A Missile Defense Agency test was scrubbed Friday after the target went awry shortly after blasting off from Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, spokesman Rick Lehner said.

The target missile blasted off after 7 a.m., with the interceptor expected to pop out of its underground silo on north Vandenberg Air Force Base about 20 minutes later. However, Vandenberg's vehicle remained in place, and officials labeled it as a “no test.”

“We had a target failure,” Lehner said. “It just did not reach the proper range or altitude for us to launch the interceptor.”

Since the Ground-based Missile Defense system's command-and-control equipment didn't consider the target to be a threat, it didn't trigger the interceptor to fly, Lehner added.

“People are disappointed we couldn't do the test today,” Lehner said.

“We didn't launch the interceptor, which is good from the standpoint of we didn't waste an interceptor.”

The system, which includes interceptors on alert at Vandenberg and Fort Greely, Alaska, is designed to guard against a limited long-range missile attack.

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In a scenario similar to last September's successful intercept, the target and the “kill vehicle” were to meet up somewhere hundreds of miles west of California, and 100 to 200 miles above the Pacific Ocean, according to the mission's primary objective.

He didn't immediately know how much time had passed after the Alaska weapon blasted off or how far it traveled before the failure.

“It wasn't destroyed; it just failed and fell into the ocean,” Lehner said.

The target weapon was fully loaded with instruments, which collected data that should reveal if a missile stage burned for less time than expected or if a used rocket motor stage didn't separate as planned.

Retired Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile parts made up the target.

“We have a target modernization program to try to get some new target boosters because some of these that we use are more than 40 years old,” Lehner said.

He added that the agency has “never had a target failure in this program.”

However, in the early 1990s the military used retired Minuteman 1 missiles until a series of flops, including one that exploded seconds after blastoff and sparked a 1,000-acre grass fire that threatened the town of Casmalia.

Lehner couldn't say when the test would be rescheduled for, but estimated “the earliest could be a couple of months.”

It takes about 60 days to assemble and install a target missile at the Alaska site, he said.

Officials hope to reschedule the test for this summer, using a target planned for a test that had been set for the fall.

Janene Scully can be reached at 739-2214 or janscully@lompocrecord.com

May 27, 2007