Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forested ridgeline near Barikot, Commander Mahmad Alam carefully adjusts the range finder on his new green BM-13 rocket launcher. His men screw fuses into Chinese-made rockets and slide them into the barrels. Another guerrilla commander, the bearded and burly Sher Mohammed, scans the horizon with a brand-new pair of West German military binoculars. Mahmad Alam confers via walkie-talkie with his forward artillery observer. "God is Great!" the devout guerrillas shout, almost in prayer. "Long live Islam! Long live Afghanistan! Death to Communism...
...rocket screams from the launcher, then another and another. There is a brief period of waiting, and then the artillery observer radios in: three direct hits within the garrison's defensive perimeter. "Communist -- tika, tika, tika!" (good, good, good!), Sher Mohammed exclaims, striking his open palm with his fist...
...managed to fight their way through to Barikot, but after a few days the guerrillas began to close in behind and around them. The main force had to retreat, leaving behind a beefed-up garrison dug in behind a maze of minefields and heavily armed with howitzers, mortars and rocket launchers...
...beleaguered U.S. space community enjoyed a boost to its morale last week. First a weather satellite was launched without a hitch atop a refurbished 25- year-old Atlas-E rocket. Then an MX Peacekeeper test missile, lofted into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base, neatly deployed its six dummy warheads 4,200 miles downrange in the southern Pacific, the 14th straight success for the program...
Then the Pentagon confirmed that last month, for the second time since April, a new SS-18, the mainstay of the Soviet strategic forces, exploded after a test launching, apparently because of a problem in the rocket's fuel system. No one suggested there was a major flaw in the SS-18 program. Nonetheless, U.S. observers emphasized the strategic importance of the missile to the Soviets, citing what former U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft called its silo-busting capabilities...