about a week after the new treaty was signed in Moscow by President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief, Mr Leonid Brezhnev.

Among weapons the Pentagon is moving to develop, as hedges against possible failure to achieve a longrange curb on both United States and Soviet nuclear arms, is a 400-kiloton multiple warhead for the United States Minuteman

Inter-continental ballistic missile. This would be about twice as powerful as the current generation of multiple warheads (M.1.R.V.5.) that can be aimed at separate targets after being carried aloft by a single Minuteman 1.C.8.M. Other advanced nuclear weapons under development include multiple warheads for the new Trident subma-rine-launched missile and new armaments for present and future bombers.

Some Pentagon research specialists are known to be disturbed because the new treaty prevents the United States from matching the size of new Soviet M.I.R.V.S. These Russian warheads are said to run as big as the explosive equivalent of one million to two million tons of T.N.T.

But the prevailing view appears to be that the most important research objectives are gaining much greater explosive yield from a given weight of nuclear material and greater accuracy for missile warheads.

Both of these projects are not disturbed by the treaty

limitations on the size of underground nuclear explosions to 150 kilotons. Defence experts say that by improving yield, or explosive power, it would be possible to reduce the amount of nuclear material in a warhead and to use the saved weight, and space for better devices to improve accuracy.

Also, they say, it would be possible to mount more warheads with better accuracy on present Minuteman missiles.

Free vote.—Any Social Credit members of Parliament after the 1975 Election would have a free vote on homosexual law reform, the league’s spokesman on social welfare (Mr R. W. England) has said in a statement. He said laws involving human and community values were of such importance that they would be decided outside the "narrow and restrictive dogmas of party political platforms and caucus control of Parliament.”—(P.A.)