The rocket Thomas Pynchon knew is an orphan.

[Paul Mackin]

A particularly well informed correspondent recently e-mailed me the 
following and it seemed too good not to share:


TP should have fleshed out the Russian side of GR. Both the Russians and 
the West raided
the Nazi rocket technology storehouse but American rockets are frozen in 
place as ICBMs and
have only seen some lite duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. America has 
abandoned the rocket and made it
an orphan. Uncle Sam has fallen in love with the drone, which requires a 
huge (and expensive)
support (intelligence) network; something a Third World fighter could 
never afford.

It's Russian rocketry that sees real service every day in the Middle 
East, Asia, and Mother Africa.
A Russian rocket pal to every guerrilla and rogue nation: reliable, 
deadly, and affordable. I'm
amazed, Paul, how willing the Russians are to share hard won 
technologies (even Stealth) with Third World Nations.
 From Day One, the Russians and Chinese, design their weapon's for Third 
world export. Their weapons
earn them hard currency.

The Russian's have perfected an anti-aircraft/drone/cruise missile that 
can be fired from
a moving or stationary vehicle and has a 12-mi range. Their rocket (it's 
called a Greyhound)
is just 10-feet long and weighs 200 pounds. A solid fuel booster drops 
off after 2-seconds
of burn time, leaving a 20 pound pencil thin warhead that lacks a rocket 
engine. That's right
no engine for the second stage: just a warhead with control vanes that 
is human (or computer) controlled via
a jam proof radio link. No second stage engine needed because when the 
booster has dropped
off, the warhead is traveling at Mach 2+. No hot rocket engine plume to 
tip off an aircraft's sensors.
The Syrians used this very missile, a few months ago, to bring down a 
Turkish Recon fighter
over Syrian airspace and send its two man crew to paradise.

OBTW re the mass killings plaguing our great nation. I notice the 
killers favor the US AR-15/M-16.
These killer's don't use the AK-47. The Analysts and talking heads 
missed this point. I think the
owners of the AK-47 are pretty much collectors who appreciate the 
alt-engineering mindset.

Why did Phillip Roth retire?