The Pentagon today began the countdown for its first attempt in more than a year to intercept an intercontinental missile, a move which is set to overhaul the Cold War strategies of nuclear deterrence.
"This is one test in a series of tests. And if it's successful we'll gain confidence. And if it fails, we will learn a lot,'' said Air Force Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. If all goes well, a modified Minuteman missile will be launched sometime after 7 p.m local time (2. a.m. Irish time Sunday) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and tracked over the Pacific by a network of satellites and radars. Minutes later, an interceptor missile will be fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall islands, boosting into space a kill vehicle that is designed to seek out and destroy the incoming "warhead.'' That is if all goes according to plan, however. Two of three previous attempted intercepts have failed, and something as minor as a faulty valve or a software glitch could throw off the whole intricate system. The last test on July 8th was dashed when the kill vehicle failed to release from its booster rocket. In a test on January 19th, 2000, it missed its target when a clogged cooling pipe blinded its infrared seekers seconds before impact. For today's test to succeed, the kill vehicle must distinguish the simulated warhead from a balloon decoy and steer itself into a collision at a closing speed of 24,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) per hour nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) over the Earth. Lt Gen Kadish said the chances of an intercept were slightly better than even but told reporters he was ``quietly confident'' of success. ``The countdown is moving very, very well,'' he said. Last summer's test failure convinced President Clinton not to proceed with the deployment of a limited national missile defense test. President George W Bush's Pentagon has taken a radically different approach, accelerating testing and development of a whole range of missile defense systems in defiance of the 1972 ABM treaty with Russia that kept the nuclear balance through the Cold War. Under the new scheme, the ground-based system being tested today will be only one component of a layered defense that also would include sea-based, airborne and space-based defenses capable of attack missiles along the entire arc of its trajectory. AFP