Missile Defense

Missile Defense Watch: Ground-based Midcourse Defense System To Be Tested Thursday

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Missile defense test planned for Thursday

For the second time, a missile defense interceptor is poised to fly on Thursday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to collide with a target launched from Alaska.

The test for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, with a price tag of about $85 million, will be similar to one last September.

Vandenberg and Fort Greely, Alaska, are home to missile defense interceptors designed to guard against limited long-range missile attacks against the United States.

Thursday’s launch window is 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday. The missile from Kodiak Launch Complex, Alaska, will blast off first, with the interceptor expected to pop out of its underground silo on north Vandenberg about 20 minutes later.

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Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, USAF, left, shows Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld one of the ground based interceptor missiles at the missile defense site at Ft. Greeley near Fairbanks, Alaska Sunday Aug. 27, 2006. This interceptor missile is like the one to be fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on Thursday.

Somewhere hundreds of miles west of California, and 100 to 200 miles above the Pacific Ocean, the pair should meet up, according to the mission’s primary objective.

While the test’s main goal is to end with an intercept, that’s not the only objective, according to Richard Lehner, Missile Defense Agency spokesman.

“But still the overall objective of the test, like all of them, is to measure system performance so that we can make it better,” Lehner said.

Also participating are crews for a specialty radar at Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., and others in Colorado, home to the command-and-control system. In all, several hundred people at the various sites will participate, he added.

Of course, the Air Force wants to intercept and “KILL” the simulated ICBM launched from Alaska (simulating rogue state North Korea), like the successful test last September. And this test has been delayed for a few months due to software and telemetry updates to the system.

While Vandenberg has previously launched the targets, this will be the second time it launches the interceptor missile.

That’s because the geometry – speed, altitude and trajectory – make it operationally realistic to test the Vandenberg system’s response to a missile launch from North Korea, Lehner said.

The Test:

If the test proceeds on Thursday, space satellites will deliver the first alert of the attacking rocket’s launch to missile defense operators based in Colorado Springs, the military’s headquarters for homeland defense, who will control the interceptor in its silo at Vandenberg.

The main engagement radar is at Beale Air Force Base, near Sacramento, but the test will allow two seaborne tracking systems – a naval radar aboard an Aegis destroyer and one, called an X-band radar, atop a mobile base the size of an oil platform – to track the attacking missile. But none of that data will be fed into the test.

The previous test, conducted last Sept. 1, was graded a success even by skeptics.

The test was designed specifically to exercise the system’s main radar – but the interceptor actually scored a kill on the attacking missile, even though such a hit was not designed to be a goal of that previous test.

The next test after this one on Thursday, weather permitting, will be in the Fall and will use the sea-platform based X-Band Radar as the primary engagement radar system.

Let’s hope for a successful test and the gaining of more knowledge for the Missile Defense Agency.

By the way, with the Democrats controlling the Congress do not be surprised that funding will be cut for the Missile Defense Agency. In fact, the House has already started to cut appropriations.

Stay tuned……

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Ground-Based Interceptor Emplacement, Sea-Based X-Band Radar, In-Flight Interceptor communications sytem Data Terminal. L-R-Down.

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