How
Missile Defense Works?
Missile Defense's 'Sweet Spot' of Success
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2001
 he
test of the ground-based ballistic missile defense
system July 14 was almost a complete success, Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization officials said Aug.
9.
The exoatmospheric kill vehicle
landed a knockout punch on the re-entry vehicle
hitting the "sweet spot" almost squarely,
said Army Maj. Gen. Willie B. Nance Jr., the program
executive officer for the project.
AFRTS Radio Reports:
• Pentagon
Says Latest MissileDefense Test a Success 
• SecDef
on Importance of Ballistic Missile Defense
The intercept occurred about a foot and a half behind
the nose of the re-entry vehicle, Nance said.
"The largest piece of debris that we saw, based
on all the radar tracks and data that we had, was
about a six-inch size piece of debris in any dimension.
And that's debris that's left over from the kill
vehicle and the reentry vehicle after the intercept,"
he said.
Of the 23 items tested in the flight, only one did
not work. "The system and the elements performed
for the most part as expected," he said. "We
did have one anomaly, ... the ground-based radar
prototype, which is a prototype of the X-band radar.
It is located at Kwajalein missile range. ...
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| IFT-6
Mission Objectives Click
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"The last objective that we wanted it to perform
was to switch its track from the re-entry vehicle
to the kill vehicle and report if it could hit,
and so conduct as an objective its ability to perform
hit assessment. It did not successfully do that.
And it was a software issue. We have determined
the cause of that problem."
About a minute before intercept, a database locked
up when the software wouldn't permit testers to
enter and delete a single-track file in the same
cycle.
"We've already made the adjustment and we're
ground-testing that," Nance said. The next
test is set for October and BMDO plans to fly the
same test in terms of the target, target complex
and the structure of the elements in the test flown
in July. Each test costs about $83 million, Nance
said.  |
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