WASHINGTON -- Pentagon planners are cautiously optimistic over a crucial
test Friday in which one missile will try to knock out another high above the Pacific Ocean with a little help from ground controllers.| Missile Test Delayed |
Update for
11 p.m. EDT, FridayBattery problems with the Minuteman 2 have delayed the missile defense test until at least 12:17 a.m. EDT Saturday. |
The
launch window for the 30-minute mission runs from 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Friday to 2 a.m. EDT Saturday (02:00 to 06:00 GMT Saturday).A dummy warhead atop a modified Minuteman 2 is to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California into skies above the central Pacific. If all goes well, a "kill vehicle" launched minutes later from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, about 4,400 miles (7,080 kilometers) away, will meet up with the warhead and destroy it.
Missile defense on the line
The $100 million test -- the third of 19 planned for the National Missile Defense (NMD) system -- comes at a critical time.
If it succeeds, unlike the last attempt in January, President Clinton could decide to order deployment of the $60 billion defense system. At completion in 2005, the system would have about 100 interceptor kill vehicles in Alaska capable of defending against 20 or so enemy missiles.
View a video of the missile defense test of January 18, 2000.
If the latest test fails, however, the project could be stalled until the next administration.
By law, the United States must deploy some kind of missile-defense system as soon as it is "technically feasible" to do so against a limited threat. The Pentagon this summer plans to recommend a course of action to Clinton, one that military officials hope to base on two successful intercepts.
Complex testing
It has become progressively more complicated to judge the strengths and weaknesses of the NMD flight tests, the Pentagon says.
This time, for example, ground controllers will relay signals in flight to help guide the "kill vehicle" to a high-speed collision with its target.
"This test is important and we want all these elements to work together in an integrated whole so we can accomplish the intercept," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
The target missile is a 63-foot (19.2-meter) modified Minuteman 2 with a dummy warhead and a deflated Mylar balloon decoy.
~ Five minutes after launch, the Minuteman is to release its cone-shaped warhead and the balloon, which would inflate to about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter. The rest of the rocket will fall harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.
Fifteen minutes after that, another rocket topped by a 5-foot- (1.5-meter-) long, 130-pound (59 kilogram) kill vehicle would be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Once it separates from its host rocket, the kill vehicle will chase the warhead for about 10 minutes using heat-seeking instruments and signals from radar and ground controllers.
The kill vehicle is designed to avoid the decoy and slam into the target warhead with a closing speed of 4.6 miles (7.5 kilometers) a second at an altitude of 144 miles (232 kilometers) above the ocean. An impact would vaporize both vehicles.
Criticism rising
The high-stakes demonstration comes amid a rising chorus of
criticism over the $60 billion program that is designed to protect the United States from an attack by "rogue" nations like North Korea and Iran.Critics say if President Clinton decides to deploy the NMD, it would violate terms of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and provoke a new arms race with China and Russia, both of whom consider a U.S. missile "umbrella" to be a threat to their own national defenses.
The NMD tests also are conducted under simplistic -- and unreal -- conditions, some critics say.
"From a technical standpoint, this is another test of hit-to-kill. But it doesn't get at the issue of whether it can deal with realistic countermeasures from another country," said Lisbeth Gronlund, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"The single decoy that you have on this test is really nothing like what we think another country might do if it were to launch missiles at us," she said.
Letter to Clinton
In a letter sent to Clinton Thursday, a group of 50 Nobel laureates called the NMD a waste of money and harmful to U.S. interests.
The group, organized by the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., said that independent scientists contend foes could easily fool or overwhelm any such defensive missile system.
The Nobel laureates also noted that North Korea recently has taken steps to improve its relations with U.S. ally South Korea.
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