Congressional Inquiry Cites Flaws in Antimissile Sensor

A Congressional inquiry into reports of corporate fraud has found widespread technical failures in a prototype antimissile sensor meant to track enemy warheads. It leaves open the question of whether the government contractors withheld information about those failures from military officials.
The 18-month inquiry, by the General Accounting Office, is the latest government examination of the questions raised by Dr. Nira Schwartz, a senior engineer at the contractor TRW Inc. in 1995 and 1996. Dr. Schwartz accused her employer of faking work on the sensor, which is meant to distinguish enemy warheads from decoys. TRW has long maintained that it did nothing wrong.
A report by the accounting office, to be made public today, details a litany of failures in the sensor, the product of a collaboration between TRW and the Boeing Company. The failures listed include noise, cooling and calibration problems; finding targets in space where none existed; and difficulty distinguishing mock warheads from decoys.