Word: falcone
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...Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base one morning last week, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Trevor Gardner bubbled over with guided-missile news. He had glowing words about the Falcon, an air-to-air missile with an electronic brain. Falcons will be carried by interceptors and fired at enemy bombers as much as five miles away. Then the electronic brain will take over, and the Falcon will track its prey across the sky, supersonically following every move the enemy makes to escape...
...Falcon is one of the most important contributions to defense since the development of radar," said Gardner. "Virtually every hit is a sure kill. The missile receives target information with the speed of light. It decides what to do without ever making any of the mistakes humans might make. It ... can destroy any enemy bomber in the world . . . with split-second accuracy. Falcon represents an achievement in scientific research, invention and production almost without parallel...
While the Air Force does have some remarkable missiles, the stratospheric claims of Airman Gardner had the bumptious ring of old-style Air Force press-agentry. The missiles are less than the ultimate in weapons. The "sure-kill" Falcon will still depend on planes to get it to the right place, at the right time, under the right circumstances. Some missiles, like artillery shells, will be duds, and the enemy bombers will fly over. Even clever missiles may be fooled, e.g., a shower of shiny metal like Christmas tree tinsel can be as distracting to a radar hunter...
...farmhand and the suicide of a farmer in horse-and-buggy Texas; in Gogol's The Overcoat, the acquisition and loss of an overcoat by a clerk somewhere in pre-revolutionary Russia; in Wescott's The Pilgrim Hawk, the liberation and recovery of a hunting falcon in the garden of an expatriate lady somewhere in France; and in Faulkner's The Bear, the pursuit of an unusually large bear in the boondocks of post-bellum Mississippi...
Next day, just a week after Hurricane Alice blew in from the Gulf, the worst flood in Rio Grande history (153 dead and missing) ended abruptly at the new concrete face of Falcon Dam, 75 miles below Laredo. This week, as the river sank to only 9 ft. at Laredo, flood waters lapped up behind Falcon Dam and assured farmers downstream of irrigation in the searing months ahead. Hurricane Alice, for all her evil, had at last blown some good...