US missile defence test fails

The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar US anti-missile shield failed yesterday when the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon said. About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had been successfully fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska, according to a statement from the Missile Defence Agency.

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.

In 2002, President George W. Bush pledged to have initial elements of the programme up and running by the end of this year while testing and development continued.

An "anomaly" of unknown origin caused the interceptor to shut down automatically in its silo at the Kwajalein Test Range in the Marshall Islands, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's missile agency.

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 programme 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 in an e-mail exchange. The system is a scaled-down version of a ballistic missile shield first outlined in March 1983 by Ronald Reagan and derided by critics as Star Wars.

Pentagon officials had hoped the test would set the stage for any decision by Mr Bush to put the system on alert in coming weeks. Initially, the system is designed to counter North Korean missiles that could be fired at the US and tipped with nuclear, chemical or germ weapons.