U.S. missile defense test fails

[BAMAPHIN 22]

An interceptor missile failed to launch early Wednesday in what was to have been the first full flight test of the U.S. national missile defense system in nearly two years.

The Missile Defense Agency has attempted to conduct the test several times this month, but scrubbed each one for a variety of reasons, including various weather problems and a malfunction on a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment being tested.

A target missile carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched as scheduled from Kodiak, Alaska, at 12:45 a.m. EST, in the first launch of a target missile from Kodiak in support of a full flight test of the system.

However, the agency said the ground-based interceptor "experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched" from the Ronald Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean 16 minutes after the target missile left Alaska.

http://www2.cnn.com/2004/US/12/15/mi....ap/index.html

[Fin_Fanatic]

i hope they can get this system functional, it would be a great accomplishment. i jsut got done studying all the ways that a missile defense system works, and it would be pretty bad a$$

[Dolphan7]

I spoke with a man from Raytheon about this and he says that their part is just the tracking device and that works just fine. Sounds like this latest test never got off the ground. Must be the propulsion part of it that failed?