| Bush's magic shield is malfunctioning A full-scale test of the American missile defense system ended in failure. An interceptor missile failed to take off from its launch pad on the Pacific Ocean atoll of Kwajalein (Marshall Islands) on Sunday. It was supposed to shoot down a ballistic missile with a training warhead that had taken off 16 minutes earlier from Kodiak Island in Alaska, which as a result self-destructed over the Pacific Ocean.
The failure in the expensive 85-million-dollar test occurred due to the fact that the engine of the interceptor missile located in the launch silo spontaneously turned off. As representatives of the US Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency explained, the automation worked “thanks to an unidentified anomaly.” Previously, the rocket launch had been postponed four times due to tropical rainfall in the Pacific Ocean. The previous, also unsuccessful, test of the American missile defense system took place two years ago. Then the 60-kilogram warhead, designed to hit an enemy missile at an altitude of 225 km, did not separate from its own interceptor missile.
This time the Pentagon was pressed for deadlines. After all, two years ago President Bush promised that by the end of 2004 the missile defense system, albeit in a limited form, would be put into operation. The White House spared no expense: in 2005, $10 billion was allocated for the missile defense program.
In total, three of the eight tests carried out failed. Director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments Sergei Oznobishchev told Vremya Novostey yesterday: “Much in this American program is intended to mislead politicians and the public. The tests were extremely simplified, carried out according to simplified scenarios that were impossible in real military practice, and all this in order to receive the next portion of appropriations.”
George W. Bush's missile defense system is a truncated continuation of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s envisioned the creation of a space force to defend against Soviet ballistic missiles. Bush's missile defense system is more ground-based and is designed to protect the US homeland from a limited missile attack from "rogue states" like North Korea.
To create it, the United States in June 2002 unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty, signed in 1972 with the USSR. In response, the Kremlin has repeatedly announced the modernization of its missile and nuclear weapons, capable of overcoming any missile defense. “Now there are new realities,” says Sergei Oznobishchev. — Moscow speaks at the highest level about partnership with the United States, Washington always emphasizes that the deployment of missile defense is not directed against Russia. But there is both hidden and overt anti-Americanism at the level of high-ranking bureaucrats in Russia, and in the United States the highest bureaucracy still does not trust Russia. That is, both sides continue to proceed from the possibility of negative development of relations.”
A few days ago, on December 10, the first interceptor missile was deployed into a launch silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Six such missiles are already in the silos of the Fort Greely base in Alaska. A total of 18 interceptor missiles will be deployed in Alaska and California by the end of 2005. The Pentagon claims that they fly at a speed of 25 thousand km per hour and will be able to hit a target with one hundred percent probability at a distance of 200 km.
“Reagan's Star Wars program was virtually forgotten until recent years, when it was revived to fight terrorism. But there is no evidence that this remedy will be effective, says Sergei Oznobishchev. - And there is a group of people in the United States who have turned the idea of missile defense into their own business. They are trying to politically promote this project.” Andrey ZLOBIN |
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