By the time it was canceled last year, the Army's proposed Sergeant York division air-defense (DIVAD) gun had become a symbol of a procurement process gone haywire. After the Pentagon spent $1.8 billion and ten years developing the tank-mounted, radar-guided gun, field tests showed that it had trouble hitting a hovering helicopter. The fiasco left the Army without a weapon to counter the Soviets' high-performance aircraft and growing fleet of nimble helicopters. Some reformers urged the Army to consider simpler and more reliable weapons, perhaps a version of the existing Rapier or the Roland missile systems. But the Army decided otherwise....
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