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US shoots down missile over Pacific
( 2002-10-15 15:49 ) (7 )

The US military said on Monday it successfully shot down a dummy warhead high over the Pacific with an interceptor missile in the seventh test of its planned shield against ballistic missiles.

"We launched the target missile about 10 p.m. eastern time (0200 GMT). We launched the interceptor missile about 22 minutes later. Six minutes after that, we had the intercept in space about 140 miles (225 kms) above the earth over the central Pacific Ocean," said Missile Defense Agency spokesman Lt. Col. Rick Lehner.

In the test, a prototype interceptor fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands smashed a modified Minuteman 2 missile launched 4,800 miles (7,725 km) away from Vandenberg Air Force base in California.

For the first time, a ship-based radar system was used in the $100 million test to gather data about the target and interceptor missile, the Missile Defense Agency said.

The result "increases our confidence in the technology that is necessary for a future defense system to protect the US homeland from a long-range missile attack," Lehner said.

The agency has had five successes and two failures in previous tests.

US President George W. Bush wants to build a multilayered defense against limited numbers of incoming warheads from what he calls "rogue" countries like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

The latest missile defense test had been scheduled for Aug. 24 but was postponed after discovery of a potential problem with a seal on the nozzle of the rocket motors of the ground-based interceptor.

It was the first test of the so-called ground-based mid-course defense since the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia on June 13.

The first test of the system took place on Oct. 2, 1999, resulting in a successful intercept. Since then, the military has hit its target four times and missed twice.

Withdrawal from the treaty cleared the way for the advanced testing needed to build possible overlapping defenses at sea, on the ground, in space and aboard modified Boeing Co. 747 jumbo jets.

Russia, China and many other countries strongly opposed Bush's decision for fear it would trigger an arms race. The treaty barred a nationwide missile defense, including ship-board radars used to track incoming warheads.

The administration is building a ground-based antimissile "test bed" centered in Alaska that it says could provide a rudimentary bulwark against a limited number of incoming missile warheads by the end of September 2004.