A second successful interception -- a first attempt in October hit the mark -- would measurably increase political pressure for a go-ahead this summer when President Bill Clinton decides whether to deploy the system to counter a missile threat from rogue states.

A failure, on the other hand, would give ammunition to NMD opponents who question the technical feasibility of a national missile defense system and argue that it is not worth the risk of damaging existing arms controls regimes.

"Everything is on schedule right now," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "There is some worry about a weather front coming in off the California coast that could interfere with the interceptor launch, but right now everything we think is on track.

Sometime after 9:00 p.m. EST (0200 GMT Wednesday, a modified Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile is to be fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base toward a missile range at the Kwajalein atoll nearly 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) away in the Pacific.

If the test goes according to plan, early warning satellites will pick up the flare of the launch and relay data on the missile trajectory, velocity and predicted point of impact to a command center in Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs will cue a radar in Hawaii to track the missile's flight. A surrogate of the advance X-Band radars being developed for the national missile defense system, the Hawaii radar will be supplemented with degraded GPS data from the target missile to mimic the more advanced radar.

Data from the radar and satellites are to be relayed to a battle management command center in Kwajalein, which will serve as the computerized brains of the operation.

About 20 minutes into the target missile's flight, the interceptor missile will be launched from Kwajalein on orders of the command center there.

About 2.5 minutes later, if the system works, an "exoatmospheric kill vehicle" will be released from the interceptor's booster and cued by the command center to maneuver into an "intercept basket" more than 120 miles (190 kilometers) above the earth.

Closing at a speed of 15,000 miles (9,300 kilometers) per hour, the kill vehicle will then search for the target missile's dummy warhead using an onboard infrared sensor.

If it finds the warhead, the 120-pound (55-kilogram) kill vehicle will try to maneuver into a collision course to destroy it.

In a previous test on October 2, 1999, the kill vehicle succeeded in destroying the warhead. However, it was pre-programmed to go to the "intercept basket," unlike this test which will be based on relays of near real-time radar and satellite data.

Pentagon officials have sought to play down expectations, noting that it is only one in a series of progressively more complex tests of the system.

But a successful test could meet the Pentagon's minimum criteria for judging the system technical ready to deploy by 2005.

The Pentagon is supposed to conduct a deployment readiness review in April or May with an eye to making a recommendation to the president by June, officials said.

"The president will have to factor such issues as technological risk, cost," Bacon said. "He'll have to look at the diplomatic impact -- the geopolitical impact of such a system."

Deployment would require either changing or scrapping altogether the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile with Russia, which vehemently opposes a US missile shield. US allies in Europe also are worried that the system will undercut deterrence and undermine nuclear arms control regimes.

But Defense Secretary William Cohen, who last year sharply increased the budget for national missile defense to 10.5 billion dollars, this year plans to raise it another 2.2 billion dollars to include possible deployment costs, Bacon said.

Copyright 1999 AFP. All rights reserved. The material on this page is provided by AFP and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

FAS: National Missile Defense - Analysis and Links

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
Space

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

SPACEDAILY

Satellite Launch To Boost DTH In India
Calcutta, India (SPX) Dec 28, 2005
The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India.