September 11, 2006 :: News
Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO), former chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Arms Services Committee which oversees ballistic missile defense, spoke on the Senate floor about the recent successes of the Missile Defense Agency on Friday, September 8. Senator Allard made note of several successful intercepts in recent months, including the September 1 test of the ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, which destroyed an incoming missile, as well as recent tests of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), and the sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Senator Allard praised MDA for learning from past setbacks, and argued that the U.S. missile defense system should be challenged even further. “We need more testing so that we can better understand the task at hand and discover the areas that must be improved,” he said. “I do not expect perfection. In fact, I expect some failures. But, in the context of several missile defense intercepts tests per year, one or two failures only means that we are pushing to find out the real capabilities of the system.”
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