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Show Pershing Series Scheduled for Green River Base Beginning May Army officials are announcing an-nouncing an eight-round series of Pershing missile mis-sile firings to be conducted conduct-ed in May and June from the Utah Launch Complex of White Sands Missile Range at Green River. The two-stage artillery missiles will be programmed pro-grammed to impact on White Sands Missile Range. Federal Republic of Germany Air Force units will fire the first two rounds on May 13 and the 3rd and 4th rounds of the series on May 28. U.S. Army troops from Europe and from Ft. Sill, Okla. will launch two rounds on June 11 and the final two rounds of the series on June 25. All of the firings will be in the early morning hours, between be-tween 3 and 4 a.m. Currently operational P-1A model Pershings will be fired by the German Ger-man units. The American troops will launch development devel-opment rounds of the P-1A Improved model in a dual purpose program designed to evaluate both the firing operations and new components of the automatic reference systemsequential sys-temsequential launch a-dapter. a-dapter. Support for the firing units will be provided by the 3rd Battalion, 9th Field Artillery, from Ft. Sill. Batteries of the 3rd Battalion also will fire two of the P-1A Improved rounds in June. Seventh U.S. Army units from Europe Eu-rope will fire the other development test rounds scheduled in June. About 400 strong, the Ft. Sill battalion is scheduled sche-duled to arrive at Green River in mid-April. The troops will be housed in semi-permanent metal buildings at the Utah Launch Complex. The firing units will be graded on their performance perform-ance by the U.S. Army Field Artillery Missile Systems Evaluation Group, also from Ft. Sill. Technical direction will be provided by a team from the Pershing project pro-ject manager's office of the U.S. Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ar-senal, Ala. Major elements of White Sands Missile Range also will support the firing program. Observers Ob-servers will include representatives re-presentatives of the prime contractor for Pershing missile ' systems, sys-tems, the Martin Marietta Mari-etta Aerospace Corp., Orlando, Fla. The series will begin the 15th year of Pershing firings. More than 300 of these powerful and highly accurate missiles have been fired from launch sites in Florida, New Mexico and Utah since test firings began in 1960. The Pershing has been operational since 1963 and is now deployed with U.S. Army troops and North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense forces for-ces in western Europe. The Pershing has a solid so-lid propellant propulsion system and an inertial guidance system. It travels tra-vels at supersonic speed and is capable of operating operat-ing in any weather conditions. con-ditions. The two-stage missile is 35 feet long and 40 inches in diameter diam-eter and weighs 10,000 pounds at launch. |