Missile-defense test called success
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
LIHU'E, Kaua'i — The Navy and the Missile Defense Agency knocked a missile out of the sky yesterday with a direct hit from a ship-launched interceptor, the latest successful testing of the nation's sea-based Ballistic Missile Defense System.
U.S. Navy
The test, labeled FM-6, was the fourth in a series to make contact with the target. In the last test in June 2003, the interceptor rocket came close but failed to hit the target missile.
The Navy launched a missile from the USS Lake Erie yesterday as part of the Missile Defense Agency’s latest test of the sea-based Ballistic Missile Defense System. Officials reported that the interceptor missile scored a direct hit on its target, fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua‘i.
Ballistic missile testing, conducted in the ocean off the Pacific Missile Range Facility in west Kaua'i, is part of the national missile defense program. The Navy's program aims to hit incoming missiles in the middle of their trajectories, when they are still high in the Earth's atmosphere.
Each of the tests has added successive complexity to the task, said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.
In yesterday's test, two Aegis ships shared data to locate and track the target missile, then the interceptor's own electronics took over the final tracking and impact.
An Aries medium-range target missile was launched at 8:10 a.m. from the Kaua'i facility.
The missile's flight was initially tracked from the Navy's Aegis-class destroyer USS Russell, which was sailing near Kaua'i. The Russell reported its data to the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie, which was farther out to sea and which then tracked it using its AN/SPY-1 radar.
The Lake Erie launched a Standard Missile-3 interceptor at 8:12 a.m. The warhead electronics identified, tracked and changed course to collide with the target. The warhead hit the target 85 miles above the sea surface about 8:14 a.m., Taylor said.
The interceptor was fitted with a kinetic warhead, which means that it destroyed the target simply with the force of its impact, not with explosives.
Taylor said the date for the next test has not been set. In December 2002, the president ordered the military to have a basic missile defense system in place within two years. The Navy expects to place 20 Standard Missile-3 interceptors aboard three Navy ships by this time next year. Other agencies are working with the Missile Defense Agency to develop ground-based missile interceptors.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
