THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701250281
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 48 lines
In the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from any navigable water, the Navy took an important step Friday toward defending its ships and U.S. forces ashore.
More than 40,000 feet above the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, a modified Navy Standard missile blasted an incoming ``attack'' missile, launched from elsewhere on the range, out of the sky.
The Standard missile's warhead exploded only a few feet from the target, spraying it with fragments that broke it into harmless pieces, said Rear Adm. Rodney A. Rempt, the Navy's director of theater air defense.
At the time of the intercept, each projectile was traveling at five or six times the speed of sound, Rempt said.
Rempt said Standard missiles with the new defense capability could be aboard two Hawaii-based ships, the cruisers Lake Erie and Port Royal, for at-sea testing beginning in 1999 - giving the ships a defensive weapon akin to the Patriot missiles the Army used in Operation Desert Storm.
For Friday's test, the crew launching the Standard interceptor knew when the attacking missile would be launched and the track it would follow. In a ``real world'' situation, the crew of a cruiser or destroyer armed with the new missiles would have to identify and lock on to an incoming missile, then get the interceptor away - all in a matter of seconds.
The $600,000 interceptor is essentially the same missile the Navy uses now aboard ships with its AEGIS combat system. Built jointly by Hughes Missile Systems and Ray-theon Corp., the modified missile includes new infrared sensors that allow it to track and intercept ballistic missiles, as well as slower- and lower-flying enemy aircraft and cruise missiles that are the Standard missile's current targets.
The Army's Patriot was used to defend Saudi Arabia and Israel against Iraqi ``scud'' missile attacks during the Persian Gulf War. U.S. military planners want to have such a system at sea to defend Army and Marine forces attempting to establish a beachhead during the first hours of a conflict.
Friday's successful test comes after two failures last week in tests of other missile defenses. The tests involved systems that would be used to track and intercept longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
This Navy sketch shows a Standard surface-to-air missile that
enables ships to protect strategic ports, airfields and bases. Such
missiles could be aboard two ships for at-sea testing by 1999, the
Navy said.