With less than a month left to meet its oft-stated goal of putting an initial U.S. territorial missile shield on alert by the end of 2004, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) says that step will be taken only after the system is judged to be ready for operations. As recently as July, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, the MDA's director, said the agency was on track to put the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System on alert before the end of the year. That remains the objective, but the MDA is not up against any hard deadline, Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the agency, said Dec. 1. Top military brass at the U.S. Northern, Pacific and Strategic commands are monitoring the MDA's progress with sys-tem deployment and testing, Lehner said. Once they feel confident that the shield is truly ready for action they will recommend to the U.S. secretary of defense that it be put on alert, he said.
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