$85 Million would buy a lot of armor for our soldiers and Marines.

''U.S. Missile Defense Test Fails



Wed Dec 15, 3:47 AM ET

Top Stories - Reuters

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first test in nearly two years of a
multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when
the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the
central Pacific, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said.




About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had
been successfully fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska, according to a
statement from the Missile Defense Agency.

The aborted $85 million test appeared likely to set back plans for
activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic
missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea (news - web
sites).

In 2002, President Bush (news - web sites) pledged to have initial
elements of the program up and running by the end of this year while
testing and development continued.

An "anomaly" of unknown origin caused the interceptor to shut down
automatically in its silo at the Kwajalein Test Range in the Marshall
Islands, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's missile
agency.

The test followed a week of delays caused by weather and technical
glitches, including malfunction of an internal battery aboard the
target missile on Tuesday, he said.

"This is a serious setback for a program that had not attempted a
flight intercept test for two years," Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's
chief weapons tester under late President Ronald Reagan (news - web
sites), said in an e-mail exchange.

The system is a scaled-down version of a ballistic missile shield
first outlined in March 1983 by Reagan and derided by critics as "Star
Wars."

'NOT CONSTRAINED BY TIMING'

Pentagon officials had hoped the test would set the stage for any
decision by Bush to put the system on alert in coming weeks.
Initially, the system is designed to counter North Korean missiles
that could be fired at the United States and tipped with nuclear,
chemical or germ weapons.

"I'm not constrained by timing, exactly," Michael Wynne, the
Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, said on Dec. 8 in reply to a question
about switching the system on. "But we'll see how (the test) goes and
then we'll see from there."

Because the mission was supposed to have exercised new hardware,
software and engagement scenarios, it was officially described as a
"flyby" rather than an attempted intercept. This meant gathering data
was the primary goal, not downing the target, according to the Missile
Defense Agency.

When a shootdown has been the chief test objective, the system so far
has succeeded five of eight times in highly scripted conditions.

The last test, in December 2002, misfired when the warhead -- a 120-
pound "kill vehicle" of sensors, chips and thrusters designed to
pulverize its target on collision -- failed to separate from its
booster rocket.

Boeing Co., as prime contractor, put together the ground-based shield,
which is to be folded into a system involving airborne, sea- and
space- based elements. All told, the Pentagon is spending $10 billion
a year on the project.

Key subcontractors are Northrop Grumman Corp., for battle management;
Raytheon Co., for the kill vehicle; and Lockheed Martin Corp. and
Orbital Sciences Corp., which build the booster rockets.''

David wrote:
$85 Million would buy a lot of armor for our soldiers and Marines.

So would the many millions that Bush just had to give back to the public
That would have bought all they would ever need.

--
Brian Denley
http://home.comcast.net/~b.denley/index.html