Missiles

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

MOSCOW - Russia may consider a preemptive strike on a missile defense system in Europe if the U.S.-led NATO project continues as planned, a top official said Thursday. Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov, in a sign of the tension between Russia and the United States over the missile defense plans, said during an international conference that a strike by his country might be possible. "A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Makarov said.

Long gone are the soldiers who kept guard at this former Army facility, searching the skies for Soviet planes that might soar in from the Pacific to bomb the city. Their weather-battered guard shack off a gravelly road in the steep hills behind Encino now has rusted window frames and a hole in one wall. But the radar tower still stands tall, overlooking the San Fernando Valley to the north and the central city to the southeast.

NEW DELHI - India on Thursday successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile that landed 20 minutes later in the Indian Ocean. The 50-ton, 55-foot three-stage Agni V rocket, named after the Hindu god for fire and dubbed the "China killer" by some in India's hyperactive news media, reportedly reached its target at the outer end of its 3,100-mile range, confirming that the weapon system can reach Shanghai and Beijing. It lifted off from an island in the eastern state of Odisha.

Your March 22 report, "Deal to Build Two Missile Systems Seen," characterizes funding both MX and Midgetman missiles as a compromise. The Air Force and Congress can't agree which missile is needed. Neither missile can increase national security because land-based missiles are no longer survivable. Building both missiles resolves the controversy in the wrong direction by increasing the budget deficit without increasing national security. A better answer is to build neither missile and to negotiate cuts to nuclear arsenals.

North Korea test-launched five short-range missiles Monday, reports said, in what analysts said was an attempt to improve its bargaining position ahead of possible talks with the United States. North Korea has recently reached out to the U.S. and South Korea following months of tension over its nuclear and missile tests this year. Leader Kim Jong Il told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week that his government might return to stalled six-nation negotiations on its nuclear program depending on the outcome of direct talks it seeks with the United States.

A 5-pound missile the size of a loaf of French bread is being quietly tested in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles as the military searches for more deadly and far more precise robotic weapons for modern warfare. In the next month or so, researchers at the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake expect to test a 2-foot-long Spike missile that is about a "quarter of the size of the next smallest on the planet," said Steve Felix, the missile project's manager.

More than 50 types of tactical missiles and precision-guided munitions have been deployed on aircraft, ships and ground units in the Persian Gulf War, providing troops with the mainstay of their firepower so far. The missiles can cost up to $1.25 million each, but their high cost accompanies the capability to deliver warheads with pinpoint accuracy from long distances. Although fighter aircraft get greater publicity, it is the missiles that provide their fighting capability.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was quoted as saying that Russia had suggested deploying missiles in his former Soviet state to counter a proposed U.S. antimissile system in nearby countries. Lukashenko told the Wall Street Journal that even if Moscow did not deploy the Iskander missiles, Belarus would consider buying them for its own use. He also supported a Kremlin proposal to place the missiles in Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

Russia said it had sold short-range Tor-M1 air defense missiles to Iran, confirmation that their delivery took place despite U.S. complaints. Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov did not specify how many missile systems were delivered, but a Defense Ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity said not all the systems under contract were delivered.

WASHINGTON - The spectacular failure of a North Korean rocket, and the humiliation it presumably caused the nation's young new leader, makes it likely the regime will soon test a nuclear device or take other provocative actions, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts. The United Nations Security Council condemned North Korea for Friday's launch, saying it violated two previous U.N. resolutions. And the White House said it would not honor a promise to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid to the impoverished nation.

NEW YORK — A federal court judge sentenced convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison on Thursday, but in a swipe at prosecutors said there was no convincing evidence that he would have committed crimes they alleged if he had not been the target of a sting operation. Judge Shira Scheindlin gave the 45-year-old Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death," the minimum mandatory sentence for conspiring to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles. She also sentenced him to 15 years on three other counts of conspiracy to kill Americans and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.

SEOUL — President Obama has said he plans to continue negotiations with Russia this year involving a U.S. missile defense system to protect Europe and is not trying to "hide the ball" in dealing with the matter. Obama said Tuesday that he wants to spend time this year working through technical issues with the Russians. In a private conversation made public by a live microphone, President Obama on Monday appeared to be putting off diplomatic talks with Russian leaders about the controversial missile defense system until after the November election, prompting quick attacks from the president's Republican rivals.

This post has been updated. See note at the bottom for details.  A retired British businessman was expected to make his first appearance in a federal court in El Paso on Monday after he was extradited last week on charges that he tried to sell missile batteries to Iran in 2006. Christopher Tappin, 65, turned himself in Friday after fighting extradition for two years and was taken to El Paso by federal marshals. Daryl Fields, spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, told The Times that Tappin was scheduled to have an initial hearing on Monday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Castañeda.

An apparent U.S. drone strike early Thursday in northwest Pakistan killed a top Pakistani Taliban commander also serving as a key Al Qaeda operative, local officials said. The death of Badar Mansoor, 35, comes as the United States steps up its pace of drone missile attacks following a six-week hiatus after an airstrike accidentally killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in November. Thursday's predawn strike occurred in North Waziristan, the volatile tribal region that serves as a sanctuary for several militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban and the wing of the Afghan Taliban known as the Haqqani network.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Myanmar on Wednesday for a landmark three-day visit to the long-isolated nation focused on encouraging further political reforms, assessing recent progress and providing a road map for forging closer ties with the United States and Europe. But the highest priority of a meeting with Myanmar's foreign minister, according to a senior State Department official traveling with Clinton, will be to seek assurances that the Southeast Asian nation will halt purchases of missile technology from renegade North Korea.

The editorial misses several key points. First, the United States should not build a missile to fit an arms control goal. This is a political missile with no useful military purpose. The perceived goal not to represent a first-strike threat is nonsense since any ballistic missile represents a direct threat to the Soviets. Second, the Midgetman missile is too expensive ($35 billion to $40 billion) to develop and deploy for the number of missiles proposed, 500. Third, this missile may not be able to carry a large enough warhead for hard targets in the late 1990s.

On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled. A firefight had broken out. Taliban insurgents had ambushed about two dozen Marines patrolling a bitterly contested road. The Air Force captain angled his joystick and the drone veered toward the fighting taking place half a world away, where it was already morning.

In November 2002, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists fired two shoulder-launched missiles at a chartered Israeli passenger jet as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya. Both shots missed, but it was an unnerving reminder that portable surface-to-air missiles have hit 40 civilian aircraft since 1975, mostly in war zones, causing 28 crashes and killing more than 800 people, according to a State Department report. The collapse of Moammar Kadafi's regime in Libya has prompted fear that terrorists may obtain shoulder-fired missiles from Libyan weapons depots, just as Iraqi insurgents pilfered arsenals after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.