Missile Defense Agency revises missile-target plans

Target failures have caused the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to adopt a new approach to acquiring targets for missile-defence trials, agency director Lieutenant General Patrick J O'Reilly told the House Armed Services Committee on 21 May.

In Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08) and in FY09 to date, the MDA had launched 18 targets with four failures. The latter had "significant negative impacts on demonstrating key capabilities for both GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defence) and THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence)", he told the committee.

"We had two failures of the STARS (Strategic Targets System) target, which we will no longer be launching. Another failure was a foreign-made target, and we have determined root cause and corrected that problem for the most recent THAAD test," said Gen O'Reilly.

In December 2003 the MDA began the Flexible Target Family (FTF) programme to develop a single set of targets with common components that could be tailored to simulate known or potential short-, medium- or long-range threats. "Unfortunately, the FTF programme has not met cost and schedule expectations to date," he told the committee. "High costs and changes in target requirements led to the discontinuation of all variants except the 72-inch-diameter LV-2."