Word: radar
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Opposition has surged, then faltered, then lately surged again. Now the final tally is too close to call. The Reagan Administration appears to have tried everything from crude offers of pork-barrel projects to invocations of biblical Armageddon to defend its proposed sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. Yet when the Senate votes on the sale this week, conceded Reagan's Senate proconsul, G.O.P Leader Howard Baker, "it may still be lost...
Something would be lost even in victory. Approval of the sale would enrage Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and perhaps harden him against further conciliation in the Middle East peace process. Disapproval would humiliate Reagan. In addition, it would likely impel the Saudis to buy comparable Nimrod radar planes from Britain and would weaken U.S. influence with the biggest exporter of oil to the West. Whatever the outcome, the debate has already strained U.S.-Saudi relations and diminished Reagan's standing among American Jews...
Take the Claribel hostile fire indicator. This truck-mount - ed radar "tracks bullets ... and pinpoints their source but," adds the knowing copywriter, "ignores stones or bricks...
Also seriously threatened: VOIR (for Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar), a scheme to place a radar-equipped robot in orbit around Venus and map its cloud-covered surface. NASA officials are even talking about mothballing the Deep Space Network, a globe-girdling array of antennas that acts as a vital communications "downlink" with all U.S. unmanned planetary spacecraft. One effect of such a move would be to silence the transmissions of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is scheduled to pass by Uranus...
Weinberger is said to be disappointed that so much attention has been focused on the MX missile and B-l bomber decisions. He feels that Reagan's proposal to improve U.S. radar and satellite communication systems, which went all but unquestioned at the hearings, is just as important as building new weapons. With these improvements, the President would be better able to launch a retaliatory strike while an enemy attack was under way, but before all American silos had been...