US missile defense shield test fails

By: Mohamed Ali

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon (the US Defense Department) said the first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar US anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific.

The aborted $85 million test appeared likely to set back plans for activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea.

A spokesman for the Pentagon's missile agency Richard Lehner said that an “anomaly” of unknown origin caused the interceptor to shut down automatically in its silo at the Kwajalein Test Range in the Marshall Islands.

The test followed a week of delays caused by weather and technical glitches, including malfunction of an internal battery aboard the target missile on Tuesday, he said.

“This is a serious setback for a program that had not attempted a flight intercept test for two years,” Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under late President Ronald Reagan, said.

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