US missile interceptor fails to hit target

WASHINGTON, Jan 19: In an apparent setback on the Pentagon's drive to develop a national missile defence, a prototype missile interceptor streaked into space in search of a mock warhead launched from an Air Force base in California but failed to hit the target, a Pentagon official announced, reports AP.

"An intercept was not achieved for reasons unknown at this time," spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner said Tuesday.

The mock warhead was meant to simulate a nuclear attack on the United States, and a successful intercept would have provided a dramatic boost to the Pentagon's effort to show missile defence can work.

The interceptor rocket was launched from a US Army missile range on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, about 20 minutes after the target missile lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:19 pm EST (8:00 AM BST. Wednesday) and headed over the Pacific ocean.

Lehner said Pentagon officials would conduct an extensive review of the test data to determine why the interceptor missed the target. He said the first preliminary report would not be available for at least 48 hours.

The interceptor launch went off as planned, Lehner said. "What happened after it got into space we do not know," he said.

Pentagon officials had asserted before the test that even if the interceptor failed to hit its target, there were other important goals for the test, including the first test of a computerized battle management system that is designed to communicate with the interceptor as it soars into space.

Lehner said there was no immediate word on whether these other aspects of the test worked as planned.

In remarks to reporters several hours before the test, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said that if the interceptor, called a "kill vehicle," succeeded in hitting the target warhead - and if all of the radar, communications and other technical aspects of the test worked correctly - then the Pentagon would have met its self-defined minimum standard for recommending that the system is feasible to deploy.

An initial test last October resulted in a successful intercept.

"I think we just have to wait until all the results are in and see how they mesh together before we can say it's a successful integrated systems test," Bacon told reporters before the scheduled start of the test.

More than a dozen of protesters held a vigil outside Vandenberg Air Force Base on Tuesday to protest the test, "We were all holding up signs protesting this wrongheaded thing our government is doing," said Bud Boothe, 74, a member of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.