May 6, 2004 :: Global Security Newswire :: News
The Missile Defense agency is reportedly planning to test the Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE) system in 2006, according to the Globalsecurity Newswire, citing an apparent email discussion among defense officials. The NFIRE has the potential to aid in the development of a space-based kill vehicle to be used to intercept a ballistic missile.
The NFIRE spacecraft is said to be under construction and planned for launch in late 2005. The 2006 test, supposing it were to occur, would probably not involve an interception, except incidentally, but only the gathering of sensor data. The interceptor is said to not be capable of “weapon-like” movement; “There is a significant chance the KV will impact the target, but that is not our objective.”
Globalsecurity Newswire goes on to cite a host of missile defense opponents, mostly from the Center for Defense Information, warning that such a test, if successfuly, would legitimize the “weaponization of space.” They include Theresa Hitchens and Philip Coyle of CDI, and Theodore Postol of MIT, well known for their opposition to all missile things defensive. Alternatively, they also suggest such a test will not work. All the sources cited agreed, however, that the basing of defenses in space would be a bad policy.
But it is precisely because the NFIRE has the prospect to legitimize space-based defenses that it should be praised, and encouraged. Space-based defenses hold the most promise for effective and quick interceptions, and is a platform for defense essential to the protection of America’s host of space assets.
In criticizing the more difficult to achieve land-based boost-phase interceptor, the KEI, James T. Hackett has recently written that the United States should return to a Brilliant Pebbles concept, where a space based interceptor detects, and then comes down from orbit to collide with, an enemy ballistic missile. The Center for Security Policy has widely made similar arguments. To be added to these arguments, however, should be a positive defense of the NFIRE concept, which seems to hold the most prospect for returning to Brilliant Pebbles. (Article)
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