National Missile Defense Test Failure: Not Yet Ready for Prime Time
Washington, D.C. . “While National Missile Defense advocates exaggerated the ‘success’ of the National Missile Defense test in October, there is no reason to read total ‘failure’ into yesterday’s unsuccessful shot,” said John Isaacs, president of Council for a Livable World “Instead, yesterday’s test reinforces the necessity to avoid what the Welch panel of independent experts referred to two years ago as ‘a rush to failure,’” added Isaacs. Present plans call for the Pentagon to conduct a “Deployment Readiness Review” in June to make a recommendation on deployment, with a presidential decision on deployment scheduled by the end of the summer. Only three of 19 intercept tests will have been completed by that time. “There are too many technical questions to bet American lives on a system that has been tested only three of 19 times and never under real-world conditions,” argued Isaacs. “Moreover,” said Isaacs, “we should not pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty and threaten further nuclear weapons reductions with Russia for the sake of deploying a missile shield that has not yet proven itself to work.” “The full system has not even been tested yet, and will not be until 2003. Right now the Pentagon is using prototypes for several of the system components, including the intercepting missile. It would be foolish to decide in favor of deployment until the entire system is tested several times under tough circumstances,” Isaacs stated.
“Let the full set of tests be completed without political pressures to deploy, and defer a decision until the U.S. is confident that a deployed system will work under real world conditions,” Isaacs concluded.