http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39735-2002Dec11.html
A Raytheon Corp.-built "kill vehicle" designed to destroy incoming warheads failed to separate from its booster on Wednesday in a test over the Pacific, setting back a multibillion-dollar system under development to shield against ballistic missiles from countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. "We do not have an intercept," said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. He said it was "frustrating and disappointing" that a glitch that had little to do with advanced missile technology had doomed the eighth, $100 million, flight test of a key part of a planned U.S. layered defense against ballistic missiles. Five of the flight tests have succeeded in shooting down the target vehicle launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force base. Wednesday's flight was the third failure, including a July 8, 2000, test in which Raytheon's so-called Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle also failed to separate from its booster, in that case because of an electronic module failure. Separating boosters from their payloads is something the United States has been doing successfully for some 50 years, Lehner said. A spokesman for Raytheon, Dave Shea, said the company had confidence in its design. High technology seemed an unlikely culprit, he said, as it might have been had the device separated on schedule and yet missed its target in space. The kill vehicle weighs about 120 pounds. Equipped with two infrared sensors and a visible sensor, it packs a small propulsion system meant to zero in on its target, bypassing decoys expected to accompany any incoming warhead. 'HIT TO KILL' The botched "hit to kill" intercept was meant to demonstrate that, as in previous tests, a warhead tipped with a weapon of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical or biological -- would be totally destroyed and neutralized in a collision with the "kill vehicle." Lehner said the test had begun without a hitch with the launching of a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg, on the central California coast. Also launched without incident was the interceptor. It was fired from 4,800 miles away on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, for the first time under cover of night, a new wrinkle in the testing program. The preceding four flight tests, all successes, had bolstered the Pentagon's confidence that the so-called ground-based system to shoot down incoming warheads in mid-course was on track. President Bush wants to put an Alaska-based "test bed" with five missile silos -- and rudimentary operational capabilities -- in place by October 2004. The site, at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, would constitute one leg of a projected multilayered defense against missiles from countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, members of Bush's "axis of evil." Developing a missile defense is the Pentagon's single most expensive program, likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over coming decades, including for sea-, air- and space-based components. For each of the past two fiscal years alone, Bush requested and Congress approved $7.8 billion in research, development and testing funds. Boeing Co. is the lead system integrator for the ground-based mid-course program. TRW Inc. builds the system's battle command, control and communications system. Lockheed Martin Corp. is the prime contractor on the current booster system. xponent Explodus Interuptus Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
