US Missile Defense Test Aborts

File photo of an abm launch on the USS Lake Erie

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Dec 7, 2006
A US missile defense test in the Pacific aborted Thursday when one of two interceptor missiles failed to fire from a US Aegis class cruiser, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency blamed the setback on an "incorrect system setting" aboard the USS Lake Erie which was supposed to launch the missiles almost simultaneously at two targets.

"The incorrect configuration prevented the fire control system aboard the ship from launching the first of the two interceptor missiles," the agency said in a statement.

"Since a primary test objective was a near-simultaneous launch of two missiles against two different targets, the second interceptor missile was intentionally not launched," it said.

A target ballistic missile had already been launched from the Pacific Missile Range in Kauai, Hawaii, and a Navy aircraft launched the second target, a mock aircraft.

The Lake Erie, the destroyer USS Hopper and the Royal Netherlands Navy frigate TROMP tracked the targets until they fell in the ocean.

The missiles that were supposed to intercept them were an SM-3 and an SM-2 missile.

Source: Agence France-Presse

MISSILE DEFENSE

BMD Focus: Israel's New BMD dilemma

Washington (UPI) Dec 07, 2006
Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are fiercely competing for an Israeli order for very short range anti-ballistic missile defense systems. Israel desperately needs such a system. In its July-August operations against Hezbollah (the Iranian-backed Shiite Party of God) in Lebanon, the Israeli Army received a nasty surprise from the ability of Hezbollah to disrupt organized life throughout northern Israel as far south as the port city of Haifa with massive bombardments of Russian-designed Katyusha rockets.

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