Monday, March 4, 2002

United States:  Interceptor Test Rigged, Report Says

A report from a scientific research group says the test of a ship-based system to shoot down ballistic missiles conducted Jan. 25 used an oversized target, the Washington Post reported Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 28).

In the test, a missile interceptor launched from a U.S. Navy cruiser shot down an Aries target missile.  A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists said the Aries target missile was five times longer and one-third wider than warheads used on the North Korean Nodong missile, the Chinese M-9 missile and any other medium-range missile the system is designed to attack.  The target’s larger size made it easier to hit, the report said.

Based on pictures of the target shortly before the interceptor hit, analysts concluded that the missile interceptor hit the Aries target in the middle, rather than at the warhead.

“So that it would not have destroyed the warhead had it been a real interception,” the report said.

“This raises the issue of what the tests tell you about capability in real-world scenarios,” said David Wright, who wrote the report.

The ship-based system test was not meant to score an intercept but to show the interceptor’s guidance and navigational capabilities,” said Lt.-Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

The UCS report applied “test criteria well above what is prudently possible at this stage of the development program,” Lehner said (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, March 2).

GAO Finds Flaws in Sensor Prototype

A U.S. congressional report into allegations of corporate fraud has found numerous technical flaws in the prototype of an anti-missile sensor that would be used to track enemy warheads, the New York Times reported today.

The General Accounting Office report, expected to be released today, details the technical problems in the sensor prototype developed by defense contractors TRW and Boeing.  The flaws found include cooling and calibration problems, detection of targets in space where there were none and difficulties in recognizing mock warheads from decoys, among others.  The GAO also criticizes TRW and Boeing’s claims that the sensor’s overall performance is excellent, according to the Times.

Boeing and TRW were forthcoming about the flaws in the sensor prototype during discussions between August 1997 and April 1998, the GAO said.  It did not say, however, whether Boeing and TRW described the flaws in response to allegations of fraud by Nira Schwartz, a former TRW senior engineer.  In 1996, Schwartz had accused TRW of faking work on the sensor prototype.

Schwartz’s allegations “appear to have sparked changes and improvements in a program that’s vital to national security,” said Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who requested the GAO inquiry (William Broad, New York Times, March 4).