The Pentagon stood by the strength of its homeland missile-defense system on July 8, saying it will not “draw any broad conclusions” about failed missile-interceptor test on July 5 before a review is complete.
A Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. failed to hit a long-range ballistic-missile target launched from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon announced.
Skeptics of the Pentagon’s missile-defense efforts have been pointing out that there has not been a successful test of such GBIs–which currently are deployed in Alaska and California–since 2008.
The Pentagon said program officials “will conduct an extensive review to determine the cause or causes of any anomalies which may have prevented a successful intercept.”
Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters he is “not going to draw any broad conclusions based on one test,” and noted the root causes of the failure are still under review.
“We’ll take steps to ensure that similar failures don’t occur in the future,” he said, adding the Pentagon’s “faith in the missile-defense program remains strong.”
“We believe that we have a robust missile-defense architecture in place, and we are in a position to respond to any threat that emanates form North Korea,” Little said.
The news of the latest test failure comes just four months after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon will deploy 14 more GBIs at Ft. Greely, Alaska, restoring previous plans to have a total of 44 of the interceptors in Alaska and California to counter a potential North Korean threat.
Little said he knew of no impact that the July 5 test failure would have on the planned missile-defense expansion.
The news of the latest GBI test failure spurred concerned responses from missile-defense critics as well as the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a supporter of the Pentagon’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system that wants more-frequent testing.
“As a result (of the failed interception), there is reduced confidence and reliability in regards to GBIs capability to defend all of the United States of America against the current and future North Korean long-range nuclear ballistic missiles as well as the future first generation Iranian long-range ballistic missiles,” Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the alliance, said in a statement.
“As the technical data unfolds over time and analysis of the roots to the cause of this failure, the underlying factors is the lack of testing on an annual basis to the GMD system and acceptance of high adversity to risk by the Department of Defense to not test these GBIs regularly because of the chance of failure,” he added. “This has to be remedied so that we may learn from failures and quickly adjust to fix, modernize and launch again until the corrections are completed of the existing issues.”