A successful test?

July 20, 2001

Over the weekend the 4th test firing of the NMD system took place, high over the Pacific Ocean. I was surprised to note that officials were reticent to state that it had been altogether successful. They stated that the missile had worked 'nominally' and that it had hit the target warhead, but there remained something unstated. Tuesday, we found out that one of the main radar systems that guides the missile had failed. So while the warhead did hit the target, I assume the radar failure would mean that if there had been second interceptor missile (common practice with the Patriot in TBMD mode) that it would have been unable to be targeted.

There must be a great many people at the Pentagon breathing a sigh of relief over the outcome of this test. Luck was in their favour.

In a PBS summary of the test, 3 experts were interviewed. A quote that tickled me was, "Its not so much a trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as a trying to hit a bullet with a supercomputer."

This test sets up the next level of complexity in systems testing. It is obvious that BMDO needs to look into these radar failures, build in more surveillance capability (most of the satellites have yet to be integrated into the system), and move from the "we will shoot at you at dusk" mentality of testing.

The interceptor software will be evolved. It has become clear that its ability to detect and classify targets is probably inadequate. If pressed to implement the system as it is at the moment then the interceptor will be of dubious quality. However, another 5 years of development will mean the interceptors computers could be as much as 10 times as powerful, possible 40 times more so, assuming that they will be smaller and faster. Given this sort of increase in computer processing power, and with probable improvements in the imaging department, even decoys wrapped around warheads could conceivably be thwarted. These improvements could allow the spare computing capacity needed to tell the mass and temperature change differences between warheads and decoys, and warheads in decoys.