BMD Watch: S-400s ready to defend Moscow

WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- Russia's new state-of-the-art S-400 missile defense system will be operational around Moscow by the beginning of July.

The commander of the Russian Air Force, three-star Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin, made the announcement Monday, RIA Novosti reported.

RIA Novosti described the S-400 Triumf system, designated by NATO as the SA-21 Growler, as "a new air defense missile system developed by the Almaz Central Design Bureau as an upgrade of the S-300 family."

"On July 1, one battalion of S-400 missile defense system will be put on combat duty to defend the airspace of Moscow and Central Russia," Zelin said.

According to the RIA Novosti report, Zelin said an S-400 battalion was still undergoing training and it would become operational on July 1, operating out of the town of Elektrostal in the Moscow oblast, or region.

RIA Novosti said the S-400 "has been designed to intercept and destroy airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 kilometers (250 miles), or twice the range of the MIM-104 Patriot, and 2.5 times that of the S-300PMU-2."

The news agency noted that in April, Col. Gen. Yury Solovyov, the head of Russia's Air Defense Forces Special Command, previously known as the Moscow Military District Air Defense Command, said the S-400 system could also be used for limited purposes in missile and space defense. However, it was not designed to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles, he said.

RIA Novosti also quoted Solovyov as claiming that the S-400 had the ability to destroy stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with an effective range of up to 2,200 miles and a speed of up to 3 miles per second, or 10,800 miles per hour.

RIA Novosti said Russia's Air Defense Forces have more than 30 regiments equipped with S-300 missile system, which will all eventually be re-equipped with the S-400s. Russia has sold the S-300 system to Iran.

MDA plans new GBI missile test Thursday

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is planning to test fire a Ground-based Midcourse Interceptor Thursday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to destroy a target missile that will be launched from Alaska, the Lompoc Record reported Tuesday.

If successful, it will be the second such test in a year. The MDA achieved a breakthrough successful test of the system against a missile target last September.

The Lompoc Record said the launch window for the test would be 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. local time. It said the target missile would be fired first from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska and the GBI would be launched from an underground silo in the north Vandenberg complex about 20 minutes later. Interception and destruction of the test missile is expected at altitudes between 100 miles and 200 miles above the eastern Pacific Ocean, the report said.

The newspaper quoted MDA spokesman Richard Lehner as saying that the objective of the test was not just to repeat September's successful result, but also to upgrade the system. "The overall objective of the test, like all of them, is to measure system performance so that we can make it better," Lehner said.

Radar tracking crews at Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., and at U.S. Air Force Space Command headquarters in Colorado would also participate in the test, the report said.

Lehner told the Record that the test had originally been scheduled for several months ago but that it had been postponed "mainly because we wanted to update the software based upon some ground testing that we did."

"We also had an issue with some of the telemetry equipment on board the test missile. ...That's all been fixed," he said.

Lehner also told the newspaper that the test had been designed to simulate the speed, altitude and trajectory of a possible intercontinental ballistic missile launch from North Korea.

On July 4, 2006, North Korea attempted to test launch its first ICBM, known as the Taepodong-2. However, the missile malfunctioned and failed shortly after take-off.

SpaceDev wins new $4.4M MDA micro-sat contract

SpaceDev Inc. announced May 9 that it had won "an additional $4.4 million contract modification to continue with Phase III of its micro-satellite program for the Missile Defense Agency."

"This third phase Task Order is the fabrication, integration and test phase and is the advancement of the company's existing contract to design and develop affordable high-performance networked micro-satellite systems to support national missile defense," SpaceDev said.

"We successfully completed an important functional test of our micro-satellite's integrated electronics and software on our sophisticated micro-satellite test bed," said Mark Sirangelo, SpaceDev's chairman and CEO. "Our program anticipates having major components for the first of the series of micro-satellites fabricated and integrated by the end of September 2007."

SpaceDev Inc. describes itself as "a space technology/aerospace company that creates and sells affordable and innovative space products and mission solutions."