HOME PAGE
|
Friday, June 25, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Weekend missile test to be held
Review-Journal
For about three minutes Saturday morning, an Army surface-to-surface missile will soar through the sky over the Nevada Test Site in an exercise to test the reliability of the military's Multiple-Launch Rocket System, a test site spokesman said.
The spokesman, Derek Scammell, said the 13-foot-long missile, which is designed to deliver conventional warheads, will carry an inert warhead for the exercise.
He said the 70-mile planned flight path is in controlled air space over the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nellis Air Force Range and a part of the range known as the Tonopah Test Range, 200 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"The purpose of the launch is to collect missile performance data to support a military stockpile reliability program, and collect data to support a Joint Suppression of the Enemy Air Defenses experiment," according to an Energy Department statement.
The launch will be conducted by Army and Air Force personnel from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
"The missile will impact on a target pad at the Tonopah Test Range," the agency's statement said.
A British Broadcasting Corp. publication, "Science and Politics Behind the News," said the Multiple-Launch Rocket System is being deployed in Albania, close to the Kosovo border.
"Each launcher carries 12 missiles that can be ripple-fired over a range of about 20 miles within a minute. Each of the missiles is loaded with bomblets, and a single salvo delivers nearly 8,000 submunitions over an area of at least 45 acres," exploding with anti-personnel shrapnel fragments, according to the BBC.
In October 1997, a rocket that was launched from the Nevada Test Site went off course, which gave residents in the rural community of Goldfield a scare.
The 34-foot-long, $2 million Sandia National Laboratories experimental rocket cruised over the town before it crashed and burned on public lands about 10 miles from Goldfield.
The town is located about two miles from the Tonopah Test Range.
E-mail this story to a friend:
Give us your FEEDBACK on this or any story.
1999 BEST OF LAS VEGAS RESULTS
Fill out our Online Readers' Poll
|
Printable version of this story
|
