Navy missille defense test successful

AP/Fox News:

A Navy ship intercepted a medium-range missile warhead above the earth's atmosphere off Hawaii in the latest test of the U.S. missile defense program, the military said Thursday.

The military had initially scheduled the test for Wednesday but postponed the drill after a small craft ventured into a zone that had been blocked off for the event.

The USS Shiloh detected a medium-range target after it was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, then fired a Standard Missile-3 interceptor.

The interceptor shot down the target warhead after it separated from its rocket booster, more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and 250 miles northwest of Kauai, the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement.

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I am not sure what a Standard Missile-3 interceptor is, but I hope it is becomeing standard equipment and that we have some on board ships off the coast of North Korea. The Navy program has generally been based on the Aegis system that was originally designed to defend ships from enemy missile attacks. By attacking after seperation, it is not clear if the design gets to the warhead before decoys can be deployed. If it hit the rocket during the lift phase, it would take care of the decoy problem.

This report by Tom Finnegan provides more details.

For the seventh time in eight tries, a ship-based missile hit its intended ballistic missile target yesterday off Kauai's coast.

The test, the first to include a Japanese naval vessel equipped with tracking equipment, checked the ability of the Navy's portion of the ballistic missile defense system.

At about noon yesterday, the USS Shiloh, an Aegis-class cruiser from San Diego, tracked the target missile fired from Kauai's Pacific Missile Range Facility and destroyed the target warhead using only the rocket's kinetic energy, ballistic missile defense officials said.

The whole test took about six minutes from launch to collision, while the contact occurred more than 100 miles above the Pacific and 250 miles northwest of Kauai.

It was USS Shiloh's first test since being fitted with the tracking and communication systems, officials said, and the test also involved upgrades in weapon system configuration and a new missile configuration.

It also was the second attempt by a ship to shoot down a separating target. The first came in November when the USS Lake Erie successfully shot down a multistage target in another test.

The achievement is considered significant because medium- and long-range ballistic missiles typically have at least two stages.

Intercepting such missiles after they separate is difficult because sensors must be able to distinguish between the body of the missile and the warhead.

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This suggest to me that we are getting pretty good. The bad news is that Finnegan reports that the Aegis ships off North Korea only have the radar and not the missiles.