America's hit-for-kill missile test fails, not many are mourning

America's hit-for-kill missile test fails, not many are mourning
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

WASHINGTON, JULY 8: Rarely has a fiasco been celebrated so universally. The United States yesterday failed to hit and destroy a target warhead in space in a dumbed-down version of a proposed National Missile Defence System, much to the delight of a vast constituency of skeptics and peaceniks.

``We did not intercept the warhead tonight. We are disappointed,'' Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the missile defense effort, told reporters at the Pentagon, shortly after a $100-million test failed for the second time in three tries.

But it was joy for a growing band of critics and privately, even some administration officials, who are opposed to the tests and development of the new weapons systems.

If the test had succeeded, it would have speeded up putting in place an expensive $30-billion to $60-billion interceptor shield and tracking radar to stop what proponents say could be incoming missiles from potential threats like North Korea. It would have also worried Moscow and Beijing, who feel such a shield would neutralise their arsenal and force them to spend money on developing newer weapons.

Failure could delay -- and not necessary deny -- America's powerful military-industrial-political nexus from putting in place 20 interceptors by 2005 and 100 by 2007. According to questionable US intelligence reports, that time frame is when ``rogue nations'' like North Korea and Iran will be a position to launch missile attacks on mainland USA. No one has explained though why any country would do that and risk being wiped off the face of the earth by America's nuclear arsenal.

But so powerful and deep-rooted is the coalition of ``weaponophiles'' in the US that they have scheduled another 16 tests over the next five years to fine-tune the system. So all that President Clinton can do is pass the buck to his successor, something he is said to be doing with a great deal of relief.

Last night's test was designed by the Pentagon to demonstrate that satellite sensors, radars and powerful computers could guide a ``kill vehicle'' to knock down an incoming warhead. But the ``hit-to-kill'' weapon fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific did not separate from the second stage of its liftoff rocket and did not get a chance to intercept a warhead launched about 20 minutes earlier from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, 4,300 miles away.

According to the plan, the interceptor was to be launched about 20 minutes after the target crossed the California coast. Tracking information was to be fed to the interceptor from a radar in Hawaii and a prototype X-band radar in Kwajalein. After a 10-minute flight, the kill vehicle was to have separated from its booster and begun to use its own infrared sensors to find the target. The two objects, each only about five feet long and weighing a couple of hundred pounds, were supposed to collide at a velocity of 4.6 miles per second.

They did not. The Pentagon did not immediately disclose the reasons for the intercept's failure. Defence officials said that data from the test might show that most elements of the missile shield functioned as designed. But some minor technical glitch--like a faulty cooling system that messed up the last test--could be responsible for this flub.

The loudest -- and possibly only -- expressions of disappointment came from the Pentagon, its closely allied group of defence contractors, and some hardcore conservative lawmakers close to the military-industrial complex.

``This is rocket science--things do happen,'' Director Kadish explained. ``It tells me we have more engineering work to do.'' Boeing and Raytheon, the two primary contractors for the NMD, are expected to shortly analyse detailed technical data from Saturday's fiasco. The final analysis will take about three to four weeks.

Although Pentagon initially claimed its first intercept test last October as a complete success, it backtracked after critics exposed the fact that the kill vehicle initially had drifted off course and picked out the large bright decoy balloon instead of the mock warhead. In the second, more complicated intercept test this January, the kill vehicle missed the mock warhead by between 300 to 400 feet after a cooling line clogged and shut down its heat-seeking sensors.

Today's test too was ruthlessly dissected by critics, including experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Federation of American Scientists. They said the experiment was a misleading guide because it was taking place under conditions that do not reflect a real attack. Besdies, they said, the decoy used today was more like a bait, and an adversary would use many decoys, not one.