Countdown begins for crucial U.S. missile test

Protesters to try to block launch

July 7, 2000
Web posted at: 6:59 p.m. EDT (2259 GMT)

In this story: Air Force: 'Everything fine' Technological and strategic concerns Scientific opposition RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California -- Anti-nuclear protesters said they would try to stop Friday night's critical test of a U.S. anti-missile system 144 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Sometime between 7-11 p.m. PDT, a modified Minuteman II target missile will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, followed 20 minutes later by a second "kill vehicle" missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific, 4,300 miles away.

The anti-nuclear group Greenpeace said it had dispatched a ship carrying 23 protesters 110 miles off shore from the seaside base, in the test's so-called "hazard zone."

Greenpeace protest Anti-nuclear activists were hoping to halt the national missile defense system test by positioning a ship in an area of the Pacific where a rocket stage is expected to splash down. Greenpeace planned to station a vessel about 110 miles offshore from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, said Steve Shallhorn, campaign director for Greenpeace USA. Twenty-three people from more than a dozen nations were on board the Greenpeace ship, the 164-foot Arctic Sunrise, stationed in the hazard zone in the Pacific. The U.S. Air Force has asked pilots and mariners to avoid the area during the test or risk damage or injury but said the test could continue even with a ship in the zone.  INTERACTIVE The missile shield dispute     MESSAGE BOARD National Security    VIDEO An explanation of what is supposed to happen during the test, from CNN's Jamie McIntyre QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

Although the Air Force has asked pilots and mariners to avoid the area during the test, it said the test could continue even with a ship in the zone.

Greenpeace also announced Friday that it had sent protesters onto the base itself to thwart the launch. But base officials said they knew of no such security breech, and everything remained ready for launch.

"According to the Air Force's own safety procedures the missile cannot be launched with people in that part of the base," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Mary Macnutt.

"Everything is fine so far," Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Leonard, a missile defense spokesman, said Friday. "There are some high cirrus clouds in the California launch area, but they present no problem."

It was the third test of the project known as the U.S. National Missile Defense system, a plan that is bitterly opposed by Russia, China, and many of Washington's European allies.

The goal of the missile defense system, the Pentagon said, is to protect the U.S. mainland from missiles that might be developed by nations such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. A U.S. missile would be launched to destroy a hostile warhead by ramming it head-on.

The U.S. military has described the strategy as "trying to hit a bullet with a bullet."

In fact a missile test in October 1999 was successful, but a subsequent test in January failed.

An independent panel of retired military officers and weapons experts told the Pentagon in a report last month that it believes missile defense is technologically feasible, but that the Pentagon may not be able to have a reliable system in place by 2005, the target date. The date is significant because the CIA has said it believes North Korea could have a long-range missile capable of reaching U.S. soil within five years.

Many critics say the technology is not feasible and that the Pentagon's testing methods are fatally flawed. Other critics say that even if it worked the weapon would not be worth the international outcry against it -- most notably Russia's threat to unravel the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow says the system violates.

Moscow and Beijing both fear that a mature and successful anti-missile system could eliminate the strategic threat of their nuclear arsenals.

Vladimir Yakovlev, the head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, was quoted by the Interfax news agency Friday as saying the tests "are the first step toward global nuclear instability."

A U.S. missile defense system, he said, would "lead directly to nuclear anarchy."

European leaders of Germany and Italy have said they fear the National Missile Defense system could spark a new arms race.

On Thursday 50 American winners of the Nobel prize sent a letter to Clinton warning him that any movement toward deployment of a ballistic missile system would be "premature, wasteful and dangerous."

Friday, another critical scientist, Ted Postol , a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that three members of the Defense Security Services came to his office "unannounced" a few weeks ago. They showed him a classified document with the word "secret" marked all over it, Postol claimed.

"This, in my view, was almost certainly an attempt to entrap me and put me in a difficult position," Postol told reporters at a Washington news conference. He said he didn't read the document.

Postol, who teaches science, technology, and national security policy at MIT, sent a letter earlier this year to the Defense Department and the White House explaining why the system will not work. He claims the Pentagon classified his letter, although he maintains he got all the relevant information from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, an arm of the Department of Defense.

In an editorial published in the New York Times Friday, Postol argued against the anti-missile system and the Defense Department's tests.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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National Defense University
Greenpeace
Vandenburg Air Force Base
SpaceCom -- United States Space Command
Union of Concerned Scientists

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