Word: radar
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...wondrously simple antidrug amendment that directs the President and Secretary of Defense to "substantially halt" drug smuggling by air and sea within 45 days. The Air Force and Navy would "locate, pursue and seize" all vessels carrying drugs and "arrest their crews." The military would also provide blanket radar coverage of the entire southern border to detect nighttime flights of contraband. Presto. Pass a bill. Problem solved...
...less hallucinatory guidance of Georgia's Sam Nunn, the Senate approved a more realistic role for the military. The Defense Department would be designated the lead agency for air and sea surveillance of drug carriers and would be required to provide an "appropriate increase" in flying hours for its radar aircraft. Under certain conditions outside U.S. territorial waters, the Navy could arrest smugglers...
...smuggling vessel can be tracked for a day or more, providing ample time for the Navy to reach, stop and inspect it. But some border-hopping Cessnas can fly to their unloading airstrips and slip out of the U.S. again in half an hour. Even if Air Force radar planes such as the AWACS or E-2C surveillance craft spot the intruders, there is not much time to alert lawmen on the ground, get them to the strip and make arrests before the drug traffickers flee. The cost of keeping an AWACS in the air, moreover, is about...
...interception, the only Air Force jets with the right type of radar to detect low-flying planes are supersonic; but if they slow to the 150 m.p.h. of the suspect prop planes, they will be near stalling speed. Even then they could do little but frighten the smugglers. The possibility of downing innocents almost certainly would preclude any shoot-to-kill orders to Air Force pilots...
...aircraft, until the bombers turned back 115 miles from U.S. territory. On May Day, two high-flying Bears closed to within 50 miles of Alaska; then an AWACS surveillance plane picked up two more Soviet bombers coming in low to avoid ground radar. Air Force fighters quickly capped those planes as well...