Politics
10:12, 01-Feb-2018
US missile defense test reported to be unsuccessful
["china"]
Share
Copied
A US ballistic missile defense test failed to intercept an incoming target in Hawaii on Wednesday, reports said.
Wednesday's trial was, in part, an effort to test new defense concepts as the missile was launched from the shore rather than the Navy Aegis warships that have carried earlier versions of the projectile for several years, CNN reported.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) confirmed the test but not the result.
"The Missile Defense Agency and US Navy sailors manning the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex (AAMDTC) conducted a live-fire missile flight test using a Standard-Missile (SM)-3 Block IIA missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, Wednesday morning," MDA spokesman Mark Wright said in a statement
The SM-3 interceptor is a defensive weapon the US Navy uses to destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
If confirmed, it would mark the second unsuccessful test of the Raytheon missile within a year. The US military had a failed SM-3 Block IIA test last year after a sailor on the destroyer John Paul Jones mistakenly triggered the missile's self-destruct mechanism.
(Cover photo: The Missile Defense Agency conducts the first intercept flight test of a land-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense weapon system from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex in Kauai, Hawaii, December 10, 2015. /Reuters Photo)
Source(s): Xinhua News Agency