In order to defend the American soil, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has been developing, testing and deploying the Ballistic Missile Defense System. This system is designed to intercept and destroy any ballistic missile attack from a rogue nation on each one of the three phases of a missile flight: boost, midcourse and terminal phase. The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), with the use of Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs), is responsible for intercepting long rage ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase flight and destroys them through collision force.Here at Vandenberg AFB, the MDA has GBI’s emplaced in their silos and Integrated Flights Tests will be used to test the initial defense capabilities of the system. One of these tests is the FT04-1 mission, which purpose is to demonstrate the system performance against a nominal target launched from Kodiak Launch Complex (KLC). Once the target is launched from KLC, the Early Warning Radar from Beale should be able to track for the missile, and send this data to other GMD elements.Simultaneously, VAFB personnel will be simulating an interceptor launch to intercept the target missile from KLC. Vandenberg personnel include officers from the 1st Air and Space Test Squadron, the 2nd Range Operation Squadron and the 2nd Weather Squadron. They are providing support for the FT04-1 mission by lending launch team expertise to the user. The capabilities of the GMD and the contribution of our VAFB personnel provides without a doubt protection to our homeland against any ballistic missiles.
(This article was written by Juan Siancas Tao for the Space & Missile Times)