U.S Successfully Flight Tests Ballistic Missile Interceptor

The United States Missile Defense Agency has announced the successful flight test of a new ballistic missile defense interceptor. The target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, located on Kauai, Hawaii on May 10. The flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system was on board the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) and resulted in “the first intercept of a short-range ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean” by the Navy’s newest Missile Defense interceptor, the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1B. The USS Lake Erie successfully detected and tracked the missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar and launched the SM-3 Block IB interceptor. “The kinetic warhead acquired the target, diverted into its path, and, using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the threat in a hit-to-kill intercept,” the MDA said. Designed to intercept and destroy short to intermediate-range ballistic missile threats, the Aegis BMD is the sea-based midcourse component of the MDA's Ballistic Missile Defense System. The new interceptor is part of the U.S’s anti-missile system the United States is building in and around Europe which is to be deployed in Romania by 2015.