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English
Noun
MIRV (plural MIRVs)
- (military) Initialism of multiple independently-targettable reentry vehicle; the independently targettable reentry capsule for a ballistic missile's payload, typically a nuclear weapon, where the missile has multiple instances of such.
1980, Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal, New York: Berkley Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 294:Picking up where we had left off at Vladivostok, we discussed verification of underground nuclear tests that each side could conduct, and also the rules for counting MIRVs — how to tell whether a missile had a single or a multiple warhead. There the Soviets granted a concession. If they placed a MIRV in a certain location, then we had the right to assume that every missile in that field had a MIRV capability.
1989, James Cameron, The Abyss (motion picture), spoken by Lt. Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn):The M.I.R.V. is a tactical nuke. Uh, fifty kilotons, nominal yield, say… five times Hiroshima.
Derived terms