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The centerpiece of the U.S. missile defense programs — the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense system — will not be ready for deployment for at least another six weeks, a top general with the program said Oct. 14.
Military officials are “shaking down†the system to find problems and fix them, a process that could take six to eight weeks, said Army Maj. Gen. John Holly, program manager for the Midcourse system.
President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might declare the system ready after the six-week period on the recommendation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Holly said.
That timeline would put the deployment of the system beyond the U.S. presidential elections scheduled for Nov.2. While several elements of the system are still under development, it is nevertheless capable of some defense, proponents of the program argue. In December 2002, Bush asked that the system be ready for deployment by late 2004.
Holly said the shakedown of the system is similar to the Navy’s sea trials of a new ship. The process is intended to find bugs and fix them before the system can be deployed, he said at an Oct. 14 briefing organized by the National Defense University, Washington.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which suspended all test flights for the past two years, plans to conduct a flight test sometime in December. The December test is not intended to hit a target, but it could, missile defense officials say.
The Ground-based Midcourse system is spread over a wide swath of U.S. territory, from Alaska in the north to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands chain in the South Pacific. It includes six anti-missile interceptors in Alaska, two at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., early warning radar at Shemya, Alaska, a command-and-control center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and satellites.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=451925&C=america
Military officials are “shaking down†the system to find problems and fix them, a process that could take six to eight weeks, said Army Maj. Gen. John Holly, program manager for the Midcourse system.
President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might declare the system ready after the six-week period on the recommendation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Holly said.
That timeline would put the deployment of the system beyond the U.S. presidential elections scheduled for Nov.2. While several elements of the system are still under development, it is nevertheless capable of some defense, proponents of the program argue. In December 2002, Bush asked that the system be ready for deployment by late 2004.
Holly said the shakedown of the system is similar to the Navy’s sea trials of a new ship. The process is intended to find bugs and fix them before the system can be deployed, he said at an Oct. 14 briefing organized by the National Defense University, Washington.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which suspended all test flights for the past two years, plans to conduct a flight test sometime in December. The December test is not intended to hit a target, but it could, missile defense officials say.
The Ground-based Midcourse system is spread over a wide swath of U.S. territory, from Alaska in the north to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands chain in the South Pacific. It includes six anti-missile interceptors in Alaska, two at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., early warning radar at Shemya, Alaska, a command-and-control center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and satellites.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=451925&C=america