superwarhead
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]superwarhead (plural superwarheads)
- (rare, military) An extremely destructive and powerful warhead.
- 1961, Associated Press Clippings File Europe Disorders 1961-09-01[1], Press Association Inc., page 2:
- And he said the Russians would need a "superwarhead" on their own minuteman-type weapon in order to be successful.
- 1977, The Military in Contemporary Soviet Politics: An Institutional Analysis[3], Praeger, →ISBN, page 190:
- Approval for its development may have been facilitated by Khrushchev’s interest in large-yield "terror weapons," for whose delivery the SS-9 was ideally suited. (Khrushchev boasted publicly about the Soviet possession of such weapons and the atmospheric thermonuclear test series conducted in August-September 1961 included the explosion of a superwarhead with a yield of approximately 50 megatons.)
- 1990, Christine Brooke-Rose, Verbivore[4], Carcanet, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 47:
- However, every smaller terrorist state has its own superwarheads, happily sold to them by the big powers' armament industries. The problem of the deterrent has merely been displaced to the irresponsible and the fanatical.