Word: monitor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...spends an estimated $15 billion a year on high-tech snooping techniques that can monitor Soviet activities in fine detail. Among them...
RADAR. Powerful ground-based radar stations can track objects the size of basketballs from up to 2,000 miles away. The Cobra Dane station in Alaska monitors missiles launched from the Soviet mainland, while Pave Paws radar systems from California to Cape Cod watch for sea-launched warheads. The new Lacrosse satellite will carry lightweight radar systems that can penetrate heavy cloud layers and monitor Soviet ground activity at night...
LISTENING POSTS. Whenever the Soviets launch test missiles, ground controllers monitor and direct the flight by sending and receiving signals in the form of radio waves and microwaves. Those signals can be picked up by a variety of listening posts, including low-flying "ferret" satellites, ships loaded with antennas and a network of ground stations in countries that are close to the Soviet Union, such as Norway and China. By monitoring radio frequencies and telephone calls carried on microwaves, the listening posts can also eavesdrop on a broad range of Soviet military communications. Information can be gleaned, for example...
...that the technology both sides have in place is capable of adequately verifying compliance with the current arms-control treaties. But some troublesome shortcomings remain. For one thing, future agreements will have to deal with mobile weapons and sea- launched cruise missiles, both of which are particularly difficult to monitor. Figures supplied by the Kremlin in connection with last month's summit revealed 84 Soviet ground-launched cruise missiles that the U.S. did not know existed...
Ultimately, technology can take arms control only so far. The biggest concern raised by negotiators of the recent treaty was the verification of those provisions beyond the scope of surveillance technologies. Satellites can count missiles and silos and bombers, but they cannot monitor the disassembly of nuclear warheads. To be assured that this is done, both sides were forced to rely on on-site inspections and the most sophisticated technology of all: the human...