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US cuts missile tests to meet president's deadline

The US risks "impairing" its program to build a missile defense because it's taking shortcuts to meet a White House directive to have a system in place by October 2004, the government's General Accounting Office says.

The Pentagon cut by half a 20-flight intercept test program through 2007 and eliminated a test scheduled for between April and June of 2004. Senate Democrats say politics is driving both the testing schedule and the decision to field a system one month before the next presidential elections.

The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional audit agency, says that to meet the deployment date, the Missile Defense Agency must abandon controls it adopted to develop the system more slowly and by making incremental improvements instead of a major leap.

"Giving up this approach opens the door to greater cost and performance risks," the agency says in its assessment. "While doing so may help meet the president's deadline, it also increases the potential some elements may not work as intended."

Ten missiles designed to intercept ballistic missiles like those being developed by North Korea before they can hit the US are scheduled to go on alert in October 2004 at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
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