The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is planning to conduct a nighttime intercept test with its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, Aerospace Daily reported today (see GSN, May 16).

Missile defense officials do not believe that testing the system at night will present serious challenges, but they say they want to test it nonetheless.

“I would think that at the least, you’d want to know that the system could work at night,” said Philip Coyle, former Defense Department director of operational test and evaluation, who pushed for the nighttime test along with several experts, according to Aerospace Daily (Marc Selinger, Aerospace Daily, May 19).

Officials also said that money and staffing shortages forced the agency to suspend a planned June 2004 missile intercept test and instead test a radar component of the system.  The agency is still deciding whether the intercept test will be conducted at all, according to System Executive Officer Patricia Sanders.  The Senate Armed Services Committee added $100 million to the fiscal 2004 budget to pay for the test, Bloomberg.com reported (Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg.com, May 19).

Boosters Tested Soon

Agency officials have also decided on more specific timeframes to test its prospective boosters.  The agency plans to test the Orbital Sciences booster in late July and the Lockheed Martin booster in late August at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.  Full flight tests of the boosters with a variety of sensors involved are scheduled to take place between September and November (Selinger, Aerospace Daily).

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