WASHINGTON, Feb 14: For the second time in two months, a test of the Pentagon's missile defence system ended in fiasco on Monday when an interceptor missile failed to lift off from its silo to meet the target, defence officials said.
The Missile Defence Agency said the failure became apparent when an interceptor that was supposed to shoot down an incoming target missile carrying a mock warhead did not take off from the Ronald Reagan Test Site, located on the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific.
"The reason for not launching is under investigation, and program officials are reviewing data to determine the cause," the agency said in a statement. The setback was most likely caused by a malfunction of the ground support equipment rather than defects of the missile itself, the officials pointed out.
The target missile, launched from a US military base in Alaska, flew over the Pacific Ocean and eventually crashed north of Wake Island. However, it was the second failed test in a row for the beleaguered national missile defence system, whose deployment was championed by President George Bush in his first term as a means of defending the country against missiles launched by "rogue states".
The previous test, attempted on Dec 15, was aborted after a built-in internal safety device detected an anomaly in the interceptor missile, shutting it down moments before launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
Lt Gen Henry Obering, who heads the Missile Defence Agency, said the anomaly was a rare gap in the flow of electronic messages between the flight computer and the interceptor's thrust vector controller, which guides the missile.
There was no immediate word when the test could be repeated. The failure was likely to further delay the declaration of the system, which is projected to cost more than 50 billion dollars over the next five years, "operational."
The administration had hoped to pronounce the system "operational" by last September, upon installation of the first batch of interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
But the largely anticipated announcement did not come because experts said the program was behind schedule by about 10 months. Currently, six interceptor missiles have been lowered into silos at Fort Greely and two at Vandenberg. Ten more are scheduled for installation in Alaska later this year, according to defence officials.
A third site with another 10 interceptors may be added at an as yet undetermined location in Europe, but those plans were pushed back by at least a year to 2010 because of budget cuts, officials said.
So far, the Pentagon has conducted 10 missile tests, only half of which have been successful. Coming at the beginning of budget debate in Congress, the new failure may invite further financial cuts in the program that already has numerous critics on Capitol Hill.
The White House itself came out earlier this month with a proposal to cut spending on missile defence by five billion dollars over the next six years. Under the administration's plan, the Missile Defence Agency's fiscal 2006 budget will be reduced to about 7.8 billion dollars, down from the nearly 8.8 billion allocated to it this year. -AFP
