1.   Besides a mock warhead, the missile will carry a single balloon decoy to try to trick the NMD system into attacking the wrong target.

2.   Abandoned were spherical balloons whose stripes made their infrared emissions fluctuate, rigid decoys that looked like mock warheads and balloons that inflated to conelike shapes.

3.   But during that time, the tests have been downgraded in complexity, now using only one decoy that is much larger and brighter than the mock warhead.

4.   But it later was forced to acknowledge that the kill vehicle initially had drifted off course and picked out the large bright decoy balloon instead of the mock warhead.

5.   Defense Department officials blamed malfunctioning plumbing on the interceptor rocket for the failure of the interceptor to hit the mock warhead.

6.   If the kill vehicle destroys the mock warhead, the sky will be filled with a blinding flash.

7.   In addition to carrying a mock warhead, the missile will carry a single balloon decoy to try and trick the NMD system into attacking the wrong target.

8.   In the test, an interceptor rocket fired from a Pacific island will try to shoot down a mock warhead in outer space.

9.   In the three tests so far, the interceptor twice missed the mock incoming warhead and produced one partial success.

10.   In two preliminary tests of the system, the anti-missile missile or kill vehicle was able to hit a mock warhead only once.