Time: Sun Nov 24 18:36:34 1996 To: Ted <tdarby@bham.net> From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar] Subject: Cruise missile route passes over Alabama Cc: Bcc: Liberty Law Cruise missiles are pre-loaded with precise digital terrain maps, and they fly with side-looking radar running at all times, in order to compare the terrain map in its memory, with the feedback from the radar. This allows the missile to cruise very low to the ground (100 feet), at near the speed of sound, making it very difficult to detect by conventional radar defense systems. Its trajectory can also be programmed to be very complex (e.g. flying in figure 8's for long periods), until it is time to drop out of the sky. They can be fitted with nuclear weapons quite easily. Just a few tidbits from my computer mapping days .... /s/ Paul Mitchell At 10:45 AM 11/24/96 -0600, you wrote: >Cruise missile route passes over Alabama >The Birmingham News >Sunday, November 24, 1996 >Metro/State Section Page 22A > >EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE (AP) - A Tomahowk cruise missile for the fourth time >was successfully test flown Friday after being launched from the Atlantic >Ocean on a course over North Florida and part of Alabama. > >The unarmed missile was launched from a torpedo tube on the USS Boston, a >nuclear submarine, crusing beneath the ocean's surface off Jacksonville, >Navy officials said in a news release. > >It landed by parachute at this base in the Florida Panhandle after a flight >of about 850 miles. > >The Navy has been using Eglin since 1985 to test cruise missiles launched >from ships and submarines in the Gulf of Mexico on a course that took the >weapons over the Panhandle, into Alabama and back to the Panhandle. > >It began shifting some of the launches to the East Coast last year to cut costs. > >Officials had hoped to begin launching from the Atlantic nearly four years >earlier but the crashes of two gulf-launched Tomahawks in Alabama in 1991 >and 1992 postponed the cross-state flights until safety questions could be >resolved. No one was injured nor any property damaged as the crashes >occurred in unpopulated areas. > >
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