10
University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Wednesday, April 23, 1986
Tomahawk destroys target Navy's missile test successful
United Press International
WARNINGTON — The Navy, in the first test of its kind with a Tonahawk cruise missile, destroyed a target airplane with an explosion 100 feet in the air, the Pentagon announced yesterday.
yesterday.
The successful April 1 test of the aircraft with a conventional warhead means a wider range of targets can be chosen for the jet-powered cruise missile, a Pentagon spokesman said.
spokeman said.
This opens up more targets to the $2 million missile — chiefly parked warplanes and command and control facilities concealed behind barriers, spokesman said. The test blast over a jet plane on the ground shattered the target, a film showed.
target, a unrelated test, an Air Force B-52G bomber receiving targeting data from Navy units fired a Harpoon air-to-surface missile for the first time in conjunction with a Navy fleet exercise, the Pentagon said. The maneuvers were Sunday in the
eastern Caribbean.
eastern California.
The 18-foot Tomahawk cruise missile was launched from a submarine to submarine at an unmanned depth in the Pacific Ocean and aimed at the plane on the ground at San Clemente Island off the southern California coast, the Pentagon said. The distance to the target was 474 miles and the missile flew at 550 mph.
The warhead exploded less than 100 feet above the target aircraft and the airplane was destroyed, said Bob Holsapple, a spokesman for the Pentagon's cruise missile office.
tagon's cries.
So that the Pentagon was extricated, satisfied with the test and that it was much better than expected.
expected.
Although conventional and nuclear warfare can be timed to explode over their targets, the Navy test marked the first time an airburst was tried with a cruise missile, the spokesmen said.
It's the first time we flew a warhead for a programmable burst
over the target," Holsapple said
the target, Hossein Mousavi. The headwas a 1,000-pound Bullpulld, which was taken from an air-to-surface Navy missile of the same name. The Bullpulld missile has been out of production since 1969.
been out of the plane.
A color palette of the test aired for reporters showed the missile fly over sea and ground and exploding into a fireball directly over the target aircraft, the blast shattering the plane. A chase plane flew alongside the missile to monitor its flight.
The missile receives continuing updates from its computer about the terrain it is following to the target. In the final update, when the distance to the target is determined, the computer signals the warhead precisely when to explode.
The $2 million cruise missile is jet powered and equipped with sophisticated radar and a terrain-mapping computer that enables it to hug the ground below radar defenses. It can be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.
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