A crucial test of the National Missile Defense system has been delayed until early July because of a minor problem in the interceptor that has now been fixed, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Bacon said the delay would have no impact on the timetable for President Bill Clinton’s decision on whether to deploy the controversial system.
The test — an attempted interception of a mock warhead over the Pacific — had been scheduled for June 26.
“We’ve known for several weeks that it’s probably going to be later than that; it’ll probably be in sometime in early July, rather than June 26,” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.
He said the schedule was set back for a week after a minor problem was discovered in the interceptor that required it to be sent to its maker, Raytheon Co., for rewiring.
“Now the re-wire is done, it’s been tested, they have confidence in it, and they are in the process now of marrying the interceptor to the rocket and shipping it to Kwajalein Island,” he said.
“This fix took about a week, and so we’ve had to delay the test by several days,” he said.
Guided by computers linked to radars and early warning satellites, the interceptor will be fired from Kwajalein Island, a Pacific atoll in the Marshall Islands, at a target missile fired from California.
The test’s outcome could be a decisive factor in whether President Bill Clinton orders the deployment of the system, a decision he is supposed to make in the early fall.
The Pentagon has said the system must make two interceptions to declare it ready for deployment. Of two previous interception attempts, only one has succeeded.
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