Ground-Based Interceptor Fails Again

Wade Boese

For the second consecutive time, a test of President George W. Bush’s fledgling ground-based missile defense system failed because the long-range missile interceptor did not fire. And once again, Pentagon officials downplayed the significance of the failure.

In December, an interceptor did not launch due to a communications problem involving an onboard computer. (See ACT, January/February 2005.) Diagnosing the most recent failure, which occurred Feb. 14, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) reported that this time the interceptor was not at fault, blaming the “ground support equipment” instead. Military officials later attributed the problem to the silo housing the interceptor.

In a successful test, the interceptor would have rocketed from its silo on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, lifted into space, and destroyed a mock warhead through a high-speed collision. However, the interceptor never even lifted off.

The interceptor model involved in the last two tests has yet to destroy a target in flight. Still, the Pentagon has deployed six of these interceptors to Fort Greely, Alaska, and two more to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to serve as the initial elements of the president’s proposed multilayered missile defense.

Yet, MDA Director Lieutenant General Henry Obering said in a post-test interview on CNN that the last two test results “have nothing to do with the basic design, the basic performance of the system.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cautioned lawmakers against drawing too many conclusions from the recent tests. “The failures in this instance were not systemic in any way,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a Feb. 17 hearing on the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2006 budget request.

October 2002 marks the last time the strategic, ground-based anti-missile system intercepted a target. That and prior tests employed a slower, substitute interceptor no longer in use.

At the Feb. 17 hearing, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) stated, “It strikes me a little odd that we would deploy a system that hasn’t succeeded and expect that to serve as a deterrent.”

Although agreeing that “there’s no deterrent if something is known to not work,” Rumsfeld defended the approach, known as spiral development, of fielding weapon systems before they are fully proven and then working to evolve them. “If you didn’t do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn’t do anything,” he argued.

The next test of the system is not yet set. Starting as early as March, the Pentagon plans to begin embedding an additional 10 interceptors at Fort Greely.