I have long anticipated this way of intercepting BMs, especially those with new manuevarable warheads, and new Topol Ms.A US F-16 fighter used an air-to-air missile to destroy a sounding rocket in its boost phase for the first time this week in a test of a new missile defense concept, US spokesmen said Tuesday.
The system -- named the Net-Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCDE) -- breaks new ground in that it would arm fighter aircraft or drones with missiles fast enough to intercept a ballistic missile as it lifts into space.
The aircraft would have to get to within a 100 miles of the launch site to catch the ascending missile in the first two to three minutes after launch.
But it could be very useful in a short range combat situation against short and medium range missiles, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the US Missile Defense Agency.
The Pentagon has two other better known boost phase intercept systems under development -- the Airborne Laser and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor -- but those are still years away from being ready, he said.
"So it does give us an initial boost phase capability even though it is a much shorter range missile, and you have to be in the area of the missile launch to be effective," Lehner said.
The test Monday at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico involved an F-16 fighter that fired two modified AIM-9X missile at an Orion sounding or research rocket.
The first destroyed the rocket and the second recorded the interception, the Pentagon's missile defense agency said.
The missile seekers' relayed images of the rocket at close range, demonstrating the capability to acquire and track the target, the Pentagon's missile defense agency said.
"Although not unexpected, the subsequent intercept destroyed the target," it said.
"A second AIM-9X launched during the test observed through its seeker the intercept of the target by the first and was also on a trajectory to intercept the target," the agency said.
Besides special seekers, AIM-9X and AIM-20 AAMRAM are fitted with a new liquid propellant second stage to give it the burst of speed needed to catch a ballistic missile in its boost phase.
Lehner said the missiles were heavily instrumented during the test, but otherwise conditions were "pretty realistic."
Raytheon Missile Systems, which developed the NCADE, said it "provides a revolutionary, low-cost approach to interceptor development and acquisition."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071204233530.iix59uhf&show_article=1
Russia orders new strategic nukes
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's military has commissioned another batch of new intercontinental ballistic missiles — nuclear weapons officials boast can penetrate any prospective missile shield, reports said Sunday.
The announcement comes amid tensions between Moscow and Washington over U.S. plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The three new Topol-M missiles are capable of hitting targets more than 6,000 miles away and, mounted on a heavy off-road vehicle, are harder for an enemy to track it down, officials said.
The Topol-M missiles, which had been deployed only in silos before December 2006, are stationed near the town of Teikovo, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces said in a statement carried by the ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti news agencies.
The same unit commissioned the first batch of such truck-mounted missiles a year ago.
The Topol-M's chief designer, Yuri Solomonov, has said the missile drops its engines at a significantly lower altitude than earlier designs, making it hard for an enemy's early warning system to detect the launch.
He said the missiles' warhead and decoys closely resembled one another in flight, making it extremely difficult for a foe to select the real target from a multitude of false ones.
Windfall oil revenues in recent years have allowed the Kremlin buy weapons and fund the development of new missiles. The deployment of Topol-Ms, however, has proceeded slowly and Soviet-built ballistic missiles have remained the backbone of the nation's nuclear forces.
Teikovo, a small town in the Ivanovo region, is located about about 150 miles northeast of Moscow.
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-12-16-russiamissiles_N.htm
Baluyevsky also warned that the launch of an interceptor missile by the US could trigger a Russian missile strike because it could be mistaken for a ballistic missile aimed at Russia.
"We are talking about the possibility of a retaliatory strike being triggered by the mistaken classification of an interceptor missile launch," he said, adding that Russia's defenses were controlled by an automatic system.
"If we assume that Iran does try to launch a missile against the United States ... then interceptor missiles from Poland would fly in the direction of Russia," he said.
"I don't mean to scare anyone, but this isn't a scare story ... It's a technical detail that could affect the military stability of the world," Baluyevsky said.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/12/17/2003392901
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