U.S. plans sea-based missile defence test

Reuters | 12/11/03

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon says it plans to use a sea-based missile to shoot down a mock warhead over the Pacific today for the first time since a botched drill last June. The Missile Defence Agency said a "hit-to-kill" missile fired from the U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie on Thursday would try to intercept a dummy warhead fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai in the Hawaiian islands.

It would use information relayed by the destroyer USS Russell, sometime after 5 p.m. Britisht time, the agency said.

Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the agency, said the test, the fifth in a series and costing roughly $40 million, was the next step in integrating the sea-based Aegis weapons system into a planned multi-layered missile defence shield.

The test was designed to evaluate selected long-range surveillance and track functions of the Aegis system.

Taylor said the destroyer Russell would be sailing closer to Kauai, using its own Aegis system to detect the target missile and feeding that data to the USS Lake Erie, which would be patrolling several hundred miles off the island.

The agency said it would be the third developmental test using more complex ballistic missile engagement scenarios in an effort to simulate a more realistic operational scenario.

In a similar test on June 18, a Raytheon Co.-built Standard Missile 3 fired from the Lake Erie missed its target, the first miss in four attempts to shoot down an incoming short-range missile using the Aegis system.

Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland, is the prime contractor for the Aegis weapon system and vertical launch system installed in Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

[samtheman]

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[KeyWest]

Love the "botched drill" comment. When we started the Navy aaw missile program there were many failures.

If you used the same criteria, that failure means don't bother but give up the program, we would never have even had guns on sailing ships. They were not accurate at all unless you were point blank.

If the argument is- but the cost of one missile is so much greater than a cannonball- you lose track of the actual cost. In the case of my aaw missile it was my ship, worth hundreds of millions and 300 sailors. In the case of the abm it is a city. Put a value on that.