Word: high-tech
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While the ability to wage such high-tech combat will remain a dream, or nightmare, for years to come, it is very much a gleam in the Pentagon's eye. Working largely through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a special unit devoted to exotic weaponry, military planners are developing a generation of computerized land and air systems that Buck Rogers would envy. Prototypes are being built by defense contractors around the U.S., and will be tested in coming months at sites ranging from private proving grounds to engineering laboratories...
...Army's videotape is spectacular. As unmanned planes sweep into view, the high-tech antiaircraft gun on the ground swivels and blows them out of the sky. It looks like a brilliant performance by one of the Pentagon's most controversial new weapons, the Sergeant York division air-defense gun, known as the DIVAD. In a test last year, the gun's laser-and-radar guidance system could not even hit a stationary helicopter, one of many embarrassments for the problem-plagued system. This time, claimed the contractor, Ford Aerospace, the weapon destroyed "six of seven high-performance aircraft...
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger must now decide whether to go ahead with plans to spend $4.2 billion for 618 of the weapons. According to one Pentagon source, a classified Army study bolsters the critics' case against the Sergeant York, concluding that the high-tech guidance system performs no better than the systems it was designed to replace. Weinberger said the latest test was "the most realistic operational testing that we ever put a weapon system through," but he is waiting to see further reports before he makes up his mind. "For the good of the taxpayer and the soldier...
...High-tech fighting machines are by no means the only Pentagon purchases that suffer defects. The latest snafu concerns new combat helmets. Introduced in 1983 to replace the "steel pots" in use since 1941, the helmets are made of Kevlar, a man-made fiber that is lighter, yet stronger than many metals. But after buying three-quarters of a million at $85.20 apiece, the Department of Defense discovered that three manufacturers had delivered defective versions made with scrap material. Army officials say that even though the second-rate helmets offer more protection than the old steel models, "We ordered...
...This year major makers of the tiny electronic wafers, which are the raw material of the high-technology age and run everything from watches to supercomputers, are playing the role of the Grinch. They will shut their doors for up to three weeks next month, a time when workers normally expect year-end bonuses and office celebrations. The painful closings are only the latest steps that chip producers are taking to cope with a slump that has crippled the once booming high-tech industry. "There's no end in sight," says Richard Billy, an analyst with the Gartner Group...