irrationality

[Eric Beck]

[Now when they build it, our enemies (whoever they are) can have no doubt
US is "irrational, vindictive, and potentially 'out of control.' "]

Pentagon Says Missile Test Fails

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A U.S. missile interceptor launched in a burst of flame
Saturday from a Pacific island missed its intended target - a dummy warhead
gliding through space. Officials blamed a technical failure of the booster
rocket which was supposed to release a warhead-busting device called a
"kill vehicle."

Because the kill vehicle did not detach from the booster, it never
activated the on-board sensors and other high-tech devices that it would
use to intercept the warhead, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said. Kadish
is director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

"We failed to achieve an intercept," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

The test cost $100 million.

Kadish said the kill vehicle - a small, maneuverable device that destroys
its target by ramming into it - apparently did not separate from the
booster rocket because it did not receive a necessary electronic signal. He
said it might take days for Pentagon scientists to understand why the
internal booster signal was no received.

Radish said the booster, which was produced by Lockheed Martin Missiles &
Space, had been a reliable item and "wasn't even on my list" of potential
concerns. The booster had been used in four previous tests without
encountering a problem with releasing the kill vehicle.

The failure raised the possibility of a substantial delay in the Pentagon's
timetable of having a national anti-missile defense system ready for use by
the end of 2005.

It was the third test of the intercept program with two of them having failed.

The next attempted intercept had been scheduled for this fall, but that
timetable might now be put back.

If Saturday's test had succeeded, it could have moved the United States a
step closer to building a national missile defense that Congress says is
urgently needed, but that critics decry as unworkable.

After fixing a last-minute technical glitch that delayed the start of the
test by about two hours, a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missile with a dummy warhead atop its third stage rocket blasted off from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., at 12:19 a.m. EDT.

The rocket headed toward the central Pacific.

Twenty-one minutes later, at 12:40 a.m. EDT, an interceptor missile
carrying a warhead-blasting "kill vehicle" launched from Kwajalein Atoll.

The interceptor was supposed to have collided with the mock warhead after
about 10 minutes of flight over the Pacific, but television monitors showed
no flash indicating a collision.

Nearly a half hour passed before officials who monitored the flight test
from a basement office in the
Pentagon reported that the interceptor missile had missed its target.

The "kill vehicle" was programmed to use target data gathered from
ground-based radars to maneuver itself into the path of the dummy warhead
140 miles above the Earth. The goal was a 16,000-mile-an-hour collision
that would disintegrate the warhead by sheer force of impact.

At stake is the future of a multibillion dollar project that has upset
Russia and China and caused many of America's closest European allies to
wince at the prospect of a U.S.-only defense against a missile attack.

Although President Clinton says he will decide soon whether to keep the
project moving toward an
anticipated deployment in 2005, it will be up to his successor to make the
final steps to build and deploy it.

This fast-approaching decision deadline for Clinton gave Saturday's test
extra urgency and public attention.

The last-minute technical glitch was a weak battery that supplies power to
a telemetry system which is needed to help engineers on the ground record
the exact point of impact between the dummy warhead and the "kill vehicle."
The battery was recharged and all other systems appeared normal prior to
liftoff, officials said.

Had Saturday's test worked, Defense Secretary William Cohen had been
expected to recommend to Clinton that he take the first steps in a phased
building plan that would have the missile defense system ready to use by
December 2005.

This was the third in a series of missile intercept tests. The first, last
October, succeeded. The second, in January, failed. Saturday's test was
delayed more than two months to fix the problem that plagued January's
test.

The anti-nuclear activist group Greenpeace had hoped to halt Saturday's
test by placing a ship in the Pacific where a rocket stage is expected to
splash down about 110 miles offshore from Vandenberg, said Steve Shallhorn,
the group's campaign director.

At the White House before Saturday's test, spokesman P.J. Crowley said: "I
would say a hit doesn't
automatically suggest success, nor does a failure automatically come with a
miss tonight."

One of the biggest backers of missile defense in Congress, Sen. Thad
Cochran, R-Miss., said in a interview Friday that he believes America can
afford a missile defense even though defense dollars are tight.

"Without a doubt, Congress will approve the funding for a missile defense
system" so long as U.S. military leaders feel confident it is
technologically ready for deployment, Cochran said. Cost estimates range
from the Pentagon's $36 billion to the General Accounting Office's $60
billion.

By law, the Pentagon must deploy a national missile defense as soon as it
is technologically feasible.