Scud

IN EASTERN SAUDI ARABIA -- When members of C Company, 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment fired a Patriot missile against an Iraqi Scud headed for Riyadh, it was the first time that most had ever heard their own weapon in action. Some mistook it for the Scud striking them."It sounded like something was impacting on our site," said Army Capt. Kevin Groome of Baltimore, the unit's commander. "It was pretty interesting," he said of the night of Jan. 21 when the first Scuds, which many had thought could not reach their position, bore in on them.

In keeping with its pledge to destroy its unconventional weapons, Libya has told U.S. officials that it will convert hundreds of its Scud-B missiles into shorter-range, less powerful weapons for purely defensive purposes and end all military trade with North Korea, U.S. officials said last week. The officials said in interviews that Libya had also agreed to make a public declaration of its decision soon. The Bush administration has told Libyan officials that the United States will not lift trade sanctions against Libya unless it ends support for terrorism and takes action to dismantle existing weapons that threaten its neighbors.

WASHINGTON -- The Iraqi missile that slammed into an American military barracks in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war, killing 28 people, penetrated air defenses because a computer failure shut down the American missile system designed to counter it, two Army investigations have concluded.The Iraqi Scud missile hit the barracks in Al Khobar near Dhahran on Feb. 25, causing the war's single worst casualty toll for Americans. The allied Central Command said the next day that no Patriot missile had been fired to intercept the Scud, adding that the Scud had broken into pieces as it descended and was not identified as a threat by the Patriot radar system.

WASHINGTON - The United States has sent Patriot antimissile systems and 600 troops to Israel to strengthen its ability to defend against missile attack. Officially, the U.S. forces have been sent for an exercise that will test the ability of U.S. and Israeli missile defenses to work together. But the exercise will mean that U.S. forces will work alongside the Israeli military and be in position to help defend against attacks by Iraq's Scud missiles if President Bush decides to take military action to oust Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration in recent days has examined the military option of boarding two North Korean cargo ships heading for Iran loaded with Scud-C ballistic missiles for the arsenals of Syria and Iran, administration officials said yesterday.The option, which has been discussed in the Pentagon, State Department and White House, is under active consideration by President Bush and his senior national security aides, but no decisions have been made, the officials said.The military planning follows State Department criticism of North Korea last month for shipping these missiles, which are still on the high seas aboard two ships.

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia -- The voices of anxious, angry soldiers fearing for the lives of their buddies cut through the wailing sirens of more than a dozen ambulances last night.They shouted at those who dared to come close to see the cruel evidence of a war that took American lives indiscriminately."Those are our guys in there. Get out of here," one soldier screamed.Other men, choking back tears, were struggling to clear through smoking rubble, searching for belongings and signs of life.Spc.

WASHINGTON -- The Patriot missile system, hailed by the Raytheon Co. and the Army as a symbol of U.S. technological mastery, was in fact an often-troubled weapon that cannot be proven to have destroyed more than one Scud warhead of the 47 engaged in the Persian Gulf War, several independent U.S. and Israeli military experts have concluded.Even that lone success -- captured on film by Israeli military scientists over Tel Aviv toward the end of the war -- is still a matter of some debate.This radical conclusion, from experts in both countries who have had access to the classified military data, is starkly at odds with the Pentagon's public score card on the Patriot's performance.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- The Israeli government decided to delay striking back at Iraq yesterday only hours before it intercepted another incoming missile.An Iraqi Scud missile launched toward northern Israel was shot down by a volley of Patriot defensive missiles about 10 p.m., according to the Israel Defense Forces.Debris from the interception rained over homes and fields north of Tel Aviv but caused no casualties and little damage, the army said.It was the fourth missile attack on Israel in five days -- and the first successful defense by the anti-missile Patriot system hurriedly provided by the United States.

WASHINGTON -- Secret U.S. assistance to Iraq may have helped President Saddam Hussein use an undetected fleet of mobile launchers to fire dozens of Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war.Many of these launchers may have been manufactured for Iraq by a U.S. company.During the war, Iraq fired more than 80 Scuds, killing 28 Americans and at least one Israeli. After the war, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that Iraq had converted as many as 225 trucks into mobile launchers -- many times more than had been estimated before the war.Just after the first wave of Scud attacks on Israel, an American named Richard C. Fuicz began telling U.S. government investigators about a visit he made in September 1987 to a truck manufacturing plant owned by Terex Corp.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Here on the glass top counter of Feisal Afghani's curiosity shop, there are at least 100 Scud missiles, freshly painted and made only this morning. Mr. Afghani is gently blow-drying the final coat of varnish.Each Scud is three inches long, stamped and cut from a sheet of zinc. Within an hour they will become key chains and brooches, and by late afternoon not a single one will be left.At 2.50 dinars ($3.75) apiece, they are the hottest-selling items in Amman.Such are the oddities of life during wartime in the neutral zone of Jordan, an oasis of unsettled peace between Israel and Iraq.

EMBARRASSED OVER the catch-and-release affair involving a Scud-bearing freighter in the Arabian Sea this week, the Bush administration yesterday learned the unpleasant -- but not wholly unexpected -- news that North Korea is planning to reactivate a nuclear power plant that could be used to produce material for nuclear bombs. So where do you prefer your blackmail? At sea in the Middle East, or on land on the Korean peninsula? North Korea is being unashamedly provocative on two fronts: It's dealing in Scud missiles with several of the world's more dicey regimes (some of them putative U.S. allies)

WASHINGTON - After a dramatic allied seizure on the high seas of a North Korean cargo vessel hiding a shipment of Scud missiles under a load of cement, the United States allowed the shipment of some 15 missiles to continue on to Yemen yesterday. Calling North Korea "one of the great proliferators on the face of the Earth," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the missile shipment "was going to a country we have good relations with." Powell said that after a "flurry of phone calls," both he and Vice President Dick Cheney were assured by Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih that the missiles were for Yemen's self-defense and would not be turned over to any other country.

WASHINGTON - A North Korean-owned ship was intercepted and boarded in the Arabian Sea on Monday by Spanish marines, who discovered at least a dozen Scud missiles under its cargo of cement, U.S. officials disclosed yesterday. The destination was most likely Yemen, a U.S. official said. After the Spanish marines requested U.S. help, sailors from an American warship boarded the vessel early yesterday. The ship, which was not flying a flag and had no markings, made evasive maneuvers and ignored warnings, officials said.

The Army missile system that tarnished Lockheed Martin Corp. with repeated test failures scored its second hit of the year yesterday, knocking a target warhead out of space in the most ambitious shot yet.The $14 billion THAAD anti-missile program has been under enormous scrutiny as the top technology demonstrator in the nation's effort to build a shield against ballistic missile attacks.With six test failures dating to April 1995, the program also has been a high-profile symbol of problems at lead contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.

The drawing shows an unmanned combat plane shooting at missiles, incoming fighters and planes on the ground -- not with missiles of its own, but with high-powered laser beams.This is not the cover of a science fiction thriller. It's an illustration in "New World Vistas," the Air Force's handbook for where it sees itself going in the 21st century.With this week's award of a $1.1 billion contract to build the airborne laser, the Air Force is putting dollars behind its sense of the future. Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall has said that the airborne laser could be as revolutionary for warfare as gunpowder and the atomic bomb.

New York -- America is moving toward a sex-neutral culture of divorce, and a lot of working women don't like it. Take Joan Lunden, the co-host of "Good Morning America," who was recently ordered by a New York court to pay her estranged husband, Michael Krauss, $18,000 a month in "temporary maintenance."She also contributes to his medical bills and covers all the fixed costs on the family home, where he, but not she, continues to live.Lunden reportedly makes $2 million annually; Krauss, says his lawyer, Norman Sheresky, is not earning a paycheck.

In keeping with its pledge to destroy its unconventional weapons, Libya has told U.S. officials that it will convert hundreds of its Scud-B missiles into shorter-range, less powerful weapons for purely defensive purposes and end all military trade with North Korea, U.S. officials said last week. The officials said in interviews that Libya had also agreed to make a public declaration of its decision soon. The Bush administration has told Libyan officials that the United States will not lift trade sanctions against Libya unless it ends support for terrorism and takes action to dismantle existing weapons that threaten its neighbors.

WASHINGTON - A North Korean-owned ship was intercepted and boarded in the Arabian Sea on Monday by Spanish marines, who discovered at least a dozen Scud missiles under its cargo of cement, U.S. officials disclosed yesterday. The destination was most likely Yemen, a U.S. official said. After the Spanish marines requested U.S. help, sailors from an American warship boarded the vessel early yesterday. The ship, which was not flying a flag and had no markings, made evasive maneuvers and ignored warnings, officials said.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon, which once bragged that its Patriot missile destroyed every Iraqi Scud targeted during the Persian Gulf war, has hard evidence that only four of 47 Scuds were obliterated, congressional investigators reported yesterday.After the war, the Patriot's boosters cited its near-perfect performance to justify building a costly "star wars" system designed to protect the United States against missile attack. Since then, the Patriot's effectiveness has been steadily downgraded.

The "Scud Stud" fired his own missile at NBC News Monday.Dashing Rome-based correspondent Arthur Kent, suspended indefinitely without pay Aug. 12 for refusing an assignment in Croatia, stood outside NBC's New York headquarters Monday morning, leafletting colleagues with a diatribe against the network.In the handout, Mr. Kent accused NBC News boss Michael Gartner of churning out "naked lies" about him on management's "publicity machine." NBC's statements, Kent wrote, are evidence of management's "incivility, brute stupidity and unworthiness to command."