SRS exercise prepares workers

Web posted Aug. 25 at 11:55 PM, Augusta (GA) Chronicle, by Brandon Haddock Staff Writer
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/082699/tec_124-5784.shtml

The green ooze spraying Wednesday from pipes outside Savannah River Site's ``H-Canyon'' was obviously fake. But to hundreds of site workers, it might as well have been radioactive plutonium.

The drama was part of the federal nuclear-weapons site's annual emergency- preparedness exercise. The event is a faked emergency that allows U.S. Department of Energy officials to grade the site's readiness for an actual problem.

Emergency workers are graded upon their performance in several categories, said Dean Campbell, a spokesman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co. The firm operates SRS for the Energy Department.

During the drills, workers must perform duties that range from caring for the injured to alerting the public of the situation, Mr. Campbell said.

``Everybody takes these drills and exercises very seriously,'' he said. ``Even the victim on the ground is not fooling around. Everybody wants to make sure they do the right thing and that they do a good job.''

Workers are told in advance that a drill will occur in a certain region of the site, but aren't told what type of emergency will be staged, Mr. Campbell said.

Some past drills have staged tornadoes and terrorist attacks, he said.

Results of Wednesday's drill won't be determined until early next week, Mr. Campbell said. The site usually receives high marks for the exercises, but often it is deemed deficient in a few categories, he said.

``We expect to have things to improve on,'' he said. ``You always have a few things you need to improve upon, but by and large, we do quite well on these things.''

There are no degrees to the Energy Department's grading scale; the site either passes the drill or it doesn't, Mr. Campbell said. The site has not failed under Westinghouse, he said.

About 300 SRS workers, and some state and local authorities, ``played'' in Wednesday's drill. The event simulated a spill of uranium from an overhead pipe at the H-Canyon plant.

The exercise stretched to Washington, D.C., where Energy Department ``security czar'' Eugene Habiger played by telephone.

The drill also reached Atlanta, where the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and the state's Department of Natural Resources monitored the day's events via faxes.

There were few smiles and many straight faces throughout, from the crane operator whose faked heart attack caused the ``accident,'' to the South Carolina official who pressed SRS officials to hold a news conference earlier than first planned.

``Eleven o'clock is too late,'' Joe Farmer told Energy Department spokeswoman Becky Craft. ``CNN is already making telephone calls, and you haven't put out a news release yet.''

As the two spoke, dozens of people hunched behind desks in the narrow, dark room that serves as the site's Emergency Operations Center. Nearly every worker spoke in stage whispers into telephone handsets and headsets; a few juggled both simultaneously.

Before the desks, three video screens stretched from floor to ceiling. One displayed information about efforts to clean the spill; another mapped wind patterns near the site. The third screen noted which media outlets had called seeking information.

Miles away, an alert had blared in the area surrounding H-Canyon, telling workers to remain indoors and to stay ``clear and upwind of 211-H.'' A roadblock prevented people from entering or leaving the scene, which was surrounded by fire engines and ambulances.

In the site's conference room, would-be reporters -- SRS workers outfitted with fake press badges from local newspapers and broadcasters -- barked questions at the site's top officials.

``They are worse than you are,'' a site spokeswoman joked to a reporter who watched the event.

Brandon Haddock covers energy issues for The Augusta Chronicle. He can be reached at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com.

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PECO Energy is making a habit of buying other utilities' albatrosses.
Give me your nukes

By Christopher Palmeri and John Gorham, Frobes Magazine, September 6, 1999
http://www.forbes.com/Forbes/99/0906/6405124a.htm

AS COMMANDER OF A SUBMARINE in the 1970s, Corbin McNeill slept eight paces from a nuclear reactor. He's still in bed with the things.

McNeill, chairman since 1997 of PECO Energy (formerly Philadelphia Electric Co.), has a most unusual strategy: He's buying aging nuclear power plants that other utilities don't want. Among them: a nuke at the infamous Three Mile Island, sister to the one that had a close call.

In the past year PECO, in partnership with British Energy, has agreed to buy three of four nuclear plants that have been put up for sale in the U.S. And he'll get them cheap. The Three Mile Island power plant, which PECO agreed to purchase for $23 million, was on the books of owner GPU at $640 million. The Clinton power station, owned by Illinova, cost $4 billion to build 12 years ago. McNeill is buying it for a net $20 million.

The station, which generates 910 megawatts, comes with a $278 million fund set aside by the seller to cover dismantling costs. Assuming the fund will cover the costs to take the plant to the dump in 2026 or so, PECO is effectively buying 27 years of capacity for $20 million--a steal.

In his three transactions McNeill has paid an average of $100 per kilowatt of power; fossil fuel power plants, by contrast, have typically traded at prices ranging from $300 to $1,000 per kilowatt.

How about operating costs? A well-run nuclear plant can generate power for 1.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, versus an average of 1.8 cents for coal, 3.4 cents for natural gas and 4.1 cents for oil.

You must be wondering why McNeill wants old nuclear plants so much more than the previous owners do. The original owner may be eager to sell simply because he doesn't want the regulatory headaches that come with operating a nuclear plant. McNeill is betting PECO can manage the plants better than their previous owners did. Besides, these companies are able to recover the "stranded costs" associated with the plants regardless of whether they sell them or not. This is a white elephant fee, so to speak: the difference between the market value of the plant and what it cost to build it. It is collected from ratepayers over a period of years during the transition to the world of competitive electric power.

McNeill joined PECO in 1988 to help straighten out the company's nuclear program. Among other things, employees at PECO's Peach Bottom nuclear plant in York County, Pa. had been caught sleeping and playing videogames on the job. In response, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had shut the plant down and fined PECO $1.3 million.

McNeill applied the same level of discipline to the power plant a Navy officer brings to a ship. Once he got the Peach Bottom plant reopened, he got the workers focused on preventive maintenance and reduced the average time the plant was down for refueling from 80 days to under 30. The plant's overall utilization climbed from 60% to 90%, among the highest in the industry.

The experience at Peach Bottom should prepare PECO to operate in a new era in which power will be sold in a free marketplace, rather than to captive customers. "We learned what it can cost when regulators shut down a plant," McNeill says. "We developed a culture to assure it never happens again."

McNeill wants to more than double PECO's power-generating capacity to 25 gigawatts (i.e., 25 million kilowatts) over the next five years. He'll accomplish this largely by acquiring nuclear plants.

Investors love McNeill's bargain-hunting; PECO's stock has nearly doubled in little more than a year. So aren't other utilities going to copycat the strategy, forcing up prices of secondhand plants? They will. Entergy, Dominion Resources and Commonwealth Edison have shown interest in buying nukes. And of these, Entergy has completed a purchase.

Even as PECO bids for other utilities' nuclear plants, it can cry poverty on its own. Its Limerick plant near Reading, Pa., budgeted at $1 billion, ended up costing nearly $7 billion, once all the Three Mile Island-inspired redesigning got done. Last year, in a showdown with regulators, McNeill demanded and won $5.4 billion (plus interest) of stranded costs, compensation largely for Limerick. Philadelphia electricity consumers, who pay among the highest prices for electricity in the country, will pay PECO a "competitive transition charge" of 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for the next 11 years.

With this income stream to back him up, McNeill went to Wall Street and sold $4 billion worth of bonds paying 5.8%. He'll use the cash to reduce higher-cost debt, buy back $1.7 billion in stock and buy other people's power plants.

"I'm no nuclear ideologue," says McNeill. "I'm a businessman who sees an opportunity."

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Uranium Resources Inc. Announces that the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Upholds HRI Inc.'s Crownpoint Radioactive Materials License

Updated 5:38 PM ET August 24, 1999 DALLAS (BUSINESS WIRE)
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/990824/tx-uranium-resources

Uranium Resources Inc. (OTC BB:URIX) announced today that on Aug. 20, 1999, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety Licensing Board ("ASLB") upheld the source materials license previously issued by the Commission in 1998 to HRI Inc., the Company's operating subsidiary in New Mexico.

In a decision denying the relief sought by intervenor groups seeking to invalidate HRI's license to conduct in situ mining operations at its properties in north western New Mexico, the ASLB administrative law judge concluded, "the ISL mining project on Church Rock Section 8, with the license conditions imposed on it by the Staff of the Commission, does not pose a credible threat to the environment or to human health and safety."

Acknowledging the very favorable ruling, Richard F. Clement, Jr., Vice President of Uranium Resources Inc. and President of HRI Inc. stated, "The Judges ruling reaffirms the Company's long-standing position that in situ mining at the Church Rock Section 8 location is benign to public health, safety, and the environment. This reaffirmation comes after a ten-year licensing process costing over $10 million dollars. HRI is very pleased with the result as the challengers to the Company's license filed more than 10,000 pages in support of their claims -- all that were found to be baseless."

Intervenors had challenged the HRI Crownpoint license on ten specific areas of concern including: Waste Disposal, Archaeological and Cultural Resources, Performance Based Licensing, Financial Assurance for Decommissioning, Technical and Financial Qualifications, Radioactive Air Emissions, Groundwater, National Environmental Policy Act Compliance, Cumulative Impacts, and Environmental Justice. The ASLB administrative law judge and his special technical assistants reviewed each of these ten areas of concern and rejected the intervenors request for license revocation on each of the counts individually, as separate partial decisions. The Judge had previously reviewed six of the initial concerns and had denied the intervenors license revocation request. The August 20 denial of the intervenors requests dismisses the final four areas of concern. Intervenors have 14 days to appeal these decisions to the full Commission.

Mr. Clement added, "The solid validation of our license for all ten areas of concern by the Judge now provides the Company the opportunity to plan for the next phase of development activity on our extensive reserve base."

With its license intact and in keeping with its overall corporate strategy, the Company's development plan for New Mexico will begin with the Church Rock district first, followed by Unit 1 and Crownpoint. The timing for such additional development at these properties will be subject to the timely receipt of additional permits, uranium market conditions and the availability of capital to finance these activities.

Except for historical information contained in this press release, the matters discussed herein contain forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and investors must recognize that actual results may differ from management's expectations. Key factors impacting current and future operations of the Company are discussed in detail in the Company's reports filed under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and include, without limitation, the spot price of uranium, weather conditions, operating conditions at the Company's mining projects, government regulation of the mining industry and the nuclear power industry, the world-wide supply and demand of uranium, availability of capital, timely receipt of mining and other permits from regulatory agencies.

Uranium Resources Inc. is a Dallas-based uranium mining company, whose shares trade on the OTC Bulletin Board under the symbol URIX. The Company specializes in in-situ solution mining and holds substantial uranium reserves in South Texas and New Mexico.

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Envirocare Competition Suit to Be Settled

BY BRENT ISRAELSEN August 25, 1999, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/08251999/utah/utah.htm

The nasty legal war between Envirocare of Utah and an out-of-state competitor soon may come to an end.

Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. (NFS) apparently has accepted a financial offer from Envirocare to settle a lawsuit NFS filed two years ago.

The lawsuit accuses Envirocare of illegally conspiring to keep NFS from developing a low-level radioactive-waste dump in southern Utah. The dump could have competed with a similar facility operated by Envirocare in Tooele County.

Attorneys for Envirocare and NFS declined to comment about the imminent settlement, saying it has yet to be approved by 3rd District Judge David Young.

In the lawsuit, the Tennessee-based NFS claims Envirocare and its owner, Khosrow Semnani, colluded with former state regulator Larry F. Anderson to prevent NFS from obtaining state licenses for NFS's proposed facility near Ticaboo, Garfield County.

The allegation followed disclosures in 1996 that Semnani had paid Anderson $600,000 in cash, gold coins and real estate during an eight-year period when Anderson was director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control.

Anderson maintains they were part of a legitimate business arrangement he and his private consulting firm, Lavicka Inc., had with Semnani. Anderson filed a civil lawsuit saying Semnani owed him an additional $5 million. But Semnani countersued, arguing Anderson had extorted the payments.

News of the payments prompted lawsuits by NFS and another Envirocare competitor, Colorado-based Umetco Minerals, which quietly settled out of court with Envirocare last year in a Denver court.

NFS and Envirocare have wrangled bitterly in state and federal courts, seeking sanctions against each other's attorneys and attempting to seal potentially embarrassing documents. The two sides also fought for months over Semnani's refusal to be deposed pending a federal criminal investigation. When that investigation resulted in a plea bargain for Semnani, an NFS attorney publicly criticized the deal.

Though NFS now is set to drop its case against Envirocare and Semnani, it will continue to pursue its civil action against Anderson and Lavicka, according to an order filed this week in a related civil matter in U.S. District Court.

Anderson also is awaiting trial on federal criminal charges of extortion, fraud and tax evasion. The trial is on hold pending a ruling on a motion by the government to disqualify Anderson's attorney, James Haskins. U.S. Magistrate Samuel Alba is expected to rule on that motion, which is under seal, by the month's end.

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On the Chinese Espionage Investigation

Thursday, August 26, 1999; Page A24
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/26/125l-082699-idx.html

The Aug. 6 front-page article "China Spy Probe Bungled, Panel Finds" contains two errors.

First, the article says that the statement of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs "notes that it is still unclear whether any secrets really were stolen." We did not say this. In fact, this issue was explicitly not a focus of our report, because we treated it as a given that U.S. intelligence officials had correctly concluded that Chinese intelligence stole design information on the W-88 warhead. Our statement said that "we take no position in this document on whether W-88 or other nuclear weapons information was in fact compromised, or by whose hand this may have occurred."

Second, the article gives a confused account of why the joint Energy Department/FBI probe initially focused upon Wen Ho Lee. As we described in our statement, this inquiry focused upon Mr. Lee because:

(1) He had access to W-88 information.

(2) He had traveled to China.

(3) His wife has extremely close ties to Chinese delegations visiting the Los Alamos laboratory.

The article accurately recounts these three factors considered in the analysis but then invents a fourth: that the Lees "were Chinese American." Let the record be clear:

The evidence we have seen and heard provides no basis for the claim that the initial DOE-FBI inquiry focused upon the Lees because of their race. Only much later in the process, once Mr. Lee had already been identified as the chief suspect, did the investigation consider the Lees' ethnicity -- and then only because, according to FBI counterintelligence experts, Beijing's intelligence actively tries to recruit Chinese American scientists working in sensitive U.S. facilities.

FRED THOMPSON
U.S. Senator (R-Tenn.)

JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
U.S. Senator (D-Conn.)

Washington

The writers are, respectively, chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

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Air Force looks for missing bomb

Updated 8:40 PM ET August 24, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990824/20/news-bomb

TUCSON, Ariz., Aug. 24 (UPI) A hiker is scheduled to guide two Air Force personnel and one forestry official up a Colorado mountain to get a look at an object that could be a missing bomb.

Air Force officials think the mysterious cylindrical object the hiker reported seeing on Whitney Mountain may be a 500-pound MK-82 bomb lost when Capt. Craig Button crashed his A-10 warplane during training more than two years ago.

The hiker, who is scheduled to lead the team to the site on Wednesday, spotted the object about eight miles southeast of the peak where Button's plane crashed in April 1997.

Button broke away from his training mission over Arizona, veered hundreds of miles off course and crashed into Gold Dust Peak in the central Rocky Mountains. The crash site was not found until three weeks later and the four MK-82 bombs were never recovered.

Air Force accident investigators determined the 32-year-old pilot from Tucson, Ariz., committed suicide by intentionally crashing his plane into the 13,365-foot peak.

Despite the Air Force's conclusions, rumors have persisted that Button's disappearance involved diverting the bombs to a militia. Although military investigators never found the bombs, there was no evidence to support the rumor either.

White Mountain National Forest district ranger Anne Huebner told the Arizona Daily Star in today's edition, "If for any reason it really did turn out to be one of the bombs, then I would expect the Air Force to come in with a fairly large search."

Huebner said the Air Force would likely begin looking for the other three bombs.

An unexploded bomb in the area could also be a relic from when the Army's 10th Mountain Division studied winter-survival skills and skiing in that area during World War II.

Investigators never accounted for much of the 30-caliber ammunition or the supply of flares aboard Button's $8.8 million aircraft.

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A-10 Bomb Search Fails

By The Associated Press, August 26, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-A-10-Crash.html

EAGLE, Colo. (AP) -- A search team hoping to locate four missing 500-pound bombs from the suicide crash of an Air Force warplane two years ago found an old unexploded mortar shell, but no sign of the bombs.

The site was at an elevation of 11,500 feet on a 40-degree slope high in the central Rocky Mountains where a hiker had spotted an object with a protruding tailfin.

Capt. Craig Button's A-10 attack jet was carrying four 500-pound bombs from a base in Tucson, Ariz., when he broke formation with two other planes on April 2, 1997. For three hours, he flew an erratic 500-mile course that ended when he crashed into the 13,000-foot Gold Dust Peak.

Air Force investigators concluded he committed suicide. The wreckage was found after an 18-day search, but there was no trace of the bombs, despite a 72-day search.

The search team, including the hiker, an Air Force officer, a civilian engineer and a forest ranger, hiked to the remote spot Wednesday before returning by nightfall.

The military closed the area until the mortar shell can be disarmed.

The shell was believed to be a relic from World War II-era training, said sheriff's Deputy John O'Sullivan. The region was declared a wilderness area in 1980, and since then there has been no military training.

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Navy Bookkeeping Found To Be Lax

By The Associated Press, August 26, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Navy-Bookkeeping.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy erroneously billed Greece and Japan for services it provided to Canada, and lost track of a $54 million payment by Kuwait for three fighter jets, according to a congressional audit.

The General Accounting Office, which says it will next look at Army and Air Force accounts, said the Navy's bookkeeping in the government's Foreign Military Sales program included inaccurate information.

In some instances, the Navy did not collect for military services and sales to allies, other times it did not credit the right account and still other times it billed the wrong nations, said the GAO, an investigatory arm of Congress.

The bookkeeping was so lax that it made ``it difficult for Navy managers to accurately account for and report on the (program),'' the GAO said in the report issued Wednesday.

The report was requested by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has long pursued waste in the Pentagon budget.

Navy records showed that, as of October 1998, some $582 million in delivered goods and services had not been charged to the appropriate foreign customers, the GAO said.

It urged the Navy to correct errors in its accounting system and work with the Defense Department's comptroller to review the overall program.

Nelson Toye, deputy chief financial officer for the Pentagon, said in a letter included in the report that the Defense Department ``generally concurs with the findings and the recommendations.''

As one example of faulty bookkeeping, the GAO said the Navy in 1996 had provided $1.1 million in support services for the Canadian Navy's shipboard command and launch system.

But instead of charging Canada's account for the $1.1 million, the Navy charged Canada only $18,507. Some $450,882 was erroneously charged to Greece and Japan and another $636,123 to a Pentagon account, the GAO said.

``Navy officials ... told us they plan to correct the erroneous charges to Greece and Japan'' and make sure Canada is fully billed, the GAO said.

Another time, the Pentagon's books showed Kuwait had not been billed for three F-18 aircraft it received in 1993. In fact, Kuwait had been billed and paid the full $54 million, the audit found.

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Mr. Holbrooke's Next Mission

Thursday, August 26, 1999; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/26/124l-082699-idx.html

AS OF yesterday, America has a U.N. ambassador. This is a bit of a novelty, since for the past year the country's political machinery has ensured that there was none: Richard Holbrooke's confirmation was held up first by an empty ethics charge and then by various senators for reasons best known to themselves. The question now is whether Mr. Holbrooke will be allowed to rebuild America's presence at the United Nations or whether more political obstructionism will make this impossible.

During its ambassador-free period, America has been voted off the United Nation's key budget committee. It has failed to mobilize the support of other governments for further reform of U.N. bureaucracy. It has been snubbed over its requests that the next U.N. session not begin on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. These slights pale next to the threat that the United Nations will rescind America's voting rights in the General Assembly -- along with those of Togo and Iraq.

Mr. Holbrooke's vigor, famously deployed in the search for peace in the Balkans, may improve America's standing somewhat. But the loss of Assembly voting rights will happen automatically unless America pays $350 million of its arrears by the end of this year. President Clinton wants to do it, and the Senate has voted a bill, by a margin of 98 to 2, that would authorize the money. But Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) may derail repayment by attaching antiabortion language that would draw a Clinton veto.

Mr. Smith sabotaged repayment last year and the year before. This year he has lost a few old allies, who declare that they are pro-life but pro-United Nations as well. It is now up to the Republican leadership in the House to stop Mr. Smith from pressing his issue at the expense of America's larger interests. Until America starts to repay its arrears, it has little hope of getting its way on such issues as the closure of unnecessary committees and the reduction in America's share of the organization's budget. Presented with U.S. demands, even reasonable ones, foreigners will respond, "No representation without taxation."

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Paying for Research

August 26, 1999 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/lwindt.htmlTo the Editor:

Re "Lobbying for Research Money, Colleges Bypass Review Process" (front page, Aug. 24): Federal research dollars earmarked for lawmakers' pet projects come at the direct expense of peer-reviewed research. For instance, a recently drafted House appropriations bill kept the pork but cut nondefense research and development by 5.1 percent, including cuts for specific research programs at NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Our elected officials in Washington do us a tremendous disservice by undermining the scientific peer-review process and thus the investments in the future of our country through investments in science and technology.

DAVID L. WINDT Berkeley Heights, N.J., Aug. 24, 1999

--

To the Editor:

Re "Lobbying for Research Money, Colleges Bypass Review Process" (front page, Aug. 24):

It is the competitive awards and contracts from Government agencies that pay for the research that makes real impacts on our lives. As a medical student and doctoral candidate, I've read many research articles. Financing sources (including specific grant and contract numbers) are disclosed in the biomedical literature, and researchers proudly proclaim financing from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and private charities. However, I have never seen an article that declared "this work was supported by pork-barrel legislation."

AMNON SCHLEGEL Bronx, Aug. 24, 1999

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LOW FLIGHTS VS. HIGH RISKS
We don't need low-level training

By Eugene J. Carroll
The Denver Post Sunday, February 22, 1998

The tragic deaths of 20 people in a cable car brought about by a low-flying American warplane near Cavalese, Italy, have created a storm of criticism in Italy. The deaths also raise serious questions about the need to train U.S. pilots for high-speed, low-level flights.

I spent hundreds of hours flying Navy attack aircraft at low levels, including flights through those same Italian mountains.

I believed then that I was preparing for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The concept was that unescorted nuclear-armed aircraft could penetrate Soviet territory only by sneaking in below the Russians' radar coverage. But that reason is no longer valid. In the unlikely event of a nuclear war today, aircraft attacks would follow only after missile warheads had destroyed Russian air defenses thus eliminating the need for low-altitude tactics.

Now the presumed justification is that pilots must be prepared for low-level attacks using conventional weapons. Unfortunately, as early as the Vietnam War, the costly lesson was learned that low-level tactics resulted in prohibitive losses because of ground fire from light, even hand-held automatic weapons. Heat-seeking missiles have subsequently added an even more lethal threat to low-flying warplanes.

The cost of low-level attacks was evident once again during Desert Storm operations in Iraq. British Tornado aircraft using minimum-altitude tactics suffered disproportionate losses early in the campaign. The American experience was reflected in the Department of Defense's final report to Congress, which noted how despite the strong peacetime emphasis on training for low-level delivery tactics, the density of the Iraqi planes and the dangers of unaimed barrage fire to low-flying aircraft drove some aircraft to higher altitudes.

The report noted that 10 aircraft were lost later during bad weather when they were forced down to lower altitudes and exposed to heavy defensive fire. Low-level attack operations produced almost one-half of all coalition aircraft losses even though they were abandoned early in the air war.

All of this sad evidence demonstrates that fighting at low altitudes costs lives and aircraft unnecessarily. This truth will be honored in the impending air campaign against Iraq. Only after great damage has been done to Iraqi air defense capabilities will attacks be pressed from closer ranges and lower altitudes, and even then it will be a rare case for aircraft to descend below 10,000 feet. There simply are no targets in Iraq that merit the greater risk of losing air crews and aircraft at lower altitudes.

Even in peacetime, low-level flying is inherently dangerous. Flying just over treetops and mountain ridges at 6 miles per minute allows very few seconds to avoid unexpected obstructions or to deal with emergency conditions in the aircraft. There is also the undeniable fact that pilots frequently fly below prescribed minimum altitudes in order to intensify the exhilarating sense of speed and danger. Even a moment's inattention can be fatal.

It is to be hoped that an investigation of the tragedy in Italy will lead to an end to this unnecessary, dangerous practice of high-speed, low-level flight training.

Eugene J. Carroll is a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral.