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Defense missile
test will be held
off Kauai

The Navy will conduct the
second Theater missile trial
flight on Friday

By Anthony Sommer
Star-Bulletin

BARKING SANDS, Kauai -- Friday is the target date for the second major flight test of the Navy's Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.

Navy technicians and engineers from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, the two contractors on the project, will be testing the second stage rocket motor on the Navy Theater Wide Missile, the larger of two Navy missile defense systems under development. The shorter-range version, the Navy Area Missile, is expected to arrive on Kauai for testing within two years.

Both are smaller cousins of the National Defense Missile tested unsuccessfully at Kwajalein last weekend. Instead of defending entire continents against intercontinental ballistic missiles, however, the Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system is designed to provide a shipboard weapon to knock down mid-range hostile missiles aimed at ships and ground troops and civilian populations ashore.

The Navy estimates that two ships armed with the Navy Theater Wide Missile could defend all of Japan against a North Korean missile attack.

Japan has indicated an interest as a possible future customer.

Friday is the beginning of a three-day window during which the test can be conducted and the day it is most likely the test will be conducted, said Capt. Chris Taylor, a Navy spokesman.

The USS Lake Erie, one of two Pearl Harbor-based cruisers fitted with computer equipment specially designed for the anti-missile system, will fire the missile offshore of Kauai into a vast area of empty ocean that is outside both the commercial air and shipping lanes. The third stage rocket motor has been successfully tested on the ground, but this will be its first flight.

The following flight will test the missile's guidance system, and the flight after that will be the first in which the Theater Wide missile attempts to knock down an incoming target missile. No dates have been announced for the next two tests.

The first flight test of a Theater Wide missile off Kauai last September went off flawlessly. It was designed primarily to test the strength of the air frame.

The Army is developing land-based companion versions of the two Navy missiles, and Navy officials say it is possible the Army will bring its rockets to Kauai for testing.

The Pacific Missile Range Facility has a much larger range area than the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and cutting-edge tracking and telemetry systems have been installed on Kauai during the past two years in anticipation of the Navy tests.