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A test of the sole U.S. defense against long-range ballistic missiles failed on Wednesday, the second failure in a row involving the system managed by Boeing Co (BA.N), the Defense Department said.

“The Missile Defense Agency was unable to achieve a planned intercept of a ballistic missile target during a test over the Pacific Ocean today,” Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. No preliminary explanation of the failure was provided.

The miss brought the so-called ground-based midcourse defense’s batting record to eight intercepts out of 15 tries, as reckoned by the Missile Defense Agency.

“This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system,” Riki Ellison, head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a booster group, said in a statement. He said it raised troubling questions about the reliability of the 30 or so interceptor missiles deployed in silos in Alaska and California.

The test was a repeat of a Jan. 31 exercise in which an advanced sea-based radar had not performed as expected.

Well, more testing and development is in order and at least with the GOP control of the House there will NOT be an attempt to defund the Missile Defense Agency. Being that the Democrats and President Obama have been reluctant to support missile defense, the GOP success in November looms even bigger.

But, there is nothing better than success and Boeing will have to demonstrate it or make way for other contractors. Missile defense is too important for failure.

The THAAD (terminal high altitude area defense) interceptor has been maligned for years as a failed, overly expensive missile defense system. That’s mostly due to the missile’s volatile initial testing phases during the mid-1990s, when the program was wrought with failure after failure — not unusual for the testing cycle of any new weapon system, particularly one as sophisticated as THAAD. In early 2000, Lockheed engineers went back to the drawing board, worked out the bugs, and were back launching the hyper-accurate interceptor by 2005. There hasn’t been a test failure since (just yesterday there was another successful intercept), a record sturdy enough for the Army to stand up two batteries of the critical system in the past two years. The launchers were designed explicitly to intercept SCUD type missiles, and are also capable of killing an ICBM payload when it’s in the terminal phase of flight. Given the widespread proliferation of ballistic missiles, the need for such a weapon is pressing.

It’s a shame then, that President Obama could inadvertently ban the THAAD system through yet another constricting treaty — and I’m not talking about the START follow-on. Yesterday the New York Times reported that: 

The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a space policy that renounces the unilateral stance of the Bush administration and instead emphasizes international cooperation, including the possibility of an arms control treaty that would limit the development of space weapons.

In recent years, both China and the United States have destroyed satellites in orbit, raising fears about the start of a costly arms race that might ultimately hurt the United States because it dominates the military use of space. China smashed a satellite in January 2007, and the United States did so in February 2008.

The new space policy explicitly says that Washington will “consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies.”

The State Department says details are forthcoming, but this sounds like a veiled reference to the PAROS treaty (prevention of arms race in outer space) or–at the very least–a like-minded document. Because certain types of ballistic, air-launched, and ship-launched missiles can be modified to kill satellites, such a treaty would be devastating to the national security and military capabilities of the United States (and all but kill missile defense)..

This, in spite of successful tests of the THADD System – such as yesterday’s.

Remember in the 1980′s when the Democrats ridiculed President Reagan by saying the missile defense systems were Star Wars and would not work? Now that the technology works, and is deployed, they continue to turn their backs.

Amazing……..

The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile. The experiment, conducted at Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off the central California coast, serves as a proof-of-concept demonstration for directed energy technology. The ALTB is a pathfinder for the nation’s directed energy program and its potential application for missile defense technology.

At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform. The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies.

Less than one hour later, a second solid fuel short-range missile was launched from a ground location on San Nicolas Island, Calif. and the ALTB successfully engaged the boosting target with its High Energy Laser, met all its test criteria, and terminated lasing prior to destroying the second target. The ALTB destroyed a solid fuel missile, identical to the second target, in flight on February 3, 2010.

The high-powered Airborne Laser system is being developed by Boeing Co., (BA.N) the prime contractor, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Boeing produces the airframe, a modified 747 jumbo jet, while Northrop Grumman (NOC.N) supplies the higher-energy laser and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) is developing the beam and fire control systems.