The most advanced test of the US Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system took place in the early hours of Tuesday.
A dummy ballistic missile was successfully intercepted and destroyed above the Pacific Ocean, according to a statement released by the Missile Defense Agency, which conducted the test.
The flight test saw a prototype Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle hit its target at an altitude of 227 kilometres. The Agency says that four decoys were also released alongside the missile, but the interceptor correctly identified the right target. The test is the seventh in a series that started in 1999.
Advertisement
But an expert contacted by New Scientist questioned the validity of recent tests. Ted Postol, a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an ex-military scientist, says all the latest tests have involved only easy-to-spot decoys.
He says that after the first two tests revealed an inability to identify more advanced decoys reliably, they were replaced to prevent failure. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e completely rigged, quite frankly,鈥� he says.
Work in progress
However another expert says this is all just part of the testing process. Mike Lennox, editor of Jane鈥檚 Strategic Weapons Systems says: 鈥淚f you鈥檙e doing an early flight test, there鈥檚 not much point in using targets you can鈥檛 hit. Nobody knows how the system will eventually look like.鈥�
But Postol also questions the Bush administration鈥檚 justification for the missile defense system: 鈥淚t鈥檚 ridiculous to talk about a country like Korea or Iraq posing a ballistic missile threat.鈥�
In the latest test of the GMD system, a modified Minuteman missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 0200 GMT. The experimental interceptor was launched 22 minutes later from a base 7775 kilometres away on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Six minutes after that, the interceptor destroyed the Minuteman, having released a 鈥渒ill vehicle鈥� projectile that closed in on the target at over 6.7 kilometres per second.
Ground and air
The test was declared an overall success but a Department of Defense spokeswoman says it will take weeks to examine all the data gathered. Only then will it be possible to determine whether any minor problems cropped up.
The Department says the test saw the greatest integration of ground-based tracking systems including an early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base and a prototype ground-based radar system at the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Facility at Kwajalein Atoll.
The test also involved a US Navy Destroyer for the first time. This would have been forbidden under the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, from which the US formally withdrew in June 2002.