Successful Anti-Missile Test
The US military has completely a very successful test of the anti-missile system it has been developing, shooting down a simulated warhead even though the test was not officially supposed to do so.
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said it had successfully completed an important exercise involving the launch of an improved ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack.
The test results will help improve the performance of a multibillion-dollar shield against the type of long-range ballistic missile that could be used to attack a U.S. city with a weapon of mass destruction, the agency said in a statement.
Officially, the $85 million test was designed to collect data rather than shoot down the target.
It was the first involving a live target since interceptor rockets failed to leave their silos during tests in December 2004 and February 2005.
It was also the first since the ground-based system, which is part of a layered shield that includes naval and aerial components, was activated to guard against ballistic missiles test-fired on July 4 and 5 by North Korea.
As an engineer, I am extremely impressed by something like this. This is an amazing feat even though tests like this are not completely realistic. Most people simply do not realize how complex something like this is. The system has to do so many different things so quickly that it is just an enormous task.
UPDATE: Reuters coverage, but it really doesn't say anything new.
By Tom, Friday, 1 September , 2006 @ 2:49 pm
Just one more stepping stone in providing protection from idiot countries like North Korea and Iran…