Word: interceptor
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PRESIDENT CLINTON'S decision last week to postpone building a $25 billion antimissile system to protect the U.S. from small-scale nuclear attack, thus leaving the system's fate in the hands of his successor, was widely expected, given that the interceptor missile has failed two of three tests so far and that the rest of the development program is bogging down. The surprising thing is that the announcement didn't leak...
...fudge - he won't kill the program, but he may simply leave it on life support for his successor to determine its fate. But Governor Bush is a lot more bullish on missile defense, charging that the limited system currently on offer is inadequate, and that only a comprehensive interceptor system capable of neutralizing all threats, whether from Iraq or from Russia, can protect America. That's essentially a reprise of President Reagan's "Star Wars" program, and it's a far easier sell on the campaign trail than the nuanced calculations involved in the limited scheme. And the administration...
...build a missile shield. Things began unraveling even before the $20 million exoatmospheric kill vehicle left Kwajalein Atoll on Friday night, when the balloon decoy accompanying a mock warhead fired from California failed to inflate. Then, shortly after the launch of the interceptor, its final rocket stage refused to separate from the kill vehicle, dooming the mission. AIR FORCE LIEUT. GENERAL RON KADISH, who runs the military's missile-defense programs, monitored the test from inside a secure Pentagon conference room. His nervous energy soured into bitter disappointment as he watched the $100 million test fall apart despite measures...
Back in the sky over the Pacific on Friday, physics and chemistry will take over. The interceptor's three sensors--two detecting heat and one detecting visible light--all share the telescope that juts out its front end. The visible-light sensor will get the interceptor into the right neighborhood, but only the infrared sensors can guide it into its target, gently steering it with minithrusters powered by 30 lbs. of liquid rocket fuel. For the heat-detecting sensors to "see" anything, they must be chilled to -330[degrees]F using nitrogen and krypton, funneled to the sensors through...
Each sensor's 65,000 pixels will feed signals into the interceptor's brain, where lightning-fast calculations involving heat, light, mass and motion are cranked into databases searching for the ballistic fingerprints of enemy warheads. As the interceptor rushes toward its possible targets (the warhead, the balloon and the launch container), it will keep them all within view for as long as possible before discarding the ones its computers say have the least likelihood of being the warhead...