Missiles

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A second day of daylight NATO attacks brought missiles in the afternoon, more explosions at night, and then a morale boost for the Serbs: TV images of a downed F-117A stealth fighter.The sounds of exploding missiles echoed in downtown Belgrade yesterday afternoon, and more detonations roared across the city at night, shaking windows and fueling a wave of panic.Preliminary reports indicated that no civilians were hurt.The primary target at night was Pancevo, a city 10 miles northeast of Belgrade with an aircraft factory and oil refinery, according to the Belgrade Center for Emergency Information.

WASHINGTON -- In an effort to increase the attacks on Serbian ground troops in Kosovo, the Pentagon added 82 U.S. aircraft to the NATO air armada attacking Yugoslavia yesterday, saying that dozens of other alliance planes were expected in the coming days.In the package are 34 combat aircraft, including two dozen U.S. Air Force F-16CJ Flying Falcons, equipped with anti-radiation missiles designed to take out air defenses, and four A-10 Thunderbolt II "Warthogs," which target tanks and other armor.

They grew up in suburban Baltimore and graduated a year apart at the U.S. Naval Academy, two midshipmen enduring a regimented life in the same huge stone dormitory. Now, they are warriors cloistered below deck on an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic Sea.Praying.For Chris and Aaron, fighter-bomber pilots on the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, their first combat mission began on an early-April night in the closet-sized chaplain's office one level below the flight deck.The senior pilots were the first chosen for combat, launching into the inky blackness and arcing toward targets in Yugoslavia.

WASHINGTON -- A year after U.S. missiles slammed into Osama bin Laden's purported Afghan mountain stronghold, the terrorist kingpin remains alive but cornered, a stalemate that many specialists say suits America's interests better than its stated aim of arresting and trying him.Roving from camp to camp in fear of American missiles, reduced to communicating with minions through hand-carried computer disks, strictly watched even by his Afghan "hosts," bin...

WASHINGTON -- As they sift through the list of potential targets for airstrikes in Iraq, Pentagon officials are aiming to diminish Saddam Hussein's fearsome arsenal and weaken his grip on power without committing the United States to an open-ended military engagement.The objectives of the mission and the choice of targets under consideration reflect a desire on the part of the military to define goals that are meaningful, but also achievable, defense officials said.While top defense officials haven't discussed specific targets being considered, they have addressed the issue in broad terms over the past year of intensifying friction with Iraq.

THE MISSILE that North Korea shot over Japan advertised that starving country's steady improvement in weapons. Lunatic as the regime of Kim Jong Il often appears, its dependence on food aid from the democracies and nuclear reactors as a bribe to avoid developing weapons-grade fuel do not guarantee good behavior.The country that is perpetually threatening to disintegrate just demonstrated its new capability to inflict severe damage to targets more than 1,000 miles away, that is, in Russia, China, South Korea and Japan.

WASHINGTON -- Raytheon Co. and General Motors Corp.'s && Hughes Electronics won federal antitrust approval yesterday for their $9.5 billion combination, bringing the companies a step closer to creating the nation's third largest defense and aerospace company.In a settlement with the Justice Department and the Pentagon, Raytheon and Hughes agreed to sell two defense electronics businesses with combined sales of about $50 million, erect a firewall that preserves competition for an upcoming bid on a new missile for the U.S. Army and provide fixed prices for AMRAAM missiles as the sole supplier of those weapons.

WASHINGTON -- Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Trident II nuclear missile survived an effort yesterday by a Minnesota Congressman to end its production.During debate on its version of the defense budget for fiscal 1998, the House of Representatives rejected an amendment from Minnesota Democrat Rep. William Luther that would remove $309.1 million in the bill for seven of the Trident II submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles.Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, America's largest aerospace company, makes the missiles in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Air Force yesterday chose the team of Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and TRW Corp. to build a prototype airborne laser, a science fiction-come-true weapon that would zap enemy missiles with a burst of light.The contract is worth $1.1 billion over a five-year period of testing and evaluating. If the weapon proves feasible, up to seven lasers could enter the national arsenal beginning in 2003 for a total value of almost $6 billion."This is really an exciting day," said Ron Andrews, vice president of the Advanced Technology Center at Lockheed Martin's Missiles and Space Sector in Sunnyvale, Calif.

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine is heading into the first round of presidential elections tomorrow in a state of national wariness and suspicion.The candidate most likely to emerge the winner is the current president, Leonid Kravchuk, a former Communist Party apparatchik who presided over 2 1/2 years of economic collapse and is now running as the champion of radical economic reform -- even though he just appointed a Communist as prime minister.In a country so deeply divided that it would seem to have no chance of hanging together, Mr. Kravchuk is also a man who, geographically, has made a complete switch of sides.

QIAN XUESEN, 98 Father of China aerospace programs Qian Xuesen, a former rocket scientist at the California Institute of Technology who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., before being deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist and who became known as the father of China's space and missile programs, has died. He was 98. Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died Saturday in Beijing, China's state news agency reported. The cause was not given. Honored in his homeland for his "eminent contributions to science," Qian was credited with leading China to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, Silkworm anti-ship missiles, weather and reconnaissance satellites and to put a human in space in 2003.

Risking a confrontation with an angry Russia Will the final act of this failed administration be to provoke a nuclear war with Russia ("U.S.-Poland missile defense deal brings Moscow warning," Aug. 21)? Our recent agreement to put U.S. missiles in Poland reminds me of 1962, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. narrowly averted nuclear conflict over Soviet-supplied missiles to Cuba. We did not, and would not, allow another nation to place ballistic missiles near our borders no matter what its rationale for doing so. Russia has ample reason to fear the intentions of the Bush administration and is within its rights to threaten retaliation.

It took close to five years of development and 14 months of live testing for Northrop Grumman to prove it could build a system that airline pilots might use to deflect terrorist missiles. Selling it may be even tougher. Congress would have to require the cash-strapped aviation industry to install the nearly $1 million systems on each of the nation's 7,800 passenger and cargo aircraft. The airlines and pilot groups say they shouldn't pay for expensive technology that doesn't address the most pressing terrorist threats.

ATLANTA -- In October 1962, a young president confronted one of the greatest crises of his century. After U.S. intelligence confirmed that the Soviets were shipping medium-range nuclear missiles to Cuba - missiles easily capable of reaching the United States, just 90 miles away - President John F. Kennedy considered whether to set fire to the Cold War. The press was itching for a first strike by American forces, as was the public. The formidable Dean Acheson, an architect of the U.S. strategy of communist containment, pushed for an invasion of Cuba.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran showed off its armaments yesterday at annual army celebrations meant to highlight the oil-rich nation's military self-sufficiency and prowess in the face of international sanctions and U.S. hostility. Iranian-made Saegheh fighter jets, which some military experts say are based on U.S. F-18s, screeched across the sky over Iranian-made armored personnel carriers and Ghadr missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles. "All these arms and equipment have been manufactured in Iran by Iranian experts," an announcer said on state-controlled TV. Military commanders and political officials who assembled for the military parade near the tomb of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said they were undeterred by the possibility of U.S. or Israeli military attacks or increased economic pressure on Iran.

What old lessons about terrorism are we in the West finding ourselves having to relearn? First, death is the mantra of terrorists. In urban landscapes, they hide among apartment buildings, use human shields and welcome all fatalities - friendly or hostile, combatant or civilian. Death of any kind, they think, makes the liberal West recoil but allows them to pose as oppressed victims. Their nihilistic hatred intimidates, rather than repels, third parties - whether "moderate" Arabs, Europeans who back off from peacekeeping in Lebanon, or the Western public at large.

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Middle River facility has received a contract for $51 million to manufacture missile launchers for the Navy's last three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers now under construction. The contract, which follows a $27 million award last summer to buy materials, marks the Navy's last order of MK 41 Vertical Launch Systems, which Lockheed has been making for the Navy since 1984. Each ship will get 12 modules that together can store and launch up to 96 missiles. Lockheed is to deliver the launchers by 2010, when the final three ships are expected to be delivered to the Navy.

Alexander Kossiakoff, a chemist who devised ways to power early naval guided missiles and was later director of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, died of heart disease Saturday at Montgomery General Hospital. The Brookeville resident was 91. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he emigrated in 1923 with his family to Seattle, and earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. He moved to Baltimore in the mid-1930s and received a doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University in 1938.

CAIRO, Egypt - Iranian officials said yesterday that Iran will soon resume its controversial nuclear work, and announced that scientists have developed solid-fuel technology to improve the accuracy of missiles already able to reach Israel and nearby U.S. bases. The tough talk comes just days before Iran's new president is to be sworn in. Ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the upset victor in this summer's election, has criticized Iran's nuclear negotiators for caving in to pressure from the West.

In an airplane hangar north of Fort Worth, Texas, technicians are preparing to mount a fire-hydrant-shaped device onto the belly of an American Airlines Boeing 767. It is an effort that could soon turn into a more than $10 billion project to install a high-tech missile defense system on the nation's commercial planes. The Boeing 767 - the same type of plane that hijackers flew into the World Trade Center - is one of three planes that, by the end of this year, will be used to test the infrared laser-based systems designed to find and disable shoulder-fired missiles.