Test of Rocket That Would Destroy Missiles Succeeds

In what officials called a major first step toward developing space-based “Star Wars” weapons, Defense Department scientists announced Thursday that they have successfully tested an experimental space vehicle designed to destroy incoming nuclear missiles by crashing into them.

The 21-second flight of the 6-foot rocket took place Monday inside a cavernous Air Force laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale.

Officials from the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Office said the test significantly boosted efforts to develop and deploy the first phase of a much larger space-based defensive network.

‘Proved That It Could Walk’

An earlier test of the vehicle “proved that the baby could stand up,” Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard said. “This one proved that it could walk.”

But skeptics of the Pentagon’s “Star Wars” program said successful tests of such components, although positive, do not demonstrate that the space-based interceptors would provide an effective and affordable defense against Soviet missiles.

“It’s a modest step and they have much to be modest about,” said John Pike, a space analyst with the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.

“To use a sporting analogy, each of these players is doing well in batting practice, but let’s see how the team does in the World Series,” Pike said. “While it’s not surprising that individual gadgets would work, that doesn’t mean the overall system would work as anything militarily useful.”

Next Test in June

The next test flight of the projectile is scheduled for late June, when the Pentagon will seek to determine whether the vehicle’s on-board homing sensor can detect the presence of a target designed to look like a ballistic missile in flight.

Monday’s test was intended to prove that the test vehicle could take off and orient itself, using tiny on-board rockets, toward a computer target.

“The components themselves represent an order-of-magnitude improvement in technology,” program manager Alan Weston said of Monday’s test. “Integrating them and demonstrating them as a flight vehicle was a first as well.”

Weston said that in one of the test’s most significant results the test vehicle pointed with “very fine” accuracy at the tiny computer target and stayed homed in on it. “This has never been done before,” he said.

Program officials believe that such tests are proving the viability of technologies that will be used in the earliest phase of “Star Wars” deployments. Those are expected to concentrate on small rockets that slam into missiles in flight, destroying them.

One of the most promising of such systems has been dubbed “Brilliant Pebbles”--swarms of small computer-equipped rockets in space, ready to intercept Soviet missiles. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has identified Brilliant Pebbles as the focus of intensive development efforts in coming budgets.

“What we’re demonstrating here applies directly to Brilliant Pebbles as well as to any system that’s launched from the ground into space,” said Lloyd Stoessell, the official in charge of the program at the Pentagon.