LANCE NOUN (WAR AND WEAPONRY)

A short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile system designed to be used mainly with nuclear warheads; also, a missile used by this system. Etymology: A figurative application of a historic weapon-name. History and Usage: The Lance missile system was developed in the US in the sixties, for use by the US army. What brought it into the news in the eighties was controversy over its replacement in NATO after the conclusion of the INF treaty of 1987, which removed intermediate-range nuclear weapons from the European NATO armoury. The programme to develop a successor was written about as the follow-on to Lance programme and the weapon itself as the Lance replacement or Son-of-Lance. The cause of the controversy was the proposal to give this new weapon a longer range, bringing it near in range to the intermediate-range Soviet weapons being destroyed as a result of the INF treaty. In May 1990 the US announced its decision not to modernize the NATO Lance, after coming under pressure from Germany (where many of the old Lance missiles are based) to cancel the development plans. There is no intention of extending the range so as to run foul of the INF treaty. But the Soviet Defence Minister blurred this distinction by describing the Lance replacement as having a range of 'up to 500 kilometres', and being 'similar to the SS-23'. Should the Soviet Union go on destroying its SS-23s when Lance was being modernised, he asked rhetorically. Guardian 29 July 1989, p. 9 Better even than the B-2 as a symbol, the committee halted work on two mischievous missiles--the SRAM-T (air-to-surface) and the Son-of-Lance (surface-to-surface). Each of these was designed to fall barely beneath the distance ceilings of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. Boston Globe 3 Aug. 1990, p. 11