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29 November 2001 |
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http://www.santamariatimes.com/display/inn_news/news10.txt |
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VANDENBERG AFB -- A damaged nose cone on the Minuteman 2 launch vehicle in the central Pacific Ocean will push the next missile intercept test to Saturday, sources said. During a routine pre-flight inspection recently, technicians discovered insulation separating improperly on the missile's nose cone, according to a military official speaking only on the condition his name not be used. The ablative material helps protect the interceptor during the friction of flight. Authorities will try to repair the flawed part, but will transport a second nose cone to the Kwajalein Missile Range, about 4,200 miles southwest of central California, in case they need to replace the shroud. "They're going to try to fix it, which is primarily a glue job," said a military official only speaking on condition his name not be used. For the $100 million test, a modified Minuteman 2 missile to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base will serve as the target for a "kill vehicle" riding aboard another modified Minuteman that will blast off from the Kwajalein Missile Range. About 140 miles above the central Pacific Ocean, the interceptor will try to seek out the mock warhead, while ignoring a decoy balloon. So far, the Pentagon has run four intercept tests, twice achieving hits. Despite the usual signs of an upcoming test -- the base must notify boaters and pilots to remain away during the liftoff window -- military officials refused to confirm the launch date. Vandenberg and Ballistic Missile Defense Organization representatives referred calls to the Defense Secretary public affairs office, where a spokeswoman wouldn't confirm the launch. "It's not a secret," Cheryl Irwin, a defense public affairs official, said Wednesday. "I'm just telling you we're going to make an official announcement tomorrow." The test date is scheduled to be announced at a Pentagon news conference today, according to a wire report. Delaying the launch from today to Saturday gives the crew better weather conditions. The Vandenberg launch is planned between 6 and 10 p.m., with Kwajalein's weapon to launch about 20 minutes later. Recent intercept tests have drawn protests at the base, including front gate vigils, along with an attempt to infiltrate secure zones on land and at sea. Many launches from Vandenberg were top secret until a mid-1990s policy change. Despite a veil of secrecy, those launches typically weren't so secret, as they were talked about in local stores, gas stations and restaurants. Janene Scully can be reached at (805) 739-2214 or by e-mail at janscully@pulitzer.net. The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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29 November 2001 |
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http://www.spacedaily.com/news/011129014401.lwtyxuqe.html |
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WASHINGTON (AFP) Nov 29, 2001 - The Pentagon expects to test its national missile defense system as early as this weekend with an attempted interception over the Pacific, a US defense official said Wednesday. "It could come as early as this weekend," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that an announcement of the test was expected Thursday. The test involves an attempted interception of a dummy warhead over the Pacific by a US interceptor missile fired from Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands, the official said. "There are no ABM treaty busters" in the test, said the official. Discussions between the United States and Russia so far have failed to reach agreement on setting aside or modifying the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow unrestricted research, development and deployment of defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Pentagon last month called off two missile defense tests because of plans to use a ship-borne Aegis radar to track the missiles would have collided with ABM restrictions on development and testing of sea-based missile defense systems. The upcoming test, which originally had been scheduled for October, would be the fifth attempt to hit a simulated warhead from an intercontinental missile with another missile. Only two previous attempts have succeeded, including the most recent test on July 14. |
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28 November 2001 |
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Washington, Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The United States will attempt the next intercept test of its new missile defense system between 9:00 p.m. Saturday night and 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke. The test will be similar in objective to a successful one in July when an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific rammed a target missile fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. ``It's just one of a series,'' said Clarke. Eighteen others are to follow through 2006. Boeing is managing the ground-based missile defense program under a $6.4 billion, five-year contract that reimburses costs and adds 15 percent, or $942 million, for bonus -- a total of $7.39 billion. Of the bonus pool, almost $565 million is tied exclusively to successful flight tests. Boeing earned $36 million of a potential $41 million for the July intercept. The Saturday test was first scheduled for October 24 but was delayed to allow more ground testing of a Raytheon Co. hit-to-kill warhead. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the test was also delayed out of concern it might violate the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile treaty with Russia and derail discussions to revise or end the pact. Saturday's test won't include use of U.S. Navy Aegis shipboard radar to track missiles. The treaty allows only tests of ground-based radar.
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28 November 2001 |
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011128/pl/missile_defense_2.html |
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WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon plans to conduct a missile defense test Saturday in which an interceptor rocket fired from the central Pacific will attempt to shoot down a mock warhead soaring through space, officials said Wednesday. The test date is scheduled to be announced at a Pentagon news conference Thursday. The test, which is designed to stay within the limits of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty governing missile defenses, had been scheduled for Oct. 24 but was delayed because of technical problems. President Bush has said repeatedly that the United States needs an effective defense against long-range ballistic missiles and that the ABM treaty must not be allowed to stand in the way. Administration officials have said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, while not involving missiles, show the country is vulnerable to unconventional surprise attack and one day this could come from missiles. For now, however, the administration is adhering to the treaty while it attempts to persuade Russia to set it aside as a relic of the Cold War. Bush has said that unless he gets an arrangement with Russia that accommodates his missile defense program, the United States will withdraw from the treaty, which it is permitted to do with six months' notice. Vocal supporters of missile defense have urged the administration to declare the treaty invalid - since one of its two original signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists - and move ahead with unlimited testing. Saturday's test, in which a missile interceptor is fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands to chase down an intercontinental-range missile carrying a mock nuclear warhead, will be the first since July. That test was successful, although the previous one in July 2000 failed. The missile intercept tests cost about $100 million each.
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25 November 2001 |
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An anti-nuclear defense system that could mean billions of dollars for Tucson will be tested over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday. The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, designed and manufactured here by Raytheon Missile Systems, is the device the military plans to use for destroying enemy warheads in space - if the technology can be proved and if the system survives political debate over its worth. Plans call for Raytheon to produce 30 of the EKVs, each about the size and weight of a large jackhammer, for testing and spares through September 2007. By one estimate, the devices cost $25 million apiece. If the program is eventually authorized for production, as many as 100 to 250 of the EKVs could be ordered. A vote is expected in Congress by Christmas on money for testing in 2002 - a $3.3 billion chunk of the overall defense spending bill. Six hundred of the 10,000 people who work for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson are involved in the project - designing, manufacturing and testing. About two-thirds of them are engineers. They're all motivated by the knowledge that any flaws in the system, once set up, could mean nuclear destruction. "The system is designed for close to zero leakage, with leakage being a threat making it through," said Charles F. LaDue, Raytheon's EKV program manager. "If we were to fail, the consequences would be devastating." Raytheon's EKV is designed to locate, intercept and destroy in space incoming enemy missiles under the Department of Defense's Ground-based Midcourse Defense Segment system, LaDue said. The program, formerly known as National Missile Defense Program, has scheduled its next test flight for Thursday. An "enemy" missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., will be located, identified and tracked by a ground- and space-based radar system. Because the radar system is not yet fully developed, early tests use a "beacon" in the enemy booster rocket to help in locating it during early stages of the mission. Once its path is determined, a multistage booster rocket topped with an EKV will be launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean for an eventual intercept in space, said LaDue. The EKV will separate from the booster, and using an infrared sensing device, lock onto the "enemy" warhead - avoiding decoys - maneuver to intercept and crash into the target. The 130-pound EKV does not contain an explosive charge but uses kinetic energy to pulverize its target, he said. When an incoming enemy missile and the EKV collide, each traveling at approximately 20,000 feet per second or more than 13,000 mph, the force produced is enough to destroy the enemy missile. Boeing Co. was chosen as the project's prime contractor last December, and Raytheon - headquartered in Lexington, Mass. - is a major subcontractor. Plans call for Boeing to receive $6 billion for testing, and up to $13 billion if the program is approved for deployment, said Monica Aloisio, a Boeing spokeswoman. The testing phase alone is expected to bring Raytheon about $1 billion in revenues, LaDue said. EKV design and production takes place in three buildings at Raytheon's plant near the Tucson International Airport. The production center includes a "Class 100" clean room, near-sterile manufacturing conditions where particles per cubic foot of air measure less than 100. The room is used for producing high-precision optical components for the EKV, said Chris Wysocki, who is responsible for the operation of the EKV manufacturing facility. The building also features seismically isolated areas so that ground tremors will not hamper precision assembly and testing, and a space chamber that duplicates the cold environment found in the vacuum of space. The program would offer a big economic boost to Raytheon's Tucson operation. "We're the biggest development program on the plant site," LaDue said. "We have a contract through 2007, and there are possibilities for contracts for deployed assets, so that would be some business opportunities also. "It's a very important program from a strategic point of view of this company." Defense officials declined to disclose the price of an EKV, but published accounts set the cost at $25 million apiece. Estimates of the number of EKVs needed for the program range from 100 to 250, with launch sites planned for Alaska and Grand Forks, N.D. "The number deployed would be based wholly on what the projected threat would be," said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Department of Defense agency overseeing the project. The test scheduled for Thursday will be the seventh, and the fifth involving the deployment of the EKV, Lehner said. The tests so far have shown that the concept is sound, Lehner said, although some bugs need to be worked out. "We've had four intercept tests so far, and two were successful and two were not," he said. "And the two failures had nothing to do with the technology." The most recent test, in July, and one in July 1999, saw the EKV hit the target. Two other test flights failed, one because of mechanical problems with a cooling system and one when the booster rocket failed to release the EKV. "The primary objective is to demonstrate hit to kill," Lehner said. "We've done it two out of four times. But any mathematician would tell you we haven't proven it yet." President Bush is pushing for the program and has committed the United States to deploy a shield against ballistic missile attack. The idea has drawn criticism since its inception, and many of the objections have grown stronger since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Considering the range of threats, I think the money and effort is better spent on other aspects of what's come to be called homeland defense," said Daniel Smith, chief of research at The Center for Defense Information and a retired Army colonel. The system is designed for the kind of threat, intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs, that Smith and others believe is waning. "Nobody has an ICBM except the Russians and the Chinese that can reach the U.S.," Smith said. "We should beef up Customs border control, the INS, Coast Guard, and coordinate responsibilities and responses of civil authorities and get more National Guard rapid response teams trained and allocated across the country." He said a 50 percent target-destroy rate shows "we are a long way from having a working system to deploy. But if we put enough money and time into it, we can make anything work. It's just a question of the overall efficiency of the shied." Smith said he has no objection to testing the system, but he fears deployment could jeopardize sensitive weapons treaties involving missiles and missile defense. The Bush administration has been urging Russia and other treaty partners to accept the idea of a missile shield. U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Tucson Republican whose district includes Raytheon employees, said he has long believed in the need for a missile defense system. He believes the terrorist attacks reinforced the program's validity. "The prospect becomes greater that fissionable material could be lost to rogue states. The events of 9/11 demonstrate that some of these nations don't care if they are hit back," Kolbe said. "It's important to develop this missile technology. What we have to do is learn from these failures. That's why we do tests." When the missile defense program was first explored in 1989, the United States faced its greatest threat from the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, said Raytheon's LaDue. But things have changed since then. "The threat is now from a ballistic missile from a country like North Korea or Iran, both of which are in the process of building ballistic missiles that could hit the U.S.," he said. "It could be a chemical or biological warhead, but the primary projected threat would be nuclear." Contact business writer Alan Fischer at 573-4175 or at afischer@azstarnet.com. |
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27 November 2001 |
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http://www.santamariatimes.com/display/inn_news/news10.txt |
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VANDENBERG AFB -- The Pentagon's high-profile missile defense program will shoot this week for its second successful intercept test of the year from here. Crews are targeting a Thursday test, with a modified Minuteman 2 missile scheduled to blast out of an underground silo on north Vandenberg Air Force Base between 7 and 11 p.m. Missile launches typically aim for liftoff shortly after the launch window opens, with the remaining time kept to accommodate any weather or technical delays either at Vandenberg or downrange. That could be critical, since Thursday's weather doesn't look favorable for launch. Another storm heading this way is expected to bring rain, clouds and wind, all of which could foil liftoff plans. Otherwise, preparations for the test appeared to be proceeding as planned, military officials said Monday. "Things seem to be on track... I've not heard of a single problem," said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization spokesman. A Pentagon official who traveled to the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean expected to give the final go-ahead late Monday night to proceed toward launch. For the $100 million test originally planned for October, Vandenberg's modified Minuteman 2 missile carries a dummy warhead and decoy balloon. A "kill vehicle" riding in the nose cone of another modified Minuteman 2 weapon launched from Kwajalein will aim to shoot down the target about 140 miles above the central Pacific Ocean. The Pentagon has had four previous intercept tests, the last occurring in July which also marked the program's second success. Lehner said this test will be similar to the earlier tests with one exception: The Vandenberg missile, which carries the target warheads and a decoy balloon, was modified by Orbital Sciences Corp. Previous tests involved target missiles modified by Lockheed Martin Astronautics. The tests are part of the Pentagon's development of a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Segment, aimed to protect against limited long-range missile attacks from rogue nations. However, protesters in the United States and abroad contend the system would start a new global arms race.
These intercept tests have drawn activists -- both
front-door vigils protesting the program and
back-country or ocean intrusions aimed at interfering
with tests. "You're telling me something I hadn't heard," said Bud Boothe, a Los Olivos resident and Vandenberg Action Coalition member. Others said a Main Gate vigil was expected at the very least. There's been no word whether any groups plan to try to infiltrate the base from the back country or ocean. Janene Scully can be reached at (805)
739-2214 or by e-mail at janscully@pulitzer.net. |
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