US Missile Defense System
Missile Salvo
US missile defence system under fire: "The truth is we withheld crucial information and colluded with contractors."
Another salvo has been fired at the controversial US missile defense system by one of its own investigators.
An engineer employed by an investigative government watchdog, the Washington DC-based Government Accountability Office, has accused the GAO of covering up the failed test firing of a prototype missile.
"The truth is that we withheld crucial information, skewed other information, and colluded with the contractors and the program officials to put a positive spin on the results of a test that was a failure," wrote subcontractor Subrata Ghoshroy in a December letter to California Congress member Howard Berman that was released publicly on Sunday April 2, 2006.
"I could no longer remain silent."
The weapon being tested was a Boeing-made "kill vehicle" that used an infrared sensor and software to distinguish long-range nuclear missiles from decoys.
A rocket boosts the vehicle into space, where it is supposed to detect, track and destroy the missile. The vehicle was tested in June 1997 and later that year the Department of Defense contractor Boeing and its subcontractor TRW, declared it a success in a classified document.
It has become a central part of the Bush administration's missile defence strategy.
However, the vehicle's ability to distinguish between a target and decoys has been in doubt.
As a result the GAO investigated the 1997 test, and produced two reports on 2002.
Now Ghoshroy, who led the technical investigation, says that the reports exonerated the contractors despite evidence that the test results were fraudulent.
He found that the missile's IR sensor was not cooled sufficiently and that the IR data was too noisy to interpret, making the success of the 1997 test impossible.
Yet these findings were relegated to the appendix of the GAO reports, which dodged the question of fraud, says Ghoshroy.
GAO comptroller General David Walker says the GAO report was investigated three times internally and was not intended "to draw any conclusion of guilt or innocence".
Source: NewScientist issue 2546 April, 2006
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