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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 2803.PDF
WORLD MISSILE DIRECTORY. # * w World Missile Directory In the year and a half since the last issue of this survey was published, the guided missile has never been far from the news headlines. In the Gulf region, guided missiles have been responsible for the sink ing of warships, the downing of a civil airliner, and the loss of civilian lives in the heartless Iraq/Iran "war of the cities". In the hands of Afghan guerrillas, the heat- seeking Stinger has probably done much to bring to an end the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. With Stinger missiles now circulating on the black market, it can only be a matter of time before one of these missiles is used by terrorists. The final cost of Western support for the Afghan guerrillas may prove painfully high. One problem which the compiler of this survey usually faces, is that of too many missiles and too few pages. Each year sees more new missiles leaving the drawing Compiled by Doug Richardson board, but seldom any withdrawal of older types. This year we can report several signifi cant retirements—an entire class of weapons banned by the Intermediate'Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed by the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union. At the same time, these pages also docu ment a dangerous trend in the opposite direc tion. As the superpowers phase out their intermediate-range weapons, other nations, "particularly in the Middle East," are about to bring equivalent systems into service. As this survey documents, a growing number of nations now see the long-range ballistic missile as an important future part of their armoury. Couple this trend with another— the development of chemical weaponry by Harpoon climbs away from its launch tube several Middle Eastern nations—and any elation one might feel at the sight of SS-20s and GLCMs heading for the breaker's yard begins to fade. As this survey closed for press the news came that Israel had launched its first . satellite. This achievement reflects credibly on that nation's aerospace industry, and makes the UK's unwillingness to develop its own satellite launch capability seem pathetic. The news from Israel does have a disturbing undertone, however. As Nikita Kruschev pointed out in 1957, when his nation orbited the world's first satellite, a rocket capable of orbiting a satellite can deliver nuclear explosives to any place on the Earth's surface. The days when such capability was reserved for the superpowers are gone for ever. A new generation of non-superpower ballistic missiles could make the world seem a much smaller place. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 1 October 1988 33
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