Boeing-Missile Defense Works Better Than Expected

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co. (BA.N) on Monday said its complex system to defend against enemy missile attacks proved more reliable than expected and required less maintenance when it went on alert for a prolonged period last summer before a series of North Korean missile tests.

"We're ready to defend the nation," Scott Fancher, vice president and program director of the system, said of the ground-based midcourse (GMD) missile defense system Boeing is developing for the Pentagon.

The system was built to intercept and destroy enemy long-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of their flight. It went on alert before the North Korean missile tests for "much longer than it had ever been before," Fancher said, although he declined to give an exact timespan.

"The system was much more robust than we had hoped," he said, referring to its software and memory banks.

The U.S. missile defense system was never engaged because North Korea's long-range Taepodong 2 missile fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan shortly after its launch.

Boeing, prime contractor for $13 billion system, was quickly able to correct the few issues that did arise, including memory buffers filling up, he said.

Increased investment by the Missile Defense Agency over the past two years will give the system a "fairly significant" capacity by the end of the year to simultaneously continue testing and keep the system operational, he said.

By the end of 2008, it should reach full capacity for simultaneous test and operation, he said.