US Defense Secretary William Cohen has delayed passing recommendations on the planned $36 billion National Missile Defense (NMD) system to US President Bill Clinton until early next month.
The delay comes as the Department of Defense acknowledges development delays with the controversial anti-ballistic missile system.
Cohen says "a number of difficult issues remain to be resolved", including development problems with the Boeing ground-based interceptor. Booster flight trials have slipped from April to early next year, says the DoD.
The Pentagon says: "There is no question that the booster is behind schedule and the question is, what can be done about it, if anything, and how it affects the general programme."
The DoD must also decide whether to delay the next intercept test from the third quarter to December or later.
Failure of the two most recent flight tests raises doubts that a 2005 deployment date for 20 interceptors is possible. The January failure was caused by a cooling problem on the Raytheon exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV), while in July a faulty electronic component failed to release the EKV from the booster.
Cohen says no recommendation will be made until completion of an internal NMD review.
Source: Flight International