US Ground-based Missile Defense Test Fails

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, December 12, 2002

US Ground-based Missile Defense Test Fails

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Pentagon officials expressed frustration on Wednesday after a glitch doomed the eighth ground-based missile defense test in a setback for the military's effort to develop and deploy a missile defense system.

A Raytheon Corp.-built "kill vehicle" designed to destroy incoming warheads failed to separate from its booster in the test conducted in the early morning over the Pacific.

"We do not have an intercept," said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

This was the third failure for the ground-based missile defensetests and would surely frustrate Pentagon officials who had been encouraged by four successful tests in a row.

In the test, a Minuteman-2 intercontinental ballistic missile carrying a dummy warhead was fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Minutes later, a prototype interceptor was launchedfrom Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific, 4,800 miles away (about 7,775 kilometers) from the Vandenberg base.

The interceptor was supposed to collide with and destroy the warhead in a "hit to kill" interception. The "kill vehicle" was equipped with two infrared sensors and a visible sensor designed to help it bypass decoys expected to accompany any incoming warhead.

Lehner said the job of separating boosters from their payloads had little to do with advanced missile technology and the military has been doing it successfully for some 50 years.

Washington has been aggressively developing a missile defense system since President George W. Bush came to power last year. To clear the way for the development, Bush withdrew the United States from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty between Moscow and Washington in June this year.

Bush's missile defense plan was widely criticized by the international community. Russia, China and some other countries have expressed their concerns that the program could lead to a renewed arms race in the world. Opponents at home also argued that the missile defense system is too expensive and unrealistic.

Designing, testing and building a system of land- and sea-based missile defenses would cost between 23 billion dollars and 64 billion dollars by 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this year.

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