US Navy Claims Success With Missile Interception Test

The Diplomat reports:

Days after North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido and landed in the northern Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Navy successfully conducted a complex missile defense test this week at the Pacific Missile Range Facility off Kauai, Hawaii, according to a Raytheon company statement.

The Standard Missile-6, one of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced missile interceptors, intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target at sea in its final seconds of flight, after being fired from the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones.

The principal objective of the launch was test to a new targeting software designed to enable the SM-6 to intercept a ballistic missile warhead descending from the upper atmosphere at extreme speed. The endo-atmospheric interceptor uses a blast-fragmentation warhead to engage its target.