Just hours after a Navy missile interceptor struck a dying spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, a senior military officer expressed high confidence early Thursday that a tank filled with toxic rocket fuel had been breached.
The order by President Bush for the Navy to launch an antimissile interceptor to destroy a disabled satellite before it falls from orbit carries opportunity, but also potential embarrassment, for the administration and advocates of its missile defense program.
The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.
North Korea appears closer to deploying a new mobile ballistic missile that is a worrisome increase in that nation's military capacity, but American government officials stress that the weapon can not reach the continental United States.
The recent missile attack on an Israeli passenger plane was a stark warning that another long-feared threat may be on the rise: terrorists shooting down commercial aircraft with shoulder-fired missiles designed for battlefield attacks on swift combat jets.
In the latest release of once-classified reports on chemical warfare tests during the cold war, the Pentagon said today that it detonated artillery shells and rockets filled with deadly Sarin gas in Hawaii in 1967.
An American intelligence assessment, completed this week as tensions between India and Pakistan intensified, warns that a full-scale nuclear exchange between the two rivals could kill up to 12 million people immediately and injure up to 7 million.
Administration officials have briefed Congress on what they described as disturbing intelligence indicating that Russia is preparing to resume nuclear tests, even as President Bush is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss arms control later this month.