Edition: U.S. / Global

Word for Word/The Clancy Effect; Quick! Man the F56 Kryton Hydro Thermal-Sensitive Torpedoes!

Published: August 18, 2002

NO doubt about it: Tom Clancy is a phenomenon. His military and espionage thrillers are routinely introduced with first printings of two million copies and shoot to the top of best-seller lists. Last year, according to Forbes magazine, Mr. Clancy earned $47.8 million.

So how does he do it? Mr. Clancy's fans adore his penchant for breakneck storytelling, as well as the welter of obsessively authentic detail he brings to his yarns. His detractors, though, have long bewailed his prolix descriptions of the weapons of war, combat systems and all manner of related hardware. This month Mr. Clancy published his 12th novel, ''Red Rabbit'' (G. P. Putnam's Sons). For those about to experience the Clancy effect for the first time, perhaps at the beach this weekend, here is a sampling of the author's most finely calibrated technoprose. THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

Secret Messages

The message, already encrypted on the master 342 cassette at N.S.A. headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland, had been further encrypted for satellite transmission on the current maximum-security State Department cipher, called STRIPE, but even if someone had the proper keys to read STRIPE, all he would have gotten was a message that read DEERAMO WERAC KEWJRT, and so on, due to the super-encipherment imposed by the cassette system.

''Clear and Present

Danger'' (1989)


The impulse entered a dividing network using krytron switches -- each of them a small and exceedingly fast device using self-ionized and radioactive krypton gas to time its charges with remarkable precision. Using pulse-compression to build their amperage, the dividing network split the impulse into seventy different wires, each of which was exactly one meter in length. The relayed impulses required three-tenths of a shake (three nanoseconds) to transit this distance.

''The Sum of All Fears'' (1991)

Missiles and Guns

The Aegis radar/missile system had been developed to deal with the Russian airplane and cruise-missile threat to the Navy's aircraft carriers. It entailed a superb phased-array radar called the SPY and a fair-to-middlin' surface-to-air missile originally called the Standard Missile, because, Gregory imagined, it was the only one the Navy had.

The Standard had evolved from the SM-1 to the SM-2, actually called the SM-2-MR because it was a ''medium-range'' missile instead of an ER, or extended-range, one.

''The Bear and the Dragon'' (2000)

The big MacMillan sniper rifle fired the same cartridge as the .50-caliber heavy machine gun, sending a two-ounce bullet off at 2,700 feet per second, covering the distance in less than a third of a second and drilling a half-inch hole into the soft side of the truck, but there was no telling if it hit a target or not.

''Rainbow Six'' (1998)


ELECTRA-CLERK 2.4.0 would not be uploaded to Alpha and Beta until it had run for a week on Zulu, and then another week would pass before they were loaded onto the backup site, whose machines were labeled ''Charlie,'' ''Delta'' and ''Tango.'' That was to ensure that 2.4.0 was both efficient and ''crash-worthy,'' an engineering term that had come into the software field a year earlier. ''Debt of Honor'' (1994)


Additionally, each P-3C carried FLIRs, forward-looking infrared scanners, to identify the heat signature of a nuclear sub, and MADs, magnetic anomaly detectors that located the disturbance in the earth's magnetic field caused by a large chunk of ferrous metal like a submarine.

MAD gear could only detect a magnetic disturbance 600 yards to the left and right of an aircraft's course track, and to do this the aircraft had to fly low, consuming fuel and limiting the crew's visual search range.

''The Hunt for Red October'' (1984)


''Can they fight?'' Jackson asked.

''They're using the T-80U. It would have given the M60A3 a good fight, but no, not as good as our first-flight M1, much less the M1A2, but against the Chinese M-90, call it an even match, qualitatively.''

''The Bear and the Dragon''

Chains of Command

How exactly did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union make its decisions? What was good for the people? But who measured that? Individuals did, Brezhnev, Andropov, Suslov, the rest of the full voting members of the Politburo, advised by the nonvoting candidate members, further advised by the Council of Ministers and the members of the Central Committee of the Party, all the senior members of the nomenklatura -- the ones to whom the rezident in Paris shipped perfume and pantyhose in the diplomatic bag.

''Red Rabbit'' (2002)


The flight of F-16's couldn't risk straying too far from COMEDY, but moved to meet the threat in the center of the gulf under direction from the Awacs. Both sides switched on their targeting radars, the UIR force controlled by ground-based sets, and the U.S.A.F. teams guided by the E-3B circling a hundred miles behind them. It wasn't elegant.

''Executive Orders'' (1996)


Given minimum source concentrations of two milligrams per cubic meter, predicted vertical temperature gradients, and cloud-width inputs, we see that the downwind toxic vapor hazard to large areas of the FRG and DDR will be approximately 0.3 (plus or minus 50 percent in our calculations, allowing for expected impurities and chemical breakdown in the chemical munitions) as great as that at the targets themselves.

''Red Storm Rising'' (1986)


The thermal blooming might have been reduced by 50 percent or so. But that meant controlling the superconducting magnets better. They were called wigglers because they induced an oscillating magnetic field through the charged electrons in the lasing cavity. Unfortunately, the breakthrough that made the lasing cavity larger had also had an unexpected effect on their ability to control magnetic-field flux.

''The Cardinal of the Kremlin'' (1988)

Germ Warfare

The tiny strands had been exposed to room air and room light for ten hours before being reintroduced into the culture dish, and already, the technician saw, the minute strands were active, using their RNA to multiply after eating, replicating themselves into millions more little strands, which had only one purpose -- to eat tissue. In this case it was kidney tissue, though liver was just as vulnerable. ''Rainbow Six''


''We show one bird lifting off,'' the watch officer told North American Aerospace Defense Command. ''Coming out of Baikonur Kosmodrome on a heading of one-five-five, indicating a probable orbital inclination of 65 degrees. Signature characteristics say it's either an SS-11 ICBM or an F-1-type space booster.''

''Only one?'' ''Red Storm Rising''

Photo: Tom Clancy, master of the military/spy/hardware thriller.