Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
A Navy ship in the Pacific shot down a dummy warhead Thursday night using an interceptor rocket guided by on-board radar, in the first test of the sea-based component of a missile defense system, officials said.
The rocket, launched from the cruiser Lake Erie, hit its target, an Aries missile fired from the Pacific Missile Range on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It took about two minutes to track and make the interception, said officials of the Missile Defense Agency.
Officials acknowledged that the test had been conducted under idealized conditions for the ship’s radar to track the dummy warhead in flight and engineer a collision more than 100 miles above sea.
