Word: zeus
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...Kwajalein, and the island already looks like the set for a science-fiction movie. Close to the coral beach, a circular, steel-mesh fence, 65 ft. high and 680 ft. in diameter, surrounds a rotating, triangular radar antenna, 80 ft. on a side. This electronic monster is named ZAR (Zeus Acquisition Radar), and when it sends its pulses into space to probe for incoming missiles, the fence will act as a shield to keep the powerful radio waves from frying all Kwajalein. Crewmen operating ZAR will go to work through a metal-shielded tunnel...
...detect an incoming missile while it is still high in space. As soon as the missile has been "acquired," another radar (Zeus Discrimination Radar) will zero in and decide whether the approaching object is actually an enemy warhead, or a decoy, or a bit of space flotsam. If it is a warhead, the missile will be turned over to a third radar, which will track it until the time comes to shoot it down with a three-stage Nike Zeus rocket. All this will be automatic, and it will happen too quickly for human hand or brain to follow...
Moment of Truth. The intricate Nike Zeus base on Kwajalein is now close to completion. Its effectiveness against long-range missiles will soon be tested with electronic tapes-flight recordings of rockets fired from Cape Canaveral down the South Atlantic range. Played over and over again, the tapes will provide plenty of practice in "intercepting" intercontinental missiles. Then there will be tests against comparatively small rockets lobbed toward Kwajalein from Roi-Namur island about 50 miles away...
...will come the moment of truth: a real Atlas will be fired toward Kwajalein from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If all goes according to plan, the speeding speck in space will be detected many hundred miles away, and its course will be calculated. A Nike Zeus rocket will rise from the island to meet the Atlas far above the atmosphere. Neither the invading nor the defending rocket will carry genuine nuclear warheads (no one on Kwajalein wants a dose of peacetime fallout), but the Nike Zeus will be credited with a theoretical kill if it comes within lethal...
Skeptics abound who doubt that the Nike Zeus system will work well enough to justify its cost (nearly $900 million). They point out that a station can be saturated by coveys of attacking missiles arriving at the same instant. A simpler enemy stunt, the critics say, would be to make a single missile spew out electronic decoys that would look like warheads to the discrimination radar. Then most of the defending rockets that roared into space would waste their nuclear thunder...