Navy: Back to the Drawing Board

Tipped with twelve nuclear warheads and carrying a price tag of $26.5 million each, the Trident II submarine-launched missile is supposed to give the U.S. the ability to destroy Soviet ICBMs still nestled in their silos. But hopes for the Trident's scheduled deployment in 1990 were set back last week when the weapon exploded during a test firing on the open sea. It was the second failure in three attempts; embarrassed Navy officials admitted that the probable reason for the misfires was a design flaw that should have been corrected on the drawing board.

Because the new Trident is about 10 ft. longer and almost twice as heavy as the model it replaces, the missile leaves a more turbulent, gaseous wake as it rises to the ocean surface. But engineers miscalculated the amount of water that would rush into the vacuum under the missile's rocket nozzles. Investigators say these "water jets" interfere with Trident's trajectory and have led to the two mishaps. Their conclusion: the missile must be redesigned. Correcting Trident II could cost up to $20 million and delay its introduction for nearly a year.