Word: supergun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...alarmed when she discovered that a shipment of carbide metal-working tools to Baghdad -- tools that could be used to cut uranium -- might be illegal. She also learned of Kennametal sales to Matrix Churchill, Iraq's main U.S. purchasing agent, which was gathering materiel for projects like the infamous Supergun. She says she warned company officers that Kennametal was not following export regulations, and questioned other company practices. Within nine months of being hired, she was asked by her superiors to resign for being "uncooperative." Unable to find a new job, Gasior moved back into her parents' suburban Pittsburgh home...
Saddam never got a chance to use his SUPERGUN, a powerful megacannon capable of hurling chemical, biological or nuclear warheads hundreds of miles. U.N. forces dismantled two models in Iraq last year, one an incomplete version with a barrel 165 yards long. But Western intelligence agents in the Middle East are nervously tracking another design that is much easier to build. Unlike earlier models, the new weapon uses ordinary 1/8-in. bridge wire, a steel fiber common in the construction of suspension bridges. Spun while red-hot around large-diameter steel pipe, the wire strengthens the barrel enough to withstand...
Meanwhile, U.N. inspectors just back from Iraq reported yesterday that Baghdad did not properly destroy all of its massive "supergun," which was capable of raining shells on Israel or Saudi Arabia...
...ballistic inspection team, part the Special Commission overseeing the dismantling of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, told superiors that 22 sections of the supergun barrel and some hydraulic buffers were not properly destroyed, as ordered by a previous inspection visit, officials said...
However, inspectors said the remaining parts were not enough to build a working supergun, and they believed the problem was due simply to sloppy demolition work by Iraqi workers at the cite in the western desert near Jordan...