Word: radar
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...install considerably more electronic gear in ground listening posts than can be carried by satellites. This is especially important in monitoring missile launchings and impacts. The sensitive equipment, like sophisticated radar, can calculate an ICBM's length and diameter and thus contribute significantly to SALT II verification. Reason: under the expected terms of the accord, if such dimensions are increased or decreased by more than 5%, the weapon would have to be designated as a "new type" of missile and be subject to a sharp limitation on deployment. (Some critics of SALT caution that the margin of error...
...innocent-looking house by the side of the Florida road was in little danger of getting a speeding ticket: it was clocked at only 28 m.p.h. But a seemingly stationary palm tree was zipping along at a frightening 86 m.p.h. Or so recorded a radar unit, similar to ones used by police, that was tested for accuracy by Miami television station WTVJ. After the demonstration exposed such ludicrous errors, Judge Alfred Nesbitt ordered 950 speeding cases held in abeyance while he began a hearing on whether or not to accept radar readings as evidence...
Experts lined up in Nesbitt's courtroom last week to testify against the electronic nemesis of motorists. "Radar is highly inaccurate, and the officers who use it are grossly undertrained," claimed former Traffic Cop Rod Dornsife. Said Dale Smith, who used to manufacture the units and is now a consultant for Fuzzbuster radar detectors: "Our experience shows that radar is probably wrong 30% of the time." That comes as no surprise to many an aggrieved driver, let alone maligned houses and palm trees in Florida. Bring back the cop on the motorcycle...
...such systems have generally been confined to remote and inaccessible locations where the costs of providing conventional power are prohibitive. For example, in California solar cells generate energy for Coast Guard buoys, rural water pumps, VHF telecommunications relay towers, automatic weather stations and even an Air Force radar station. In addition, Kansas oil wells use solar electricity to inhibit the rusting of metal; a remote Arizona Indian reservation gets its power from cells, and even the Saudi Arabian government plans to line its Jidda-Riyadh highway with 400 solar-powered emergency call boxes...
Meanwhile Soviet freighters at Haiphong were unloading resupplies of sophisticated hardware, including missiles and radar equipment. Soviet reconnaissance kept watch on the battlefronts with high-altitude sorties over the Gulf of Tonkin. A flotilla of 13 Soviet ships cruised the South China Sea, awaiting the arrival of the flagship of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, the 16,000-ton cruiser Admiral Senyavin...