By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON: After a successful test last week, the tracking radars and interceptor rockets of a new American missile defense system can be turned on at any time to respond to an emerging crisis in Asia, senior military officers said Tuesday.
General Victor Renuart Jr., the senior commander for defense of United States territory, said that the antimissile system could guard against the risk of ballistic missile attack from North Korea even while development continues on a series of radars in California and the Pacific Ocean and on interceptor missiles in Alaska and California.
While the new system is limited, it is the most extensive anti-ballistic missile system the Pentagon has fielded since the Safeguard ABM system near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota was briefly operated, starting in 1975. Congress immediately voted to shut it down, and it operated for only a few months.
"We can bring missiles up or take them down as need be so that they can continue doing the testing," said Renuart, commander of the military's Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs. But, he added, "I'm fully confident that we have all of the pieces in place that, if the nation needed to, we could respond."
He said the system showed an initial capability in July 2006, when American missile defense went on alert as North Korea staged missile tests. Because the array of interceptors and radars remains under development, it has never received the military's official status of being an operational weapons system.
Renuart spoke during a Pentagon news briefing on Tuesday that offered a recap of a missile defense test held on Friday that was deemed a success.
Lieutenant General Henry Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the target missile was launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, and tracked by radar at Beale Air Force Base, near Sacramento. The interceptor missile was fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, California, scoring a direct hit on the dummy warhead.
"Does the system work? The answer is yes to that," Obering said. "Is it going to work against more complex threats in the future? We believe it will."
Obering acknowledged that no decoys were flown in the path of the interceptor on Friday as might be expected in a real missile attack. Skeptics have challenged the Missile Defense Agency to conduct more realistic tests that would include even primitive technologies designed to fool the interceptor. These include balloons and chunks of metal that separate from the missile along with the warhead.
The general said the next test, which is expected in the first half of 2008, would include countermeasures to gauge the interceptor's ability to differentiate between the real warhead and decoys. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are scheduled to meet up in Moscow later this month for joint talks with their counterparts on Russia's objections to American proposals for missile defense in Central Europe. American plans call for 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic to defend against a possible missile attack from Iran.
Obering said Friday's successful test would help make the Bush administration's case with allies.
"I think it helps us in a very real way, because, as I have had conversations with our European partners and allies and NATO partners in the past, one of the questions I do get asked is, well, this system is not proven," Obering said. And this, he added, goes a long way "to answering that question."
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