Wikipedia
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.
Chevaline may refer to:
- The Chevaline project, a former secret project to upgrade the British Polaris missile system
- Chevaline, a commune of the Haute-Savoie département, in France
- The Roan Antelope, known in French as Antilope Chevaline
Usage examples of "chevaline".
Hackworth bent down, laced his fingers through the space frame, and lifted the chevaline with one hand.
A lumbar support pressed thoughtfully on his kidneys, and then the chevaline trotted into the street and began heading back toward the causeway.
The vehicles were horses, chevalines, and velocipedes with fat knobby tires.
The chevaline did a perfectly good job of not stepping on anyone, and Hackworth soon learned to stop worrying and trust its instincts.
Outside of New Atlantis, she and her chevaline were surrounded everywhere by a shell of hovering security pods serving as a first line of personal defense.
A modern lady's chevaline was designed with a sort of Y-shaped body that made it unnecessary to ride sidesaddle, so Nell was able to wear a fairly normal-looking sort of dress: a bodice that took advantage of her fashionably narrow waist, so carefully honed on the Academy's exercise machines that it might have been turned on a lathe from walnut.
Within moments the chevaline was threading gaps between trees at something close to a cheetah's sprint velocity, clawing its way up the hill toward the dog pod grid.
His faith did not begin to waver until evening approached, the eternal clouds changed from silver to dark gray, and he noticed that the chevaline was taking them higher and toward less densely populated ground.
She gave her chevaline a nudge and pulled up nearly abreast with her father.
After the chevalines had planted themselves and the Hackworths had dismounted, they were able to hear low voices coming from below.