2 December 2001
Missile Defense Test's Value Questioned
Stormy Calif. Weather Delays Fifth Trial
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer

A Pentagon official said a range safety rule requiring continued visual tracking of a missile in flight, as well as concern about static interference arising from the stormy weather, prevented the launch of a target missile. The test was rescheduled for tonight, but with more poor weather expected, the official said that a further delay was likely.

The test is due to follow the same scenario used in the past four trials. The target missile will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles and will arc across the Pacific, releasing both a mock warhead and a single balloon decoy. Twenty minutes later, an interceptor missile is supposed to blast off from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific about 4,500 miles away. Once in space, a "kill vehicle" -- a 120-pound, 5-foot-tall device resembling a telescope with a jet pack -- is to separate from its booster and home in on the imitation 5 1/2-foot-tall warhead.

If all goes according to plan, the kill vehicle will ram into the warhead about 140 miles over the Pacific, demonstrating a concept that defense officials have dubbed "hit to kill."

With a record of two hits and two misses in four previous intercept attempts, the Pentagon is avoiding any major changes in the target, interceptor or test course that might add risk this time. A new critique by the Union of Concerned Scientists released on Friday called attention to the lack of operational realism in the test, citing a continued heavy reliance on surrogates and artificial elements. But Pentagon officials defended the simplified measures as part of a step-by-step approach that is normal in the early development of a complex weapons system.

Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), told reporters on Friday that a hit would give him confidence enough to move on to more complicated and realistic test scenarios, including the use of more and different decoys. A miss, depending on the cause, could stir renewed questions about the Bush administration's ambitious development plan, which many Democratic lawmakers, scientists and arms control advocates regard as unworkable, unaffordable and unnecessary.

The land-based interceptor system is only one of several technological approaches that the Bush administration is pursuing in a broadened program of experimentation. Others involve sea-based interceptors, airborne lasers and space-based weapons. But the land-based interceptor design has received the most funding and attention, having been accelerated by the Clinton administration in 1999.

In its 28-page critique, the Union of Concerned Scientists said artificial test conditions such as the use of a single decoy mean that the results will reveal little about the proposed system's ability to operate under real combat conditions.

The report noted that the booster used to launch the kill vehicle travels at only a third of the speed intended for the actual weapon, whose new and faster booster is more than a year behind schedule.

Additionally, it said that each of the mock warheads used in the tests has carried a transponder and that the transponder data have been designed to provide the initial guidance to the interceptor for when to launch and where to fly. Pentagon officials have said that the transponder is necessary to compensate for the lack of a high-precision X-band radar in the proper location in the testing range. And they have said that data from the transponder have not factored in the final homing of the kill vehicle. But the report of the scientists' group said the transponder has served to get the kill vehicle to a location in space that has minimized the amount of maneuvering it has had to do.

The report also observed that all the tests -- including the planned fifth one -- essentially have been the same, with no change in the trajectories of the missiles, the target complex, the time of day of the launches and the intended intercept point.

"We find that the current test program is still in its infancy, and that the United States remains years away from having enough information to make an informed decision on the deployment of even a limited nationwide missile defense system," the report concluded. "Hit-to-kill has been demonstrated, but not under conditions that are operationally relevant."

Kadish himself emphasized several times on Friday that the purpose of these initial tests was not to prove the system's ability to operate under real-life conditions but to identify weaknesses and acquire confidence in the approach. "We are testing to learn; we are not testing as pass-fail for some operational reason," he said. "There seems to be confusion on this every time I discuss these types of tests."

Kadish said that artificialities are inherent in much developmental testing but that the plan is to eliminate them in the missile defense program over time. To this end, the administration has proposed such changes as launching interceptors from Alaska and using ship-based tracking radars.

But some of these moves, as well as plans to test other kinds of antimissile technologies, threaten to bring the United States into conflict with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans some kinds of experimentation as well as the deployment of a nationwide missile defense. President Bush has declared his desire to set the treaty aside, but he and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is intent on preserving the treaty in some form, were unable to work out their differences during meetings last month.

To avoid a confrontation over the treaty, the administration decided to forgo the use of a ship-based Aegis radar and a land-based radar planned for the latest test.