Neither Lapped nor Gapped

High in the sky and deep under the sea, the U.S. proved again last week that it is far from being lapped or gapped in the military race. Items:

P: Hoping to prove to Congress and the budgetmakers that it is possible to devise a defense against missiles, the Army disclosed that one of its operational Hawk antiaircraft missiles knocked down a supersonic Honest John over White Sands, N. Mex. last month. In the first known kill of a ballistic missile, the two birds collided 1 1/2 miles up at a combined speed of 2,000 m.p.h. Though a far cry from the Army's goal of perfecting a nuclear-tipped Nike-Zeus missile system capable of intercepting 16,000 m.p.h. ICBMs at 100-mile altitudes, the Hawk tests dispelled doubt that "a bullet could hit a bullet," gave new ammunition to the Army in its campaign to pry loose $137 million in Nike-Zeus funding now being withheld by the Budget Bureau.

P: Proving that the U.S.S.R. has many a missile woe of its own, U.S. intelligence reported that the Soviets failed in two attempts to launch key missiles during their recent test series (in which they also successfully lobbed a pair of ICBMs onto a bull's-eye in the mid-Pacific). U.S. monitors in the Middle East picked up the countdowns between Jan. 15 and Feb. 1, but could not tell whether the two birds blew up or the tests failed for other causes.

P: Proving that U.S. submarines can sail at any time of year to the top of the world, within easy Polaris range of Russia, the nuclear sub Sargo slipped hundreds of miles under the fierce Arctic ice pack to the North Pole. The fourth U.S. submarine voyage to the Pole, it was the first made in the dead of winter. Sargo chose the tougher western route (more than 4,200 nautical miles from Hawaii through the Bering Strait to the Pole), bucked the worst ice of the year (average thickness: 6 ft.), sailed under the pack for almost 15 days, surfaced seven times. At the Pole, where the sub poked up its conning tower, several crewmen scrambled out and proudly planted the red-white-and-blue-striped state flag of balmy Hawaii.

Silently tumbling in a near-Polar orbit last week was a mysterious object described as a spook satellite. Spotted by Navy radio space scanners, it is 19 ft. by 5 ft., and ranges in its orbit from an apogee of 1,074 miles to a perigee of 134 miles. The Soviets declared it was not one of theirs. U.S. spacemen said it was not one of theirs. Was it an enemy's "seeing-eye" space station (as retired Army Lieut. General James Gavin darkly suggested), or a curious visitor from outer space? No one knew for sure. Best guess: it was a harmless piece of space "garbage"--perhaps a spent final stage from some past satellite --and it will stay up there to tantalize scientists for several months more.

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