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U.S. Missile Intercept Test Expected in Summer 2006 By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is not likely to test its flagship anti-ICBM system against a flying target until at least next summer, a spokesman said last month (see GSN, Aug. 25). The agency is planning four flight tests of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system several months apart over the coming year, spokesman Richard Lehner said by e-mail. The first two tests, beginning late this year, will not include targets, he said. The third will include a target, but is intended as a “fly-by” and not to hit the missile. The fourth test will be “likely in 4th quarter” of fiscal 2006, he said, which is July, August and September, and “will have an intercept as an objective.” That is potentially a 19-month delay since the last intercept attempt in February. The schedule also means the agency will experience a nearly four-year delay between actual intercepts, if the next attempt is successful. The last successful intercept was on Oct. 14, 2002. Furthermore, at least until mid-2006, the agency will not have conducted an intercept test using the new interceptors that are being purchased and loaded into the ground in Alaska and California for potential defensive use. Six are already installed and six more are planned for the end of the year, Lehner said. Four interceptors scheduled for deployment will instead be transferred to the test program, he said. The agency is funding installation of up to 20 more by the end of 2007. Representative John Spratt (D-S.C.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, this year added language to the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill approved by the House to provide $100 million for a missile intercept test from an operational silo “as soon as practicable.” The move was an apparent effort to gauge the operational capability of the system’s fielded components prior to continued investment in deployed systems. No Senate bill includes such legislation. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering “feels [the interceptor flight schedule] is a measured approach to testing over the next year to exercise the operational configuration of booster and kill vehicle, the integrated fire control system, as well as use of operational sensors for tracking, including Aegis, forward deployed X-band radars and the sea-based X-band radar,” Lehner said. GSN last month reported the delay in testing, but was unable then to identify a scheduled time-period for the next intercept test. Previous FailuresThe anti-ICBM system last underwent intercept testing in December 2004 and February 2005. In both cases, the interceptor missile failed to leave its silo to engage its target. Agency officials have said the failures resulted from technical glitches. A Defense Department-appointed panel reviewing the failures in March suggested that quality control was weakened as the agency moved to both test and meet a White House-driven schedule of fielding interceptors and other system components by the start of 2005 (see GSN, June 10). The panel recommended a more cautious approach to testing that would include delaying the next scheduled intercept flight until it was believed it would have an 80-percent probability of success. Critics say the intercept tests, as they have been conducted to date, have been significantly artificial, so even the successful flights have not demonstrated whether the system could be made to eventually work under real conditions. U.S. officials and the review panel this year have argued that the basic feasibility of the system has been demonstrated through earlier testing and that the potential of an effective system should discourage potential adversaries such as North Korea from developing ICBMs. Prior to the most recent test failures, officials had boasted of the agency’s then five-for-eight record of intercepts as evidence of the system’s potential. They do not now cite the agency’s five-for-10 record. Instead, they point to reportedly successful intercepts from 2000 to 2002 using prototype interceptors and missiles as evidence of the system’s potential effectiveness. “The successful prototype interceptor tests that we conducted in 2001 and 2002 gave us the confidence to proceed with the development and fielding of a system that relies primarily on the hit-to-kill technologies,” Obering told a congressional committee in May. “While our testing has continued to build our confidence in the system, long-range interceptor aborts in our last recent tests have been very disappointing,” he said.
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