Help | Sitemap | Archive | Advanced Search   
  CHINA
  BUSINESS
  OPINION
  WORLD
  SCI-EDU
  SPORTS
  LIFE
  WAP SERVICE
  FEATURES
  PHOTO GALLERY

Message Board
Feedback
Voice of Readers
 China At a Glance
 Constitution of the PRC
 CPC and State Organs
 Chinese President Jiang Zemin
 White Papers of Chinese Government
 Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping
 English Websites in China
Help
About Us
SiteMap
Employment

U.S. Mirror
Japan Mirror
Tech-Net Mirror
Edu-Net Mirror
 
Saturday, June 09, 2001, updated at 11:10(GMT+8)
World  

US Plans to Conduct Fourth Missile Defense Test in July

The United States plans to conduct the fourth test of a planned missile defense system by the end of next month, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday.

This will be the first Bush administration flight test of the controversial multibillion U.S. dollar ballistic missile defense.

The test would involve the same components as the last one - a dummy warhead and decoy launched from California's Vandenburg Air Force Base and a prototype interceptor with a 54-kilogram "kill vehicle" launched 6,919 kilometers away, from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

"And hopefully, they'll meet somewhere over the Pacific," said Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The test is likely in "mid to late July, based on current planning," he said.

Two of three U.S. missile defense tests have failed to prove the system would work, most recently on July 8 last year when an attempt to intercept and destroy a dummy warhead in space failed because the weapon did not separate from the second stage of its liftoff rocket. Those misses led former U.S. President Bill Clinton on September 1 last year to defer the politically charged decision on when to take the first steps toward deploying a national missile defense.

The project is estimated to cost as much 60 billion dollars for the land-based leg of interceptors, radar stations and battle management network.

Arms control experts said that the U.S. missile defense plan, opposed by the international community, will not only spark a new arms race, but also threaten world peace and security, and stimulate nuclear proliferation.







In This Section
 

The United States plans to conduct the fourth test of a planned missile defense system by the end of next month, a Defense Department spokesman said Friday.

Advanced Search


 


 


Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved