The test came a few days after a visit to Alaska by Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov, who met with U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld at Fort Greeley. The bulk of the ground-based interceptors for the system are located there.

Following the meeting, Ivanov told reporters at an August 27 news conference that he and Rumsfeld discussed “missile defense cooperation,” among other issues.

Washington has drawn a number of governments—more and more including Moscow—into collaboration in establishing the missile shield, offering them inclusion in a U.S. nuclear umbrella the system is designed to establish.

Rumsfeld made no attempt to disguise which states are among the prime targets of this effort.

“We’ve seen very recently in the press a good deal of activity in North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles…and in Iran, with their public desire to have a nuclear program and their reasonably advanced missile capabilities,” Rumsfeld told the media August 27. “We’ve also seen, I’m told, something in the neighborhood of 4,000 missiles launched by Hezbollah into northern Israel…. So it’s clear that the problem of the proliferation of ballistic missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction technologies is a real one.”

In the press conference with his Russian counterpart, Rumsfeld also said Washington was exploring the possibility of improving its own ballistic missile arsenal by creating an intercontinental missile with a conventional warhead instead of a nuclear one. He said it doesn’t matter that those facing such an attack might assume it was facing a nuclear assault since “there are only a few countries that would have the ability to do anything about it.”

The target missile in the test was launched from Alaska and reportedly followed a trajectory similar to the path a missile fired from north Korea might follow in an attack on West Coast cities. It was shot down by an interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, reported the September 2 Washington Post.

The test is “about as close as we can come to an end-to-end test of our long-range missile defense system,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering.

Washington has received the strongest support for the missile weapons system from the Japanese rulers. In late June, Tokyo and Washington signed an agreement to jointly produce antiballistic missiles, and to deploy Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles on U.S. bases in Japan. The U.S. military has also positioned Aegis-class ships off the Korean coast equipped with radar to detect missile launches.

The Indian government has offered its strong backing for the missile shield as well. “Many forget that Mr. Bush spent his first nine months in office thinking up ways to contain China, which he branded a ‘strategic competitor,’” said the August 31 Financial Times. “One such method was to boost funding for Star Wars II, an anti-ballistic missile system that—if it ever worked—would partly be aimed at blunting China’s nuclear reach. India was one of the first countries to welcome the system,” noted the Financial Times.

The next test, which will include “real-world” conditions, such as using decoys and other countermeasures to try to confuse the “kill vehicle,” is scheduled for December, according to Lieutenant General Obering.
 
 
Related articles:
Gov’t of north Korea denounces U.S./south Korean military exercises  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home