1.   And in a separate, somewhat paradoxical failure, the target of the interceptor also failed to work when it did not properly inflate a decoy balloon.

2.   But it later acknowledged that the kill vehicle had initially drifted off course and picked out a decoy balloon rather than the warhead.

3.   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.

4.   But later analysis showed that the kill vehicle had drifted off course and had initially homed in on a decoy balloon instead of the warhead.

5.   By contrast, the spherical decoy balloons have more uniform signatures.

6.   But when it actually performed the tests last October and this January, each flight had but one decoy balloon.

7.   Even with all the coaching, the computer brain of the kill vehicle had selected a decoy balloon, Schwartz and other experts said in interviews.

8.   It did manage to identify one star successfully, Raytheon said, and then found a decoy balloon that had been released by the test missile.

9.   It suffered initial navigational mistakes and found the target only after luckily homing in on a nearby decoy balloon.

10.   The sensors of the current missile defense system are not able to distinguish decoy balloons from those that contain nuclear warheads.