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Chevaline (pronounced: ''Shev-a-leen'') was a project to improve the penetrability of the warheads used by the British Polaris nuclear weapons system. Devised as an answer to the improved Soviet Anti-ballistic missile defences around Moscow, the system was intended to increase the probability that at least one warhead would penetrate Moscow's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defences, something which the Royal Navy's earlier UGM-27 Polaris re-entry vehicles (RV)s were thought to be unlikely to do. Chevaline used a variety of penetration aids and decoys to offer so many indistinguishable targets that an opposing ABM system would be overwhelmed attempting to deal with them all, ensuring that enough warheads would get through an ABM defence to be a reasonable deterrent to a first strike. The project was highly secret, and survived in secrecy through four different governments before being revealed in 1980. ==Military and political requirements== The origins of the Chevaline requirement grew from the conclusion of several British governments that in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack on the UK alone, as had been threatened in late 1950s by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin〔A.J.R.Groom, "British Thinking About Nuclear Weapons", Frances Pinter, 1974, pp. 190-191. ISBN 0-903804-01-8〕 it was unrealistic to expect that the US would retaliate against the Soviet Union and risk an attack on major American cities. That conclusion by successive British governments was the basis of their justification given to the British people for an independent nuclear retaliatory capability. For some time this deterrent force had been based on the Royal Air Force's V bomber force. This looked increasingly vulnerable in the face of ever-increasing Soviet Air Defence Forces, and by the late 1950s the RAF was pursuing the Blue Steel II standoff missile to allow its bombers to fire their weapons while still (hopefully) outside the range of the defensive fighters. Another solution was the Blue Streak missile project, although this was running into continued delays. Blue Streak also had the serious problem of basing; the UK was small enough that it seemed possible for the USSR to spot the launch sites without much trouble and attack them directly. A better solution came along in the form of the US's AGM-48 Skybolt missile. The US bomber force was facing the same sorts of problems as the British V bombers, and were attempting to solve it in a similar fashion, with a long-range standoff missile. In this case, however, the missile in question had a truly long range of just under 2,000 km. Considering the distance from London to Moscow is about 2,500 km, Skybolt would allow the V-bomber force to attack Russia from sites not far off the British coast, with complete immunity. Skybolt seemed like such a good solution that work on both Blue Steel II and Blue Streak were cancelled. Skybolt development was itself cancelled in early 1962, leading to a major political row. In the end a compromise was reached later that year; the Nassau Agreement had the Royal Navy taking over the deterrent role with newly acquired Polaris missiles, an arrangement that was formally outlined in the Polaris Sales Agreement. One key part of the agreement was that the UK would develop their own warheads for the missiles, as the UK military and political establishments were rather worried about losing their own nuclear production and design capability. Having already put some effort into the Skybolt warhead, it was decided to adapt this design, based on the US W59, for Polaris instead of the original W58. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chevaline」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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