Fast-Flying Target Hit in ‘Star Wars’ Test : Weinberger Hails Experiment, Criticizes Recent Budget Cuts

An Army missile struck a target traveling at 2,160 m.p.h. last week, successfully completing an experiment that “carries us much further” toward erecting a space-based missile defense system, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said Tuesday.

The demonstration, conducted last Friday over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, was disclosed at a Pentagon news conference less than a week after congressional committees cut as much as $1.7 billion from President Reagan’s $5.4-billion request for his Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as “Star Wars.”

“I need to point out the unwisdom of congressional attempts both to slash our strategic defense research and to hamper the goals of our program,” Weinberger said in announcing the experiment’s results.

‘An Important Step’

The test, the latest in a $100-million series of “Star Wars” development experiments, was believed to be the first in the series in which a moving target was intercepted within the atmosphere.

Air Force Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Office, said in an interview that the experiment represented “an important step forward” in the pursuit of a defense against short-range missiles.

Although he cautioned that the results of the experiment “shouldn’t be blown out of proportion,” he said it demonstrated “a nifty, low-cost kind of technology.”

Moreover, the test demonstrated a technological improvement with a direct application to European defenses at a time when European allies are considering participation in “Star Wars” development but remain concerned that beefed-up U.S. defenses might invite a first strike aimed at Western Europe, rather than America.

Steps Into Controversy

Weinberger, in making his strong comments Tuesday, stepped into a controversy over whether the research should be aimed first at producing a “terminal defense”--which would address the narrower goal of protecting missile silos--before meeting the President’s broader objective of producing a nationwide shield.

“It is not our missiles we seek to protect, but our people, and we must never lose sight of that goal,” Weinberger said. Pentagon officials acknowledged that the technology tested Friday would be critical in a system of “terminal defense” intended to protect individual missile fields.

The question of whether the system, if proven feasible, should be designed to protect weapons before it can be deployed to protect the population is politically sensitive, and the Reagan Administration has been criticized for maintaining what some in Congress have challenged as uncertain goals for the program.

Panel Prefers Silos

On Friday, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended that more attention be paid to the program’s potential to protect the relatively limited number of silo sites from which intercontinental ballistic missiles could be fired in retaliation for an enemy attack.

By a 10-9 vote, the committee said that while the population defense should be explored, the program’s “major emphasis . . . should be dedicated to developing survivable and cost effective defensive options” for protecting U.S. retaliatory forces and command facilities.

Weinberger, however, complained that such “a myopic focus on terminal defense can skew our research, lead us away from promising technologies and, worst of all, possibly lead us to mistake something less than total defense as sufficient for our requirements.”

In the experiment disclosed Tuesday, as described by Jere L. Andrews, who manages the series of tests under which the demonstration was conducted, an F-4 Phantom jet flying above the New Mexico desert released a target at 44,000 feet.

Used On-Board Radar

Eighteen seconds into the 30-second flight of the target, the booster that propelled it dropped away. Radar at the missile range tracked the target for two seconds and fed data into a launching unit that, within about three seconds, fired the missile toward the target.

The projectile homed in on the target, using an on-board radar and computer to track its prey and guide its course automatically, receiving no instructions from the ground.

The 12-foot missile destroyed the target on impact at 12,000 feet.

An experiment using a similar projectile was conducted two months ago, when the missile homed in on a stationary target tethered to a balloon at 12,000 feet. In June, 1984, an interceptor destroyed a missile above the atmosphere over the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Western Pacific.