SDTW successfully launches missile Published April 6, 2007 By 1st Lt. Michael Carpenter Space Development and Test Wing KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, New Mexico -- A target missile was successfully launched on March 20 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., by the Space Development and Test Wing's 3rd Space Test Squadron here. The Target Launch Vehicle-5 traveled its course from California and impacted the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles west of the island of Kauai, Hawaii. This is the sixth successful mission of the TLV target missile for the Missile Defense Agency since 2000. TLV-5 used all three rocket motors of a retired Minuteman II missile plus a front section built by Orbital Sciences Corporation and Sandia National Laboratories. The three rocket motors were built in 1968, 1984 and 1965 respectively, and are a success story for the 3rd STS Aging and Surveillance program. The test squadron delivered the rocket motors from a stockpile of retired Air Force intercontinental ballistic missiles. The squadron stores, inspects, restores and tests these motors so that they can be used as target missiles or as spacelift vehicles to place satellites into orbit. Capt. Justin Knutzen, chief of the Long Range Targets Branch said, "It was a tremendous feeling to have contributed to a test this important to the defense of the nation and its citizens."