- guardian.co.uk, Monday July 10 2000 01.08 BST
The Minuteman II missile that was launched from Vandenberg air force base near Santa Barbara in southern California at the weekend was part of a £66m missile defence test. The dummy warhead was meant to have been destroyed in a 16,000 mile-an-hour collision by an interceptor rocket fired from the Pacific atoll of Kwajelien 4,500 miles away. But the interception failed because the "kill vehicle" did not separate from the rocket.
The failure has provided useful ammunition for opponents of the scheme who see it as an unnecessary escalation of nuclear capabilities promoted for bogus reasons by the military-industrial complex. It has also been hinted that President Bill Clinton is far from displeased with the flop because it allows him room to defer support for a missile defence system about which he has always been lukewarm.
Pentagon officials, who had watched the flight in silence from a basement in Washington, were trying to put a brave face on it yesterday. Lieutenant-General Ronald Kadish, the director of the Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation, said: "We're disappointed."
He added frankly that the failure of the kill vehicle to separate was "not even on my list" of things that might have gone wrong. "It did not receive a necessary electronic signal."
A White House spokesman said after the test that "a hit doesn't automatically suggest success. Nor does a failure automatically come with a miss".
Presidential candidate George W Bush, a big supporter of "Star Wars", said that the test had been "a disappointment". Al Gore said that he did not want to pre-empt analysis of what had gone wrong.
Leading members of the scientific community in the US have also attacked the tests.
And there was wide condemnation internationally.
Officials in Moscow said Saturday's failure showed it was impossible to create an impenetrable anti-missile shield.
A US official in China for arms control talks said after the test failure that Beijing reiterated its opposition to NMD. "They were clear, as they have been publicly, on their position on National Missile Defence. They don't like the idea," senior US arms control adviser John Holum said.
