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← Today at the Talk Radio News Service Pentagon Briefing on satellite shoot-down →

General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed the press about a mission to shoot down a defunct satellite with a tactical missile

February 21st, 2008 by Meredith MacKenzie · No Comments

Gen. Cartwright Looks On

Gen. Cartwright repeated the Defense Department’s previous statement that the shot from the USS Lake Erie was a direct hit, though he said there is no “smoking gun” as to whether the fuel tank had been hit. The video of the impact showed some indications, he said, that the tank was breached such as a fireball and a vapor cloud. But Cartwright said that they are still compiling all the radar evidence and at at this time the military is about 90 percent sure that the tank was breached.

Cartwright said that no debris any larger than the size of a football has been identified thus far, though the military will be tracking the debris for its next three rotations of the earth. Most of this debris is expected to burn up upon its reentry into the atmosphere. Overall, he said that the various commands working on the project were pleased. He said that this operation didn’t give any new insight into the realm of missile defense since the missiles used had been modified away from their original purpose of defensive missile interception to perform this shot. The main difference Cartwright expressed, is that the satellite target is not like the missiles originally intended target–an intercontinental ballistic missile, in that the satellite does not follow a ballistic trajectory, it was traveling faster and it is not aerodynamic.

The two prepared, but unused back-up missiles will be reverted to their original purpose of missile defense over the course of the next few weeks. Cartwright said that all the debris which does not burn up in the next 48 hours should de-orbit over the next month.

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