Plumbing Leak Foiled Pentagon Missile Test

A simple plumbing leak foiled last month’s test of an experimental interceptor that is central to the Pentagon’s effort to develop a national missile defense system at a cost of $12.7 billion over the next six years, investigators have concluded.

The conclusion suggests that no fundamental scientific flaw caused the interceptor to miss its target, a dummy warhead streaking over the Pacific Ocean. But the failed intercept attempt has forced a delay of at least several weeks in the next test of the anti-missile system--now scheduled tentatively for the second half of May--as the Pentagon and defense contractors make certain they understand what went wrong and take steps to avoid a recurrence, Pentagon officials said.

The delay, in turn, threatens to upset President Clinton’s plan to decide this summer whether to build the system, beginning with construction next year of silos and other facilities in Alaska for the first 100 interceptor missiles.

The system is intended to shoot down a small number of ballistic missiles of the type being developed by North Korea and Iran. Whether it is ready--and reliable enough to justify its high cost and disruptive effect on arms control agreements--is being debated in Washington and on the presidential campaign trail.

Advocates of the system can take heart that the Jan. 18 test failure was caused by a mechanical glitch, not something that calls into question the basic physics and design of the proposed anti-missile shield.

On the other hand, the crippling of the interceptor by something as mundane as punctured tubing may be seen as evidence that the system is just too complicated.

White House officials said Monday that there has been no change in Clinton’s self-imposed deadline for a decision on whether to proceed from development to deployment.