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U.S. Plans: Interceptor Test Produces Fourth Successful Hit The U.S. Defense Department Friday successfully tested a missile interceptor designed as part of the developing national missile defense system. It was the fourth hit in six intercept tests (see GSN, March 15). More than 140 miles above the Earth, a prototype missile interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean hit a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force base in California. Operators integrated land- and space-based sensors and command, control and communication procedures to track the launch of the Minuteman target. They also used a prototype X-band radar that provided intercept data to the interceptor (U.S. Defense Department release, March 15). Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz praised the outcome of Friday’s test. “I think what we can say is that our test program is proceeding and showing some quite impressive success,” Wolfowitz said Saturday on CNN. “I’ll say right off the bat — before some critic discovers it — this was not a, quote, ‘realistic’ test of exactly what an intercept would have to do,” he said in response to criticism that the test was deceptively impractical. “But it’s the first time we’ve had anything that looked like a decoy warhead, and it picked out the real warhead from the decoys.” “We’re in a development program. People need to understand that,” Wolfowitz said. “As we have said over and over again, it’s an important area where we’re going to go down the avenues that work and cut off the avenues that don’t work” (U.S. Defense Department transcript, March 16). Critics of a U.S. missile defense plan, however, said that the system is still very far from operational. “We have a long way to go before the final exam,” said Chris Madison of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. “I’m concerned that people have the impression, based on these tests, that we’re almost to missile defense. Until we have operational testing, we’ll have no idea whether we can get there.” The U.S. Missile Defense Agency expects to conduct operational tests based on the most realistic scenarios over the North Pacific Ocean after 2004, said MDA spokesman Lt. Col. Rick Lehner. Developers will need to conduct 20 more tests before they can reach an operational system, and the Pentagon plans to conduct a test every three months until 2007, he said (Associated Press/Deseret News, March 17).
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