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U.S. Testing: Last Night’s Test Called “Total Success” A “hit to kill” interceptor destroyed a mock warhead last night more than 140 miles above the Earth, according to the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (see GSN, Dec. 3). It was the third successful intercept in five attempts (U.S. Defense Department release, Dec. 3). The test was a “total success,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin. “We achieved intercept” (James Dao, New York Times, Dec. 4). “This was an important achievement,” said BMDO Director Lt. Gen Ronald Kadish. “It means we can take the next step and make the tests more complex” (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, Dec. 4). Tests Not Realistic? Missile defense critics raised questions last week about the value of the series of interceptor tests, arguing that the test conditions were not sufficiently realistic to justify deploying a national missile defense any time soon. In a 28-page technical critique, the Union of the Concerned Scientists criticized the five tests as too simplistic and essentially identical to each other. “In each case, the trajectories of the target missile and of the interceptor missile were the same, the target complex deployed was the same, the intercept point was the same, and the test took place at the same time of day,” the report said. Furthermore, the effort to disguise the target warhead with a single, large balloon decoy was not only not realistic, the report said, but the Pentagon oriented the “cluster” of the warhead, decoy, and delivery bus in such a way as to make the interceptor’s job as simple as possible. Delays in developing the interceptor’s three-stage booster have forced the Pentagon to use a two-stage booster for the recent tests, meaning that the test interceptor has been moving at half the speed at which an operational interceptor is designed to travel. There has been, therefore, an artificially long amount of time for the interceptor to identify the target and maneuver to a collision in the tests, according to the report. The UCS particularly questioned BMDO’s use of a radar beacon attached to the target warhead to provide target tracking information to the interceptor. The beacon is being used as a substitute for radar information that BMDO plans to collect with a yet-to-be-completed X-band radar. The report said the beacon provides extremely precise information to the interceptor, allowing the interceptor’s kill vehicle to search a very small area of space for the target. The future capabilities of the X-band radar have not been announced, the report said, questioning the realism of the test (Union of Concerned Scientists release, Nov. 30).
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