Word: cannon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Teamsters President Roy L. Williams, suffering from emphysema, waited attentively last week in Chicago's U.S. District Court to be sentenced for his part in a bungled conspiracy to bribe then Senator Howard W. Cannon of Nevada. If anyone was moved by his illness, it was not U.S. District Judge Prentice H. Marshall, who slapped Williams, 68, with a provisional maximum sentence: 55 years in prison and a fine...
...Cannon...
...relatively slow A-10 Thunderbolt is a "close-support" aircraft, intended to swoop in low over a battlefield and savage the enemy's infantry and armor. When the prototype jets started flying in 1975, some Air Force brass were worried that its GAU8 antitank cannon was not up to snuff. The nose-mounted, 30-mm weapon was like a Gatling gun, with seven rotating barrels. And like a Gatling gun, it seemed a little oldfashioned, unworthy of a state-of-the-art Air Force. Colonel Bob Dilger was ordered to Dayton to take over the GAU8 program...
...take Dilger, a fighter pilot and former dogfight instructor, long to decide that he did not want to replace the GAU8 with some expensive missile. The General Electric cannon performed spectacularly in tests. Over a simulated battlefield in the Nevada desert, his A-10 pilots destroyed 65% of their targeted tanks at a distance of 3,000 ft., and more than 80% at 2,000 ft. The cannon fires off 70 rounds a second. Says Dilger: "We found that the optimal burst to kill a tank was only 35 rounds...
...ammo that worked, for the lowest possible price. The companies still compete hard, improving efficiency and cutting prices to win the major share of each year's production contract. Average cost per shell: less than $15. Over five years Dilger used the savings to further refine the cannon, yet still managed to turn back a surplus of $124 million that had been allocated for the GAU8 program. He is proud. Dilger's reward? No promotion. A new, unattractive desk job. In 1980, colleagues say, he quit the service in disgust. Today Bob Dilger, 49, raises corn and cattle...