US Plans to Conduct Fourth Missile Defense Test in JulyThe 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. |
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