KEYSTONE KOMRADES

What goes up must come down, especially in Russia these days. On Tuesday, a $3.5 million Israeli satellite that was launched on a converted Russian nuclear missile crashed moments later into the Sea of Okhotsk. Earlier in the day, a warplane misfired six rockets in southern Russia, hitting a house, but causing no casualties. On March 10, an attack jet accidentally fired a missile that narrowly missed a nuclear power plant south of Moscow. TIME Moscow correspondent Terence Nelan says many more foul-ups go unreported because Russian defense and space programs still operate under the old Soviet veil of secrecy. "The Russian armed forces are undermanned, under-maintained, under-funded, and have an extremely low morale," says Nelan. "There are just accidents waiting to happen."