Team Infidel
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Boston Globe
February 25, 2008 Team analyzed impact of missile
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
ABOARD THE USS LAKE ERIE - A team of engineers from Raytheon Co. were onboard this Navy warship when it destroyed a crippled satellite last week to help assess whether the missile destroyed the spacecraft more than 130 miles above the earth.
"We had a Raytheon contingent onboard," Lieutenant Commander Drew Bates, the combat systems officer on the Lake Erie, said late Saturday, a day after the cruiser returned to port in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after the successful intercept.
Among them was the lead engineer for the SM-3 Standard missile, which was built by the Waltham-based defense company's Missile Systems Division in Tucson but was originally designed to intercept aircraft and missiles - not satellites.
"He had several [other] folks [from Raytheon] as well that were helping with the kill assessment once we got the video back from the seeker head on the missile," Bates said, standing a few feet from where their missile was launched from a vertical tube on the deck of the ship. "That all had to be run through an analysis to figure out whether we had done the job or not."
Raytheon said the successful intercept "demonstrates the capability of the SM-3 missile to meet a unique situation and perform beyond its intended purpose."
The missile, it added, "was never designed to engage a satellite. Much engineering and technical expertise made this one-time mission possible."
The first-of-its-kind mission, ordered by President Bush to prevent the out-of-control spy satellite from dumping a hazardous fuel called hydrazine on a population center, captured world attention.
The ship's 360-person crew - along with about 35 contractors from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. - practiced the mission more than 120 times over the previous month and a half, the ship's captain, Randall M. Hendrickson, said.
But "if I didn't have the engineers getting me from point A to point B, I couldn't get to the spot I needed to shoot," he said.
February 25, 2008 Team analyzed impact of missile
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
ABOARD THE USS LAKE ERIE - A team of engineers from Raytheon Co. were onboard this Navy warship when it destroyed a crippled satellite last week to help assess whether the missile destroyed the spacecraft more than 130 miles above the earth.
"We had a Raytheon contingent onboard," Lieutenant Commander Drew Bates, the combat systems officer on the Lake Erie, said late Saturday, a day after the cruiser returned to port in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after the successful intercept.
Among them was the lead engineer for the SM-3 Standard missile, which was built by the Waltham-based defense company's Missile Systems Division in Tucson but was originally designed to intercept aircraft and missiles - not satellites.
"He had several [other] folks [from Raytheon] as well that were helping with the kill assessment once we got the video back from the seeker head on the missile," Bates said, standing a few feet from where their missile was launched from a vertical tube on the deck of the ship. "That all had to be run through an analysis to figure out whether we had done the job or not."
Raytheon said the successful intercept "demonstrates the capability of the SM-3 missile to meet a unique situation and perform beyond its intended purpose."
The missile, it added, "was never designed to engage a satellite. Much engineering and technical expertise made this one-time mission possible."
The first-of-its-kind mission, ordered by President Bush to prevent the out-of-control spy satellite from dumping a hazardous fuel called hydrazine on a population center, captured world attention.
The ship's 360-person crew - along with about 35 contractors from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. - practiced the mission more than 120 times over the previous month and a half, the ship's captain, Randall M. Hendrickson, said.
But "if I didn't have the engineers getting me from point A to point B, I couldn't get to the spot I needed to shoot," he said.