Word: rocketted
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This Friday, sometime between 7 and 11 p.m. Pacific time, the Pentagon plans to fire the rocket from California, then fire the interceptor from the Pacific. It hopes the resulting collision will persuade President Clinton to give the order to start building a $30 billion system to protect the U.S. from missile attack. Success could signal the most profound change in U.S. national security since Washington decided to contain Soviet expansionism in 1947. That is why so much is riding on this week's test for the military, its contractors and the space shield's many proponents in Washington...
There are virtually no unknowns in the procedure. The Pentagon knows the type of rocket launching the target as well as the nature of the target; it knows how powerful the rocket's engine is, where it is coming from and when it is being launched. The crew launching the interceptor will even get to listen in on the countdown of the warhead's rocket as it takes place. All that is valuable intelligence--and much, if not all of it, would be denied to the U.S. if a rogue state decided to strike. Such advantages "place significant limitations...
...test favors a positive outcome in other ways. Much of the gear now being tested won't end up in the operational system. The rocket that will ultimately be deployed to lift the interceptor into space--still in development--will shake 10 times as violently as the more gentle boosters scheduled for the first seven tests. While the Pentagon says the shield will defend against "tens" of incoming warheads, all 19 of the Pentagon's tests are against a lone incoming warhead. Jacques Gansler, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, told Congress last week that the testing program will grow...
Five minutes into its launch, the California rocket will release its mock warhead. The accompanying balloon will quickly inflate to its 6-ft.-plus diameter. Traveling less than a mile away from the mock warhead, the balloon is supposed to lure the interceptor away from its intended target. The warhead and the balloon, along with the container in which they rode into space, will reach a top speed of 14,700 m.p.h. and a peak altitude nearly 1,000 miles above the earth...
Within moments of liftoff, the infrared sensors on a Pentagon satellite perched 22,000 miles above the earth should pick up the rocket's flaming plume. The satellite will alert ground-based radars in Hawaii and Kwajalein, which will begin searching the northeastern skies for the intruder. In a fully deployed system, early-warning radars in Alaska, California, Britain, Greenland and Massachusetts would get the alarm. Updates on the target's path will pour into the U.S. Space Command's outpost at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. Computers there will assemble a "weapons task plan" based on the incoming weapon's trajectory...