US missile intercept test fails

Washington Post ^

[FromLori]

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- An interceptor missile launched from California on Wednesday failed to hit a target fired from a Pacific atoll 4,000 miles away during a test of an anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Air Force announced.

The missile, called a ground-based interceptor, lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:03 a.m. and released a device called an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, or EKV, that was to plow into a target missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The interceptor's sensors worked and the EKV was deployed, but it missed, according to a statement from Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

[Waverunner]

See the original ICBM interceptor with a nuke warhead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike-Hercules

[WOBBLY BOB]

It’s no secret that the Russians do not want the United States or her allies to be protected by missile defense, and believe that New START forbids further development of missile defense. Last December, in the midst of the treaty’s negotiations, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, “By building such an umbrella over themselves, our partners [the U.S.] could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance and the aggressiveness immediately increases in real politics and economics.” After the treaty was signed, the Russians effectively declared victory on the matter. Their government issued a statement that the treaty “can operate and be viable only if the United States refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.”

[TXnMA]

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