MDA to Divert Four Missile Interceptors for Testing

Four U.S. missile interceptors that were to be deployed this year at Fort Greely, Alaska, will instead be used for pending flight and intercept tests, Inside Missile Defense reported yesterday (see GSN, July 22).

The next flight test is scheduled for September at the Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific, Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said July 28. The agency will then use Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for another three tests planned through fall 2006.

A production version of the kinetic kill vehicle that is perched atop the interceptor will be tested for the first time during the first two trials, Obering said. The third test calls for a radar characterization, in which a target is launched and the kill vehicle attempts to obtain information sufficient for an intercept.

If the initial flight tests are successful, the agency plans to try to intercept target warheads during tests beginning no sooner that September 2006, Obering said (Thomas Duffy, Inside Missile Defense, Aug. 3).

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