ISLAMABAD – The United States on Monday successfully intercepted anintercontinental ballistic missile by two ground-based interceptors in afirst-time “milestone” achievement, according to the Pentagon’s MissileDefense Agency.
Two ground-based missile interceptors were launched Vandenberg Air ForceBase in California after radars tracked a simulated intercontinentalballistic missile launched from the Reagan Test Site on Marshall Islands’Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific ocean almost 4,000 miles (approx 6437 km)away.
The Missile Defense Agency said the “salvo” intercept test was aimed toensure that defensive interceptors can be launched in quick succession totarget and destroy enemy missiles fired at US targets.
The other aim was to find out that the sensors of the interceptor missileswere able to distinguish between friends and foes in the air as during awar multiple missiles are likely to be in the air with some of them firedby the US and others by its enemies.
“The US Missile Defense Agency, in cooperation with the Joint FunctionalComponent Command for Integrated Missile Defense, US Northern Command, andelements of the US Air Force Space Command’s 30th, 50th, and 460th SpaceWings, conducted a successful test today against an IntercontinentalBallistic Missile (ICBM) class target.
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This test was the first salvo engagement of a threat-representative ICBMtarget by two Ground Based Interceptors (GBI), which were designatedGBI-Lead, and GBI-Trail for the test. The GBI-Lead destroyed the reentryvehicle, as it was designed to do.
The GBI-Trail then looked at the resulting debris and remaining objects,and, not finding any other reentry vehicles, selected the next ‘most lethalobject’ it could identify, and struck that, precisely as it was designed todo,” the Missile Defense Agency press release said.
