Missile Test: A Hit or Miss for Bush Plan

As dusk approaches today, Air Force technicians at Vandenberg Air Force Base will launch a missile toward a collision in outer space that could have far-reaching effects back on Earth.

If the target missile is struck and obliterated by a high-tech “kill vehicle” launched from a South Pacific atoll, the Bush administration will have a powerful new argument for its proposal to accelerate the controversial missile defense program. But if the modified Minuteman streaks untouched through the heavens, the program will come under renewed criticism--and its proposed funding could be cut.

Though the Pentagon insists that it will push ahead with its development work no matter what the outcome, “this test could definitely have a big political effect,” said Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an arms control advocacy group.

That’s because the test has come at an unusually sensitive moment.

The White House and the program’s advocates are gearing up to fight in Congress for a $3-billion increase in the missile defense budget. They want to step up the pace of one or two $100-million tests each year to as many as eight.

Critics want to scale back that 57% budget hike and, in particular, block or delay construction of a missile defense test site that could force the United States to withdraw from a decades-old arms control treaty with the Russians.

To add to the drama, a failure tonight would be the third in four flight tests. When the interceptor missed on July 7, 2000, the Clinton administration decided against moving forward toward deployment of the ground-based system it had worked on for eight years.

Since then, the missile defense team has put off new tests and put in painstaking work in hopes of avoiding another calamity. “If it failed, I think it would be quite embarrassing,” said Philip E. Coyle, who was the Pentagon’s top weapon tester in the Clinton administration.

All that said, supporters and critics alike are predicting success.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who heads the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, told reporters Friday that he was “quietly confident” that the test would succeed. He put the odds of all systems working at about 50-50 but said the odds of an interception were slightly better than that.

The test was “very complex,” he noted, though still far less challenging than attempting to knock down a real warhead hurtling toward the United States.

The test, scheduled to take place between 7 and 11 p.m. PDT, will still involve some prototype components, including the rocket booster on the interceptor missile and the X-Band radar.

Yet it will be more challenging than past tests. And for the first time, it will involve all the basic elements of the national missile defense system, including space-based missile warning sensors and ground-based early warning radar.

The test will begin when Air Force technicians turn a key at Vandenberg, near Lompoc, Calif. That key will launch the target, a modified Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile, which will carry a dummy warhead and a balloon decoy.

About 20 minutes later, as the target sails westward over the Pacific Ocean, a prototype interceptor missile with a so-called kill vehicle will be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 4,800 miles away.

If all goes according to plan, the 120-pound kill vehicle will detach from the booster rocket beneath it and speed toward the target. Using radar data and its own infrared sensor, the kill vehicle will try to find the dummy warhead in space and distinguish it from the balloon decoy and the booster.

The intercept would occur about 140 miles above the central Pacific Ocean, at a speed of more than 15,000 mph. The collision at that velocity will reduce both pieces to tiny fragments of space dust.

The first test two years ago, involving a predetermined target area, led to a successful interception, though critics contended the test had been oversimplified. In the second test in January 2000, the kill vehicle missed its target after a clogged cooling pipe disabled its infrared sensors, which are used to distinguish the warhead. And in the third test last summer, the kill vehicle failed to separate from the booster.

A recent report by the Pentagon’s test and evaluation department said the kill vehicles’ ability to distinguish between a decoy and a nuclear warhead will be the biggest challenge for the program.

“All aspects of the performance requirements appear to be within the state of the art of technology,” the report said. “Discrimination . . . , on the other hand, will be the biggest challenge to achieving a hit-to-kill intercept.”

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.Org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan military and space policy think tank based in Alexandria, Va., said the outcome of the test is not likely to derail the program but could help shift public sentiment, which has leaned toward Bush’s plan for a more robust national missile defense system.

“It’s hard to see how this is going to play out in the new political environment,” Pike said. “Obviously, the perception that it is not ready for prime time would make it more difficult to knock down the ABM Treaty and more difficult to move on funding.”

The test draws particular attention in California, since much of the technology involved has been developed or spearheaded in the state. Boeing Co.’s space and communications group, headquartered in Seal Beach, is the lead system integrator for the program, while Raytheon Corp.’s electronic systems division in El Segundo developed the kill vehicle, including the crucial infrared sensors. Lockheed Martin Co.’s space and missile operations, in Sunnyvale, are providing the modified version of the Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile.