Word: terrain
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...research and development and who are likely to be the most anxious to see that it is funded and produced. This leads to field-testing standards that bear little resemblance to combat. The Maverick antitank missile, for example, is being tested by pilots who know both the terrain and target locations ahead of time. The expensive ($1 billion apiece) Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers equipped with the AEGIS air-defense system have never been pitted in simulated combat situations against low-flying missiles like the Exocet. When the Army's new DIVAD-system air-defense gun, called the Sergeant...
...because of its complexity, also would face severe maintenance problems. The Air Force contends that the B-52 presents too broad a "cross section" for Soviet radar. Critics doubt that the B-1B design will fool Soviet radar either. Worse, they charge, the B-1B's own terrain-following radar, which it uses to navigate to the target, will send out what amounts to a beacon that enemy fighters and missiles can home in on. The doubters concede the B-1B's advanced avionics gear will do a better job of jamming Soviet radar, but add that...
Your pleasant review of John McPhee's book In Suspect Terrain [Jan. 31] states: "No other journalist avoids the obvious with as much success as John McPhee. To hold readers through books about oranges, the New Jersey Pine Barrens or birchbark canoes is a tribute to his eye for narrative grain and hand for prose dovetails. The sanding and finishing are done by editors at The New Yorker, where McPhee's books first appear." In actuality, John McPhee's prose is written, sanded and polished by John McPhee...
...photographs and helped them erect ground stations to receive data directly. The Brazilians have used Landsat to reroute segments of their trans-Amazon highway around swamps and other obstacles. Anyone can purchase the photographs. Even the U.S.S.R. and China have bought them, sometimes of each other's terrain. Indeed, the program has been so successful in spotting resources-copper deposits in Pakistan, tin in Bolivia-that some nations have condemned the orbital photography as economic spying...
NONFICTION: Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon ∙ Growing Up, Russell Baker ∙ Hospital, Michael Medved ∙ In Suspect Terrain, John McPhee ∙ Isak Dinesen, Judith Thurman ∙ The Path to Power, Robert A. Caro