Defense Missile Fails in Crucial Test

WASHINGTON —  A missile interceptor streaking through the heavens over the central Pacific failed to strike a dummy warhead in a long-awaited flight test Friday night, dealing a new setback to the Clinton administration’s controversial national missile defense program.

In a $100-million experiment that has drawn intense interest around the world, the “kill vehicle” fired into the sky from the Marshall Islands failed to strike the mock warhead launched into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base for reasons that were not immediately known.

“We failed to achieve an intercept this evening,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman announced in Washington at 10:15 p.m. PDT.

The intercept should have occurred about 9:49 p.m. PDT. Officials monitoring a telescopic display had expected to see a bright white flash upon collision, as they did in a test flight in October. Instead, they saw only the dark void of outer space.

Pentagon officials said there could be a number of possible explanations for the mishap, including the inability of the kill vehicle to separate properly from its booster rocket.

The Pentagon is expected to decide whether it considers its prototype missile defense system “technically viable” in a few weeks.

A favorable judgment could increase pressure on President Clinton to authorize initial steps toward construction of a land-based missile defense system. But Friday night’s failure could give Clinton more latitude, particularly if he is inclined to slow development of a national missile shield.

Anticipating that possibility, senior defense officials, including technology chief Jacques Gansler, have insisted in recent days that the technology could be deemed adequate even if the interceptor failed to strike its target.

Still, the miss is certain to complicate their plans and is likely to bring a new outburst of complaints from critics who view the system as expensive and unworkable.

The flight test began at 9:19 p.m. PDT, when a Minuteman II missile blasted off from its pad at Vandenberg, soaring into the starry evening sky with a majestic roar, its contrail creating a graceful arc over the Pacific.

The test was initially scheduled to begin shortly after 7 p.m. PDT. But it was delayed for more than two hours by a mechanical malfunction involving the telemetry system on the Minuteman missile preparing for takeoff at Vandenberg.

The experiment, closely watched around the world, was designed to test whether an interceptor fired from the central Pacific could locate and destroy a mock warhead lofted into the heavens from Southern California.

Clinton administration officials are stressing that the next administration will make the pivotal decisions on deployment of a missile defense system. Still, the outcome of Friday night’s test will be an important element in the system’s limited performance record, which has become the focus of a vigorous debate.

Foes of the proposal maintain that it never will work effectively against enemy missiles and countermeasures, while advocates say that a growing missile threat from countries such as North Korea and Iran makes construction of a system ever more urgent.

The proposal has stirred strong opposition abroad, from allies who fear that it would disrupt treaties and alliances and from governments such as Russia and China that fear it would render their own nuclear arsenals useless.

Pentagon officials announced the mechanical problem at Vandenberg about an hour before the scheduled liftoff.

They said it involved a battery that supplies power to the Minuteman’s telemetry system, which generates a stream of data on the location and flight path of the missile. The system also enables scientists to determine after the test exactly where the interceptor collided with the dummy warhead.

As the scientists at Vandenberg prepared for the launch, a small number of protesters maintained a quiet vigil outside the main gate.

Officials of the Greenpeace anti-nuclear organization said that several of its members had entered base grounds Thursday night in hopes of reaching the launch area and delaying or stopping the test.

With the same goal, the 160-foot Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sun was sailing into an off-limits hazard area off the coast.

“We’re trying to send a message to Bill Clinton to take his finger off the ‘Star Wars’ button and make the world a safer place,” said Steve Shallhorn, campaign director for Greenpeace USA.

Air Force Maj. John Cherry, a base spokesman, said that the base was on heightened security alert and that no protesters were in the launch area.

One trespasser was arrested Thursday night just inside base boundaries, and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department apprehended seven people crossing private ranch land north of the base Wednesday night and Thursday evening.

Cherry said that Coast Guard and Navy boats were patrolling the off-limits waters.

Inside the base, about 200 off-duty Air Force personnel and family members gathered at a designated observation site to await the launch. The atmosphere was festive, and some brought picnic dinners and their pets with them.

The flight test was a carefully choreographed search-and-destroy mission executed by a complex array of advanced aerospace technology.

The target missile’s nose contained a conical mock warhead, about 5 feet high, as well as an uninflated 6-foot-diameter Mylar balloon that was to be released with the warhead to duplicate the kind of simple decoy an enemy attacker might use to throw off an interceptor.

About five minutes after launch, the dummy warhead and decoy were released from the target rocket. After 15 more minutes, the surrogate interceptor rocket was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 4,300 miles from Vandenberg.

A satellite 22,000 miles in space was supposed to track the Vandenberg missile with infrared sensors and relay that information to a “battle management” center in Colorado. The information was to be passed by radar in Hawaii and Kwajalein to the electronic brain of the interceptor rocket, to help it plot its course.

Once in space, the 130-pound kill vehicle atop the interceptor rocket was supposed to break free from the booster and, using sensors and tiny thruster rockets, maneuver its way into the path of the target.

It was the third of 19 planned flight tests. The first test in October was deemed a partial success. In the second, in January, the interceptor missed its target.

Wary governments abroad and missile defense skeptics at home have watched the tests with increasing alarm. As the designated launch time neared Friday, they issued a new round of dire warnings and technological critiques.

In Moscow, the commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Force warned Friday that the test would lead to instability and a new arms race.

“These steps represent the first steps toward global nuclear instability,” Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev told the Interfax news agency. “They will lead directly to nuclear anarchy.”

In Washington, organizations critical of the program denounced it as a wasteful exercise that jeopardizes international arms control agreements, which they say provide a better path to national security.

Jack Mendelson, a former U.S. arms control official with the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, predicted that Clinton would order preparatory work on the system to begin.

But he said that, since the next president would make the key decisions, Clinton’s order would be only a “busywork decision” intended to “flameproof” Vice President Al Gore from Republican charges that the administration has been weak on defense.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, meanwhile, sought to rebut criticism that the missile test had been “dumbed down” to the point that it could not be used to judge the proposal’s technical viability.

He said that the first two flight tests had been criticized as overly complex by the system’s independent reviewer, retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch. As a consequence, he said, the tests were greatly simplified.

“We are responding . . . to the independent review that says we should ‘walk before we run,’ ” he said in an interview with National Public Radio. “Then to be criticized for doing that, it seems to me, is rather ironic.”

At the White House, a spokesman cautioned that it will be some time before it is clear whether the test is a true success or failure.

“I think there will be a great temptation to do some instantaneous analysis after the test tonight,” said spokesman P.J. Crowley. “I would say a hit doesn’t automatically suggest success, nor does a failure automatically come with a miss tonight.

“So I think everyone needs to understand that this is going to be a process that unfolds over many weeks, both in terms of analyzing what tonight’s test shows [and] how that feeds into the Pentagon’s recommendation to the president.”

*

Richter reported from Washington and Boxall from Vandenberg Air Force Base.