Test of US-Japanese missile interceptor fails

The US Navy and the Japanese ministry of defense have unsuccessfully attempted to intercept a ballistic missile in a test of a jointly built system off Hawaii, the US military said Wednesday.

The two nations have been working together since 2006 to develop a variant of the Standard Missile-3, a ship-launched missile that operates as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Tuesday evening's test saw a medium-range ballistic target launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, the US Missile Defense Agency said in a statement.

The USS John Paul Jones guided-missile destroyer detected and tracked the target missile with its onboard radar using Aegis.

"Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, but the missile did not intercept the target," the MDA said.

This was the fourth development flight test using an SM-3 IIA missile, and the second such intercept test.

The previous test, in February 2017, was successful.

According to the MDA, America has so far spent about $2.2 billion on the system and Japan about $1 billion.

The test comes amid heightened tensions around North Korea's continued advances in its ballistic missile program.

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South Korea said Tuesday a drone believed sent from North Korea had been spying on a US missile defence system before it crashed. The remains of the small drone, which was equipped with a camera, were retrieved by the South's military last week from a hillside where it had crash-landed close to the heavily-fortified inter-Korean border. The military analysed the contents of the camera's ... read more

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Test of US-Japanese missile interceptor fails Test of US-Japanese missile interceptor fails Reviewed by Unknown on 04:12:00 Rating: 5

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