Word: antiaircraft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...command, asking for an audience with the Prime Minister. Seven weeks later, they have still received no response, so most stay home passively and grow beards -- an officer corps on a genteel sit-down strike. "A coup, a civil war?" laughs an air-force officer whose Hawk missile antiaircraft battery shot down four Iraqi jet fighters on the day of the invasion. "We're all too comfortable economically to even think of revolution. Maybe if we had a hint at what might follow the Sabahs if they were overthrown, we would...
...whistle-bang-boom-whistle-bang-boom-whistle-bang. What follows is a mad melee of men scattering like quicksilver into gullies, ditches, crevices, behind hillocks, into hollows. The peshmerga are helpless before these gunships, but it is not for want of trying. They tear open with everything they have: antiaircraft guns, rockets, small arms, machine guns, even mortars. But their fire is confused and disorganized. The "damnation birds" keep wheeling around and coming back, untouchable...
...underprotected three-member crew vulnerable to a fiery death from an enemy hit. The $3.2 million M1A1 Abrams tank was criticized as an overpriced gas-guzzler prone to mechanical breakdowns. The $11.7 million Apache was depicted as difficult to maintain in a desert. The Patriot was just another overpriced antiaircraft weapon never tested against missiles in combat. But now, says Gordon Adams, director of the independent Defense Budget Project, "defense contractors all say the war proved their weapon is ironclad, gold-plated and a surefire winner...
That kind of bluster is wearing off, and other generals are drawing pointed lessons. Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov told the Supreme Soviet in Moscow that Iraqi air defenses "failed in most cases." Furthermore, "we have weak spots in the antiaircraft system, and we need to examine them." The success of the American F-117A Stealth fighter, of course, throws into question the effectiveness of the whole $100 billion Soviet radar- and missile-defense network...
Captured Iraqi soldiers try to blame the brutalities on Saddam. Last week the resistance was holding 16 of them, ages 18 to 47, at a small house in a Kuwait City suburb. An antiaircraft gun stood in the garden, and the garage was stacked with grenades and ammunition boxes, one of which bore the logo of the Jordanian armed forces...