Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An offensive ballistic missile system having warheads aimed at independent targets that can be launched by a single booster rocket.
- noun One of these warheads.
- intransitive verb To provide with multiple independent warheads.
- intransitive verb To equip a military force with a missile system of multiple independent warheads.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- abbreviation military
multiple independently -targettable reentry vehicle - theindependently targettable reentry capsule for aballistic missile 'spayload , typically anuclear weapon , where themissile hasmultiple instances of such
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Weapons specialists developed something called a MIRV, a warhead that perched atop a missile containing as many as 10 separate bombs that would disperse and end the world many times over.
RutlandHerald.com 2010
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Each has 24 Trident-II missiles with 4 MIRV warheads of the W76 and W88 warheads, that will be a total of 1152 warheads.
Matthew Yglesias » Predictions Are Hard, Especially About the Future 2010
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Sometimes the acronyms will become verbs ( "just MIRV your warheads" was a favorite of Cold War-era balance-of-terror counters; you figure out what it means) just to make things obnoxiously inscrutible.
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This means every USN Fleet base, every one of the major Commands and all their subordinate units were likely crispy crittered to the extent that only those small enough and/or far away in the field would likely be MIRV-free and they would have at most 7-10 days of food and water to hike out of the BFE with.
Comic-Con 08: Awesome Terminator Salvation Updates - Rated R?! « FirstShowing.net 2008
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Russia is not prevented from deploying large numbers of land-based MIRVs, which have been described as the most destabilizing nuclear weapon system, and where the United States has announced it will de-MIRV its ICBMs. START II banned land-based MIRVs, but its progeny puts them right back in the Russian arsenal.
After START, when do we stop the one-sided deals? Jennifer Rubin 2010
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Even the smallest one was too big for an ICBM or its MIRV delivery platform.
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The Russian are modernizing what strategic force with Bulava's and MIRV capable RS-24's I think those are ballistic missiles.
Wired Top Stories Nathan Hodge 2009
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The difficulty of miniaturizing even single warheads, much less MRV, MIRV, or MARV, is hard enough that even with some plans of US thermonuclear weapons, there's much in the manufacturing techniques that probably weren't well documented.
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The invasion of Iraq had a MIRV warhead full of motives, none of which had to do with eliminating Saddam's arsenal of WMDs.
Pentagon Thievery 2006
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However, combine that assertion with a country that recently has developed and tested MIRV missile technology, combine that with a country that has recently developed and tested missile technology that has a low radar visibility ... '
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