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U.S. missile defense test fails

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, December 12, 2002

The United States failed to complete a missile defense test because of a fault in the interceptor.

The Defense Department said a missile defense test on Wednesday was aborted when the so-called kill vehicle failed to separate from its booster.

The $100 million test was conducted over the Pacific Ocean and was meant to introduce a range of assets in the planned U.S. layered defense system.

The failure was the first in a flight test since July 2000, in which the kill vehicle also failed to separate from the booster. Five of the eight tests by the Missile Defense Agency have succeeded.

"We do not have an intercept," Missile Defense Agency spokesman Rick Lehner said.

The kill vehicle is manufactured by Raytheon and is equipped with two infrared sensors and a visible sensor. It is meant to ignore decoys and focus on incoming warheads. Boeing Co. is the integrator for the Ground-based Midcourse Program.

A Pentagon statement said the booster used in Wednesday's test was a surrogate system. The statement said two new booster designs are currently in development and will undergo flight testing beginning next spring.

The agency said other missile defense assets employed in the test performed as expected. This included the Spy-1 radar of the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis cruiser, which successfully tracked the target missile after launch.

In addition, the Airborne Laser, a modified Boeing 747 aircraft, used an installed infrared sensor to detect and track the boosting target missile after launch. The developmental Theater High Altitude Area Defense also tracked the target missile after launch.

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