Word: troop
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...Nieuports and German Taubes opened the age of aerial combat by taking potshots at one another with rifles in the skies of World War I Europe. But the first military function of aircraft in that war was gathering intelligence. Tiny, unarmed biplanes scurried behind enemy lines to spy out troop dispositions and act as airborne forward artillery observers. Warfare has grown immensely more complex in the half-century since then, but gathering intelligence nonetheless remains one of the airplane's most significant and fascinating functions...
...guide defensive surface-to-air missiles, or whether it is designed to control a network of offensive nuclear weapons. The aircraft's antennas, tuned to a wide range of radio frequencies used in military communications, can overhear conversations between major command posts 200 miles away and thus plot troop movements and combat readiness. Analysis of EC-121 data can reveal how much traffic is moving in and out of a military airfield...
What-lfs. NATO planners fear such a troop shortage means that the alliance could not contain a Soviet thrust by conventional means and would thus have to resort almost at once to nuclear weapons. Though the possibility of direct So->~a aggression remains highly unlikely, NATO commanders nevertheless worry about "what-if" situations that could spill over into Western European soil. What if, for example, a revolt by the Czechoslovak army led to fighting that saw Soviet troops pursuing the Czechoslovaks into West Germany? Similarly, a Soviet move into the so-called gray areas of Yugoslavia or Austria would pose...
...before China becomes a nuclear superpower. Fast-moving, heavily equipped Russian armored columns stab across the Amur and Ussuri rivers into Manchuria, brushing aside China's infantry. A Soviet armored division knifes into Manchuria from the west, across the Mongolian border. Fleets of Ilyushin bombers pound Chinese airfields, troop concentrations and industrial centers across the entire northeast. China's outnumbered jets are swept from the skies, and within a week the major Manchurian cities of Shenyang and Harbin have fallen to the Soviet pincers. Linking up, the Russian columns race south toward Peking, then halt 50 miles away...
...Free Diversions. In Japan, the system for subsidizing executive fun and games works somewhat differently. At the end of each month, women who run geisha houses and popular bars troop to the accounting departments of big firms. Each visitor carries sheafs of bills and whispers the name of the executive-san concerned. They are paid, no questions asked. The Japanese executive has the world's most generous expense account for nocturnal diversions. A government survey found that in 1967, Japanese businessmen spent $1.4 billion on nontaxable "official entertainment." The 1,140 bars along Tokyo's Ginza depend...