Word: interceptor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sources apparently within the SDI program told the Times that the 1984 launchings did not prove the efficacy of the heat-seeking infrared sensor. Rather, the target ICBM carried a beacon that guided the interceptor rocket toward a set-up collision. Officials involved with the test have vigorously defended the test results. Said General Eugene Fox, the retired Army missile- defense chief: "We didn't gimmick anything." William Inglis, the experiment's civilian test director, dismissed the accusations of an SDI hoax as "technical nonsense." There was indeed a beacon, but, said Inglis, it served only for "range safety" purposes...
Last month Yeltsin cast an absentee ballot for Bush. He released information from the flight recorder of KAL 007, the Korean airliner that a Soviet interceptor shot down off Siberia in 1983. Yeltsin was making a humanitarian gesture to the families of the passengers, who included many Americans. But he was also inviting Bush to take credit for having encouraged the move, thus giving the beleaguered President a boost in the polls. Worried that his government was backing the wrong horse, the Russian ambassador to Washington, Vladimir Lukin, sent Yeltsin a positive assessment of Clinton and urged the conciliatory call...
...Wars is in trouble. The first tremor came in a May 15 memo by Assistant Secretary of Defense David Chu leaked to the press last week. Haste could make billions of dollars in waste, warned Chu. The department's top weapons analyst says plans to deploy 100 ground-based interceptors by 1997 -- rather than 2002, as he recommends -- to fend off small-scale nuclear attacks cannot proceed without major cost overruns and performance problems. In the rush to deploy, he says, the military will have to design and start buying SDI before any of the missiles, radar or communications involved...
...Everyone with a favorite weapons program, whether a member of Congress or a general, points to the gulf war as justification. Last week, for example, Democratic and Republican representatives from New York and Pennsylvania joined forces to order continued production of the F-14 Tomcat, a carrier- based interceptor Cheney says the Navy has in sufficient quantity. Price tag for the congressionally ordered continuation: $987 million...
...city, Iraqi antiaircraft fire was directed into the sky at planes that were not there -- yet. Stealth fighters also sneaked past radar to join the initial attack. Then high-flying aircraft, some launching missiles from far off, jammed or confused enemy radar and took out some antiaircraft guns, interceptor planes and airfields. Finally, when a path was cleared, bombers and fighter-bombers attacked at lower altitudes for greater accuracy...