May 14, 1990

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HEADLINE NEWS

AMRAAM Successful in Key Test; GAO Calls for Halting Production

LANCASTER, CALIF., WASHINGTON The advanced medium-range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM) program passed a critical milestone when four of the new weapons, fired in rapid succession from a single F-15, successfully “killed” four QF-100 drone targets.

By WILLIAM B. SCOTT,JOHN D. MORROCCO

HEADLINE NEWS

Piaggio P-180 Receives FAA Certification; First Delivery Planned for Year-End

GENOA, ITALY Italy’s Piaggio has received Federal Aviation Administration certification for its Avanti P-180, and the company plans initial customer delivery of the unconventional design, twin-engine business aircraft before year-end.

By JEFFREY M. LENOROVITZ

HEADLINE NEWS

SAC Fears B-2 Production Cutback Will Cause Targeting Uncertainty

WASHINGTON The Strategic Air Command believes the Administration’s B-2 bomber cutback means that several hundred of the most important, hardest-to-destroy military targets in the Soviet Union will have to be assigned to substantially less effective weapons in the late 1990s.

By DAVID F. BOND

HEADLINE NEWS

Pentagon Wary About Concurrency But Cites Other Sources of Risk

WASHINGTON The Defense Dept. has acknowledged that there is too much overlap of development and production in some of its weapon programs, but it said it is too late—and would be too expensive—to reorganize them. “We have a number of existing programs under contract that have a greater degree of concurrency than we would like,” John A. Betti, under secretary of Defense for acquisition, said as he sent congressional committees a report on concurrency required by the Fiscal 1990 military authorization bill.

HEADLINE NEWS

NATO Review of Nuclear Forces Centers On Tactical Air-to-Surface Missiles

WASHINGTON NATO’S proposed tactical air-to-surface missile (TASM) is rapidly becoming the new focal point of the longstanding debate within the alliance over the makeup and necessity of its shortrange nuclear arsenal. NATO defense ministers began the process of reassessing the alliance’s tactical nuclear force requirements last week following President George Bush’s call for canceling plans to develop a successor to the Lance missile and modernize nuclear artillery (AW&ST May 7, p. 21).

May 71990

May 211990

May 14, 1990

May 14, 1990