Word: interceptor
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...Edward Wilkinson announced as he hoisted a glass of champagne in mid-Pacific, 4,800 miles from California. Wilkinson, director of U.S. Army effort known as "Homing Overlay Experiment," had good reason to hope for some insomnia in Moscow: his project scored its first success last week. A special interceptor rocket fired from Meek Island in the Kwajalein archipelago had struck the dummy warhead of a Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that had been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California some 30 earlier. Military analyst described the collision, which pulverized both projectiles more than 100 miles above...
...produce Sukhoi and MiG jet fighters. Missiles are the specialty of the Yangel, Chelomei and Nadiradze bureaus. Often, test models from rival firms will be put into production simultaneously. The result: in a country where the selection of shoes or overcoats is limited, there are six different types of interceptor jets...
Still, even Soviet servicemen equipped with the best Soviet weaponry often fall short of the Pentagon's image of the Soviet military as a fighting force. On paper, for example, Soviet air-defense forces command a string of 7,000 radar installations and 2,300 interceptor jets. Yet the fact that two Korean civilian aircraft were able to stray into Soviet airspace without being rapidly intercepted suggests that the defense shield is sievelike in spots...
...they know what they had hit? If not, say U.S. officials, they should have. The Times story asserts that the interceptor pilot probably fired two air-to-air missiles from behind and below the jet, a position from which he could not readily have identified the distinctive shape of a Boeing 747. Perhaps, but a 747 is much bigger than an RC-135. Tapes of the pilots' conversation also indicate that the jet showed flashing navigation and strobe lights, not a common characteristic of spy planes...
...U.S.S.R.'s reaction was thoroughly chilling. Some top Administration foreign policy officials had been hoping that Soviet leaders would duly note that Reagan had not sought harsh retaliatory penalties against the U.S.S.R. because of the shooting down of a South Korean airliner by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, despite all the condemnatory rhetoric out of Washington. And Soviet President Yuri Andropov had remained publicly silent about the air atrocity, leading some in the Administration to wonder whether he might wish to pick up Reagan's cue and offer some fresh arms control proposals of his own. But when...