US Missile Defence Test Fails, Again.
Posted 2-16-2005 at 10:50 PM
For the second time in two months, a test of the national missile defense system has failed, Pentagon officials said Monday.
Military technicians believe the failure of the $85-million test was due to a problem with ground support equipment, not with the interceptor missile itself. A preliminary assessment indicated that the fault occurred in the concrete underground silo, where a variety of common and widely used sensors perform safety and environmental monitoring.
The interceptor, located at the Ronald Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific Ocean, was supposed to target a mock ballistic missile fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska. The target missile went off as scheduled but the interceptor failed to launch.
While the failure marked yet another delay for the program, defense officials expressed relief that the problem did not appear related to the interceptor. No date has been set for another test.
"The interceptor itself is fine and will be used for other tests," Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said Monday. "We'll just keep trying, keep testing, and hopefully we'll be able to do another interceptor test in the next few months, using the same interceptor."
Yet analysts said that each setback diminished the program's credibility at a time when the Bush administration must deal with the announcement last week by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that his country had nuclear weapons. .
Full Story at
http://globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050215-interceptor-failure.htm
For the second time in two months, a test of the national missile defense system has failed, Pentagon officials said Monday.
Military technicians believe the failure of the $85-million test was due to a problem with ground support equipment, not with the interceptor missile itself. A preliminary assessment indicated that the fault occurred in the concrete underground silo, where a variety of common and widely used sensors perform safety and environmental monitoring.
The interceptor, located at the Ronald Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific Ocean, was supposed to target a mock ballistic missile fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska. The target missile went off as scheduled but the interceptor failed to launch.
While the failure marked yet another delay for the program, defense officials expressed relief that the problem did not appear related to the interceptor. No date has been set for another test.
"The interceptor itself is fine and will be used for other tests," Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said Monday. "We'll just keep trying, keep testing, and hopefully we'll be able to do another interceptor test in the next few months, using the same interceptor."
Yet analysts said that each setback diminished the program's credibility at a time when the Bush administration must deal with the announcement last week by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that his country had nuclear weapons. .
Full Story at
http://globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050215-interceptor-failure.htm
