Military releases few details on Kodiak rocket explosion, finds 'no issues' with state range

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/article/20150206/military-releases-few-details-kodiak-rocket-explosion-finds-no-issues-state-range

Military releases few details on Kodiak rocket explosion, finds 'no issues' with state range
Dermot Cole
February 6, 2015

FAIRBANKS — The military says it knows why a rocket launched from the state-owned Kodiak rocket range had to be destroyed four seconds after launch last August, but refuses to release the report or disclose specific details of its contents other than to say “an external thermal protective cover designed to regulate motor temperature interfered with the launch vehicle steering assembly.”

Because of the steering problem created by the support equipment, the test range flight safety officer made the correct decision to blow up the rocket just after launch, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

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The Aug. 25 launch was to test the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, part of what the military calls the “conventional prompt global strike” program. The glider is designed to carry a weapon thousands of miles at five to 10 times the speed of sound. The goal of the global-strike effort is to develop the technology to hit a target anywhere in the world in as little as an hour without using nuclear weapons.

A Congressional Research Service report in August said that while proponents have said the high-speed weapons would reduce the nuclear threat, critics have charged “it might upset stability and possibly increase the risk of a nuclear response to a U.S. attack. This risk derives, in part, from the possibility that nations detecting the launch of a U.S. PGS (prompt global strike) weapon would not be able to determine whether the weapon carried a nuclear or conventional warhead. Congress has raised concerns about this possibility in the past.”