‘Star Wars’ Test Shot Hits Small Sphere at 12,000 Feet

WASHINGTON — A self-guided missile fired by the Army in a defense experiment struck a suspended target at an altitude of 12,000 feet earlier this week, scoring what a senior Army officer described Friday as a first bull’s-eye in a new series of “Star Wars” trials.

Disclosure of the experiment, conducted Sunday at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, coincided with a speech delivered by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who criticized opponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative--popularly known as the “Star Wars” program--who question whether the project is technologically feasible.

Suspended From Balloon

In the test, a 44-inch aluminum sphere was suspended from a large helium-filled balloon. A 12-foot projectile, guided by on-board radar devices and propelled by 216 small motors, was launched toward the target.

Within eight seconds, it had traveled about 22,000 feet to the target, achieving a speed of about four times the speed of sound and destroying the sphere upon impact, said the Army officer, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. In a test earlier this year, a similar projectile missed its target.

The flight was the fifth in a series of nine, intended to end with several tests in which the projectile would strike a simulated warhead traveling at 2,500 m.p.h.

“That’s a very good experiment . . . where a very small instrument can be propelled with very great accuracy at a considerable range and can be launched or initiated from a platform in space,” Weinberger said of Sunday’s trial, which involved the stationary target.

However, the range of the experiment was considerably less than would be required in a defense against incoming nuclear warheads.

Although the primary focus of the “Star Wars” project has been aimed at developing a defense against long-range ballistic missiles, such as those that the United States and Soviet Union have targeted at each other, the experiment conducted Sunday would be of particular concern in the development of defenses against short- and intermediate-range missiles, such as those deployed in Europe.

However, the technology being tested also would be significant in designing a “terminal” phase defense, in which missiles that had not been intercepted upon launch or in flight beyond the atmosphere would be destroyed at a relatively low altitude of about 50,000 feet just moments before landing on their targets. Such an interception, the Army officer acknowledged, is considered a “last-ditch defense.”

According to the Pentagon, the experiment was conducted to determine whether sufficiently accurate guidance could be achieved to permit interception of incoming warheads within the atmosphere. Weinberger said the trial “takes us closer” to that accuracy.

The Army officer took pains to avoid characterizing the trial as anything more than an experiment in the multibillion-dollar research effort--although Weinberger described it as “another significant breakthrough.”

Calls Critics ‘Short-Sighted’

However, the officer said: “If we have some successes in the next two (experiments), we’ll say we have a going idea.” Those trials will involve moving targets, greater distances and more powerful missile guidance devices, he said.

Weinberger, speaking at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va., said critics of new weapons have been proven “terribly wrong” over the years.

“Today we hear all of these same sort of voices raised against strategic defense in this same tradition of very short-sighted skepticism. And we answer them in the same way--with results, with the tremendous technical progress that we are actually making now,” he said.