Soaring Costs Peril New Missile

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, unhappy with the skyrocketing costs of the Air Force’s newest air-to-air missile, designed by Hughes Aircraft Co., has ordered a delay in production and left open the possibility that he might actually cancel the program, it was learned today.

Weinberger’s decision, summarized in a memo written earlier this week, directs the Air Force to establish a new committee “to define and evaluate the feasibility of alternative methods for reducing” production costs for the AMRAAM, which was to have become the “super-missile” of the 1990s.