WASHINGTON – The US military said it had successfully completed its “most challenging” missile intercept test yet, using Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co hardware to shoot down an intermediate-range ballistic target over the Pacific.
The test, which took place Friday west of Hawaii, validated capabilities required in the first phase of President Barack Obama’s revamped approach to defending Europe and U.S. forces deployed there, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, said in a statement.
The Obama administration is racing this year to wrap up the initial phase of a layered, multibillion-dollar antimissile bulwark in Europe. US officials describe it as a hedge against missiles that could be fired by Iran and perhaps tipped with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads. Obama’s so-called Phased Adaptive Approach also is designed to boost defenses against North Korea, another focus of US antimissile efforts.
Ultimately, it is to add to the existing ground-based defenses of US soil as the technology improves. The event Friday, dubbed Flight Test Standard Missile-15 (FTM-15), was “the most challenging test to date,” the MDA said. It marked the first time that Lockheed’s shipboard Aegis combat system had been used to intercept a target with a range greater than 3,000 kms (1,864 miles) and the first such Aegis test to rely on missile tracking data gathered by another remote radar station.
“The ability to use remote radar data to engage a threat ballistic missile greatly increases the battle space and defended area of the SM-3 (interceptor) missile” built by Raytheon and used to destroy the target, the statement said. Previous sea-based Aegis intercept tests have featured shorter-range targets.
