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News :: Government Secrecy : International Relations : Nukes : Political-Economy : Regime |
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Important Test for Missile-Defense System Ends in Failure |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Stout
(No verified email address) |
15 Dec 2004
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The test was also to have been the first for the multibillion-dollar program since Dec. 12, 2002. That test was also a failure; the interceptor did not separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere. |
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - An important test of the United States' emerging missile-defense system ended in an $85 million failure early today as an interceptor rocket failed to launch as scheduled from the Marshall Islands, the Pentagon said.
A target rocket carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched from Kodiak, Alaska. But the interceptor, which was to have gone aloft 16 minutes later and picked off the target 100 miles over the earth, automatically shut down instead because of "an unknown anomaly," the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said.
Despite the disappointment, today's event was not a total failure, said Richard A. Lehner, an agency spokesman. He said "quite a bit" had been learned from the aborted test, which he called "a very good training exercise." He noted that the rocket that failed to rise can be used later. The target rocket landed in the ocean some 3,000 miles from Kodiak, he said.
Mr. Lehner said he could not predict when the cause of the shutdown might be determined. No future tests have been scheduled.
The missile agency had attempted a test several times this month, but weather and other factors caused postponements. Today's test was to have been the most advanced so far, Mr. Lehner said. The interceptor was equipped with the same type of booster rocket that the defense system is to use when it is fully operational.
The test was also to have been the first for the multibillion-dollar program since Dec. 12, 2002. That test was also a failure; the interceptor did not separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere.
Before today's test, the Pentagon agency had conducted eight tests with interceptor vehicles, scoring hits in five. Some critics of the Missile Defense Agency, which has spent more than $80 billion since 1985, say the entire program is unrealistic, and that the tests have been scripted.
On the contrary, the agency says. It says the tests are designed to answer specific questions and "to build confidence in the system that we are working to design." Although individual tests are expensive, Mr. Lehner said fewer are necessary than with missiles of years past because of advanced modeling and simulation techniques.
The missile system under development is a scaled-down version of the "Star Wars" defense envisioned by President Ronald Reagan two decades ago against a rain of missiles from the Soviet Union. But the end of the cold war made President Reagan's original vision outdated. The system now contemplated would guard the United States against attack from smaller "rogue nations."
The administration of President Bill Clinton explored a much less advanced system. Then George Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign to push for a scaled-down version of the Reagan plan.
It was not immediately clear how long today's failure might delay deployment of the system. In December 2002, President Bush said he hoped the system would be operational by the end of 2004.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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MIT's Role in Missile Test Fraud |
by Theodore A. Postol
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2004
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After more than 3 1/2 years of foot-dragging, excuses, and violations of federal regulations, MIT announced last week that it could not investigate credible evidence of possible scientific fraud in fundamental National Missile Defense research being done at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. The reason outgoing president Charles M. Vest gave is that the Pentagon had classified everything about the investigation.
If the particular allegations of fraud have merit -- and I believe they do -- MIT and the Pentagon have been involved in a fraud that has promoted a weapon system that will have little or no utility and could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Of even greater importance, millions of lives could be lost if this weapon system failed to defend our nation from a nuclear ballistic missile attack.
The allegations of fraud involve the critically important Integrated Flight Test 1A, or IFT-1A, in June 1997. Its purpose was to determine if the currently deployed National Missile Defense could tell the difference between warheads flying through space and simple balloons designed to look like warheads. If the IFT-1A experiment could not demonstrate that the weapon could perform this task, the weapon could never have a realistic chance of working in combat.
In May 2000 I sent evidence to the White House that, despite the claims of unqualified success by the Pentagon, the IFT-1A had in fact been a total failure.
Initially, the Pentagon claimed that the letter I wrote to the White House was secret. Then the Pentagon reversed itself and claimed that the experiment was old and irrelevant, and then it reinforced this claim by arguing that it now uses a slightly different sensor that renders the results of the IFT-1A irrelevant. Finally, after trying for years to dismiss the relevance of the IFT-1A, the Pentagon has again reversed itself and claims that the release of any and all information about it would cause grave, direct, and immediate harm to the national security.
In subsequent work, I learned that the document that had led me to warn the White House about fraud in the National Missile defense program had been produced for the Pentagon by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.
The Lincoln Laboratory report was written in 1998 for federal agents from the departments of Justice and Defense. The agents had come to MIT for help in evaluating evidence they had collected that indicated researchers at TRW might have fraudulently tampered with data to make the IFT-1A test look like a success when it had in fact failed. Since Lincoln Laboratory had been deeply involved in early analysis of the IFT-1A, and has special national status as a federally funded research and development center, it was in a unique position to evaluate all the evidence uncovered by the federal agents.
In April 2001, I began a process of alerting MIT's then-president Charles M. Vest and his provost, Robert Brown, that MIT's Lincoln Laboratory had failed to cooperate with the federal agents and had withheld critical information that the sensor in the IFT-1A had not performed as designed. Since the sensor did not collect valid data, the experiment was a total failure and fraud had occurred at TRW. Of even greater concern, it was clear from documents created shortly after the IFT-1A in 1997 and General Accountability Office reports published in March 2002 that Lincoln Laboratory was fully aware of the failure of the sensor.
MIT's response during this period was at first to deny that it had oversight responsibilities for the report, then, in July 2002, to produce an interim inquiry report, reviewed by MIT's lawyers, that praised the work done by Lincoln and concluded: "The good news is that the management and culture of the Lincoln Laboratory . . . have created processes to insure that the nation's trust is protected."
Four months later the conclusions of the interim inquiry report were completely reversed and an investigation recommended. It is this investigation which MIT now says it cannot pursue because material is classified. In fact the investigation can be fully accomplished with material already made public.
The mishandling of this affair by MIT poses threats to the integrity and credibility of all university-based research in this country. MIT's continuing excuses for not investigating this matter and its attempts to evade its responsibilities represent a serious violation of the public trust and the most basic principles of academic integrity. But of far more importance than the future of MIT, it does a disservice to our system of government and undermines the defense of our country.
Theodore A. Postol is professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
© 2004 Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com |
