Kauai missile-defense BARKING SANDS, Kauai >> The Navy's Sea-Based Midcourse Missile knocked down a target rocket for the first time in a test yesterday at the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai.
test hits bull’s-eye
The Navy's sea-based system brings
down a rocket for the first timeBy Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.comThe direct hit was a bonus. The test, the fourth in a series of nine, was to evaluate the ability of the missile's guidance system to lock on to a target.
Navy officials said earlier this week there was a possibility the missile's warhead would hit the target but that a miss would not be considered a failure. The actual destruction of target rockets with test missiles is scheduled to begin later this year.
The Sea-Based Midcourse Missile, formerly known as the Theater Defense Missile, is an improved version of the Standard Missile long used by 50 Navy ships for anti-aircraft defense.
It is designed to protect ships at sea and troops and civilians ashore by hitting hostile rockets above Earth's atmosphere with a solid warhead, the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet.
The Sea-Based Missile is a less powerful version of the missiles being tested at Kwajalein to defend portions of the United States against intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The ARIES target missile was fired from Kauai at 4 p.m. yesterday. About eight minutes later, the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser USS Lake Erie, which has been outfitted with special computer programs to guide the missile, fired at the target. Although workers at the missile range saw the target rocket fired, the Lake Erie was far beyond the horizon when it fired its missile.
The Navy said the missile "acquired, tracked and diverted toward the target" and that its kinetic warhead collided with it.
The Sea-Based Midcourse Missile testing program is the highest-priority program at the Pacific Missile Range, which is Kauai's largest employer. A short-range version of the same missile was recently scrapped by the Navy because of cost overruns.