Washington | Thursday
A SIXTH US attempt to intercept a long-range missile with another missile has been scheduled for Friday over the Pacific in a slightly more ambitious test of a national missile defence system, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency said in a statement that the target missile will carry three balloon decoys instead of one, making it somewhat more difficult than previous attempted intercepts.
Three of five previous attempted intercepts have been successful, including the last two.
Since declaring its intention to develop a broad range of sea, air, space and ground based missile defences, the Pentagon has changed the name of the program from the National Missile Defence system to the Ground-based Midcourse Defence system (GMD).
But the GMD system remains the most advanced.
It consists of a ground-based interceptor missile that is guided by space and ground-based radars into a collision course in space with an incoming warhead.
In Friday’s test, a long range target missile will be fired over the Pacific from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Early warning satellites and ground early warning radar will pick up the missile and relay data on its course through a computerised command centre in Colorado to a powerful X-band targeting radar on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
About 20 minutes after the launch from Vandenberg, an interceptor missile will be fired from Kwajalein into the path of the dummy warhead released by the target missile.
If all goes according to plan, a ”kill vehicle” released by the interceptor will pick out the warhead from the decoys and manoeuvre itself into a pulverizing collision. – Sapa-AFP