January 2000 Space News

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen News Briefing January 28, 2000 -- I think the technology is certainly proving to be on the right track. The miss that was involved was not by much. So I've made no judgment in terms of whether or not it should be delayed. I really don't anticipate any kind of a major confrontation with Congress going into this year. I don't expect that they are going to force my hand as such on the ABM Treaty.
SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION TO MAP EARTH THREE-DIMENSIONALLY Lockheed Martin 28 Jan 2000 -- The next Space Shuttle mission – STS-99, featuring the orbiter Endeavour and an astronaut crew of six – is currently scheduled for launch at 11:47 a.m. Central Standard Time on Monday, January 31, with a launch window of two hours.
ORBITAL'S CHANDLER, ARIZONA ROCKET BUSINESS PROVIDES UNITED STATES WITH ALL NEW SPACE LAUNCH CAPABILITY Orbital Sciences Corp. 28 Jan 2000 -- The United States has an all-new rocket to launch government satellites into space, thanks in large part to the work that Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) performed at its Chandler, Arizona rocket assembly and testing facility, the company said.
ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY CONDUCTS THE INAUGURAL LAUNCH OF THE OSP ROCKET FOR THE U.S. AIR FORCE Orbital Sciences Corp. 27 Jan 2000 -- Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) announced that it successfully carried out the inaugural launch of the U.S. Air Force's new Orbital/Suborbital Program (OSP) space launch vehicle, delivering 11 satellites and two scientific experiments into their targeted orbits.
Airborne Laser aircraft arrives at Wichita (AFPN) 24 January 2000 -- Over the next 18 months, this Airborne Laser -- a Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft -- will undergo changes at the Boeing facility here. The most noticeable difference will be installation of a turret in the aircraft nose.
The countdown to a missile defense By Richard J. Newman U.S.News & World Report 1/24/00 -- Under Republican pressure, Clinton and Gore have already adopted a bolder missile defense program than they backed just two years ago. Republicans continue to use the issue to set themselves apart.
Missile defense opens a Pandora's silo By BRAD GLOSSERMAN The Japan Times January 23, 2000 -- It has become apparent that, the administration's protests notwithstanding, efficacy will not determine whether the system is developed. In fact, John Pike, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists, believes the Clinton administration will be "compelled" to endorse national missile defense this summer.
Missile Test Failure Points to Bigger Problem By PAUL RICHTER, Los Angeles Times Saturday, January 22, 2000 -- Twenty years ago, the "Battle manager" system "was seen as a profound challenge," but with advances in computing and other technologies "today it's not seen as such," said John Pike, space analyst for the Federation of American Scientists. Still, the job is huge, and testing of the system remains at an early stage.
First Airborne Laser Aircraft Arrives at Boeing Wichita for Start of Major Modification Work Boeing 22 Jan 2000 -- The first Airborne Laser (ABL) flying platform - a 747-400 Freighter - flew into Boeing (NYSE: BA) facilities in Wichita, Kan., (Saturday, Jan. 22) and will immediately begin 18 months of major modification work by Team ABL. The aircraft left Paine Field in Everett, Wash., earlier on its next step toward becoming the world's first flying missile defense system.
Politics is fuse of controversial missile program By BRETT DAVIS, The Huntsville Times 01/21/2000 -- ''Obviously, this is the most complicated weapon the Pentagon is buying, and it's being tested less than any other weapon,'' said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists.
Air Force successfully launches upgraded communications satellite built by Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space Lockheed Martin 21 Jan 2000 -- The U.S. Air Force successfully launched the eleventh of 14 communications satellites, built by Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, yesterday at 8:03 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla.
ANOTHER ANTI-MISSILE MISSILE FAILURE Voice of America 21 January 2000 -- An unsuccessful anti-ballistic missile test by the United States is a popular topic on many newspaper editorial pages at week's end, as the nation debates the wisdom of going ahead with a defense against possible missile attacks by so-called "rogue" nations.
Lockheed Martin and U.S. Air Force Kick Off Cape Canaveral New Year With Successful Atlas Launch of Defense Communications Satellite Lockheed Martin 20 Jan 2000 -- An Atlas rocket lit up the Florida sky tonight with the successful launch of the Defense Satellite Communications System III (DSCS III) satellite for the U.S. Air Force. Liftoff occurred at 8:03 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, followed by successful spacecraft separation from the launch vehicle just under a half hour later.
Infrared Systems Cause Missile Test to Fail By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service 20 January 2000 -- Preliminary data indicates two infrared sensors aboard the exoatmospheric kill vehicle, an experimental DoD missile, caused the failure of a National Missile Defense test Jan. 18.
DoD News Briefing Thursday, January 20, 2000 -- Right now, no decision has been made to change the date of the next test. That's scheduled for April or May -- late April or early May. If that test goes off on schedule, and if the results are good, I wouldn't anticipate that there'd be a delay in the Defense [sic] Readiness Review. This is a program that has considerable congressional support because of the perceived threat, and it has considerable support in this building because of the perceived threat. So we'll have to weigh a whole series of factors.
Seeker fault cited in failure of missile defense intercept test Aerospace Daily January 20, 2000 -- The best way for Clinton to make NMD a non-issue for Gore is to give an okay for deployment, which would be easier if there were three successful intercept tests before the review, Pike added.
Missile Test Off by 6 Seconds, Data Show PAUL RICHTER, Los Angeles Times January 20, 2000 -- As with the rest of the missile defense system, "there are so many things that could go wrong, and everything has to go right," said John Pike, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
Pentagon: Sensors failed 'kill vehicle' in 2nd trial Critics fear that missile defense is being rushed Andrea Stone USA TODAY January 20, 2000 -- John Pike, a defense analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, suspects that even another test failure wouldn't kill the program. "This is a political decision driven by the need to defend Al Gore against the Republicans rather than defend America against missiles," he said.
Delay Sought in Decision on Missile Defense By ELIZABETH BECKER and ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times January 20, 2000 -- "The president's deployment decision will have more to do with defending Al Gore against George Bush than the American people against North Korea," said John Pike, of the Federation of American Scientists. "They will need a lot more tests to decide whether this will work."
REGIONAL VIEWS ON U.S. NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE PLANS, ABM TREATY REVISIONS Foreign Media Reaction 19 January 2000 -- Potential U.S. plans to build and deploy a national missile defense (NMD) system and related efforts to secure Russian agreement to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty met with widespread criticism from the vast majority of editorial writers from Russia, Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
Ballistic Missile Intercept Test Background Briefing Wednesday, January 19, 2000 -- If you take the ground test, the test preparation, the actual conducting of the test and the hardware, we estimate this is a $100 million test, it's a three-month campaign minimum to get to this test. I said the other day, you know, a miss doesn't necessarily mean a failure; a hit doesn't necessarily mean success. Everything appeared nominal till we got to the end-game and the kill vehicle failed to conduct the intercept. The target update went out, the EKV [exoatmospheric kill vehicle] separated, the first star shot -- remember the star shot from the last time -- opened his eyes, did the maneuver. Opened his eyes, saw the star, kicked back over, flew a little further, did the second star shot, and it appears -- it appears -- that when it opened its eyes a second time it didn't immediately see the star. So did his first step-function, saw the star, correlated itself, kicked over and started to look at the target, where it thought the target complex was. The bottom line is the star shots appeared to work this time, where last time they apparently didn't. It apparently saw the target complex nearly dead-center. This seeker has two infrared sensors and one visual light. It appears that the visual light sensor package acquired the target and began the discrimination process. It appears that there was an anomaly or an issue with the IR sensor packages -- IR being the infrared. The test set-up was to use the IR in the very end-game. The very end-game time sequence was just under six seconds. Preliminary indications -- and I want to emphasize "preliminary" -- is that the visual light sensor was able to do the discrimination between decoy and RV.
WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING January 19, 2000 -- There's no reason at this point to believe that they can't meet their summer deadline of making a recommendation to the President, but it's not something that's completely knowable at this point.
Deployment of Missile Defense System Could Cause New Arms Races With Russia, China CNN THE WORLD TODAY January 19, 2000 -- JOHN PIKE, FED. OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: I think that Clinton's political advisers are basically going to say, let's go ahead and deploy this thing, take away the Republican's campaign issue, and we'll let President Gore sort the mess out after he gets elected.
U.S. Missile Intercept Test Fails CBS News January 19, 2000 - According to John Pike, Federation of American Scientists, "It's obvious that a lot of the pieces of (the prototype) worked. The problem of course, is that in actual combat all of the pieces are going to have to work, or the system fails completely. And the most important part, actually killing the warhead, didn't happen here."
MISSILE TEST FAILS Voice of America 19 January 2000 -- Critics of the effort to build missile defenses, including Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists, say President Clinton should delay that decision.
U-S MISSILE DEFENSE Voice of America 19 January 2000 -- John Isaacs, president and arms control spokesman for the liberal Council for a Livable World, says the Clinton Administration has placed itself in a political bind by promising a deployment decision by June, when only limited testing data on the N-M-D program will be available.
MISSILE TEST Voice of America 18 January 2000 -- The United States is set to make a key test of a system designed to protect the country against ballistic missiles Tuesday evening.
DoD News Briefing Tuesday, January 18, 2000 -- We won't know whether we can call this an integrated systems test until after the test is over and all of the data has been evaluated. If all the elements work successfully, based on post-flight analysis, then we can consider this an integrated systems test. If the test fails in the sense that the interceptor does not hit the reentry vehicle, it would be difficult to call it a successful integrated systems test. The Ballistic Missile Defense Office set the two successful intercepts, one of which is an integrated systems test, as the bare minimum standard that would give them confidence that we can proceed with the program.
U.S. TEST OF MISSILE DEFENSE FAILS John Diamond Chicago Tribune January 19, 2000 -- "A simple political commitment by this president to deploy a national missile defense simply inoculates Al Gore in the fall campaign" said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists.
'Star wars' shield threatens treaties Justin Brown The Christian Science Monitor TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2000 -- "North Korea is an absurd reason to make such a high-risk decision," says Charles Ferguson of the American Federation of Scientists. "No other country in the world shares the fear that North Korea is an imminent nuclear threat."
NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE CONDUCTS INTERCEPT TEST January 18, 2000 -- The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's (BMDO) National Missile Defense (NMD) Joint Program Office announced it performed a test today involving a planned intercept of a ballistic missile target over the central Pacific Ocean. An intercept was not achieved.
Missile Shield Still Drawing Friends, Fire Bradley Graham Washington Post January 17, 2000 -- . Specialists such as Postol, his MIT colleague George Lewis and John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington argue that the system can be readily defeated by, for instance, dispersing lightweight warhead replicas alongside the real thing.
Missile Test FOX NEWS NETWORK SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME January 17, 2000 -- JOHN PIKE, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: In the real world, there are going to be a hundred objects out there. They're all going to look the same. And there's no way to tell which one's the real warhead. They got lucky in this test. They're not going to get lucky in combat.
MISSILE DEFENSE TEST Voice of America 14 January 2000 -- Defense expert John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists says the president faces political as well as technical questions.
Background Briefing: National Missile Defense Friday, 14 January, 2000 -- IFT-4, Integrated Flight Test No. 4 is a fourth in our series of flight tests, but this is our second attempt to try to do an actual intercept of an ICBM-class target at a closing speed of about 15,000 miles an hour, and the altitude will be in excess of 120 miles. This will be the first time we will begin integrating other elements of the NMD system into the actual test scenario. This setup is a simulated reentry vehicle and one large balloon. But since the balloon has a different signature than a normal decoy would -- a normal decoy would look like a regular RV -- it makes it much easier than a real-life situation. Whether Integrated Flight Test 4 will be deemed an integrated systems test has not been decided yet, for the purposes of the DRR. In Integrated Flight Test 5, which is scheduled for April or May, we will have another element as part of the BMC3, the IFICS -- the In-Flight Interceptor Communications System.

Boeing to Acquire Hughes' Space and Communications Businesses Boeing 13 Jan 2000 -- The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) and Hughes Electronics Corporation (NYSE: GMH) announced that Boeing will acquire Hughes' space and communications business and related operations for a value of $3.75 billion in cash.
Guard Teams to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service 13 January 2000 -- DoD announced plans Jan. 13 to form 17 more Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, bringing the total nationwide to 27.
DoD Helps Hometown USA Confront Terrorism By Linda D. Kozaryn American Forces Press Service 13 January 2000 -- In the event that terrorists strike, DoD is considering ways to best support civil authorities in the event of terrorist attacks involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Contrary to some critics' view that defense officials and the media have hyped the threat, DoD and the media share a responsibility for educating the public.
Task Force Counters Terrorist WMD Threat By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service 13 January 2000 -- The Joint Task Force, part of U.S. Joint Forces Command, will always work only in support of a civilian federal lead agency. The FBI would be the lead agent for investigations.
DOD ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR 17 NEW WMD CIVIL SUPPORT TEAMS January 13, 2000 - Beginning in fiscal 2000, Guard members selected for these 17 new teams will undergo 15 months of rigorous individual and unit training. Following the training, they will be evaluated for operational certification.
DoD News Briefing Thursday, January 13, 2000 -- Secretary Cohen is announcing the establishment and location of 17 additional weapons-of-mass- destruction civil support teams. The WMD civil support teams will be able to deploy rapidly, assist local first-responders in determining the nature of an attack, provide medical and technical advice, and pave the way for the identification and arrival of follow-on state and federal military response assets. Each WMD civil support team consists of 22 highly skilled full-time members of the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard. The Department of Defense has no plans to create 54 teams. The Department of Defense is going to implement the 27 teams that have been authorized by Congress. In fiscal year 1999, we expended a little over $60 million to train up and employ and equip these teams.
ORBITAL SET TO LAUNCH NEW OSP ROCKET FOR U.S.AIR FORCE ON JANUARY 14 Orbital Sciences Corp. 12 Jan 2000 -- Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) announced that it is in final preparations to launch the U.S. Air Force's Orbital/Suborbital Program (OSP) space launch vehicle on Friday, January 14, 2000 from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California.
Should The U.S Have A Missile Defense System? YES By Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas American Legion January 2000 - We need a reliable and effective national missile defense system. Defending America outweighs our Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with a nation (the Soviet Union) that no longer exists.
Should The U.S Have A Missile Defense System? NO By Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga. American Legion January 2000 - President Reagan called for an anti-ballistic missile defense system 16 years ago. Forty billion dollars later, we don't have a weapon that can shoot down an ICBM.
Pentagon said to lack understanding of satellite's vulnerability to attack The Associated Press January 5, 2000, John Pike, a representative of the military weapons watchdog group Federation of American Scientists, said such high-tech military testing will encourage other nations to develop anti-satellite weapons. "We live in a glass house," Pike said. "We should not be organizing rock-throwing contests."
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control - Dallas Receives $143 Million for the PAC-3 Missile Lockheed Martin 05 Jan 2000 -- Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control - Dallas has received three contracts valued at more than $143 million for the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) Missile. All three contracts, issued in late December, were awarded by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) in Huntsville, Ala.
BOEING-BUILT XM-1 SATELLITE READY FOR LAUNCH Boeing 04 Jan 2000 -- The XM-1 spacecraft was built for XM Satellite Radio Inc., Washington D.C., by Boeing Satellite Systems, Inc. (BSS), a unit of The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA). The XM-1 satellite - designated as 'Roll' - is scheduled to launch on Jan 8, 2001 from the Sea Launch floating launch platform near the equator.

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