The test involved a modified Minuteman missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 10:00 pm (0200 GMT Tuesday), and a prototype interceptor fired 22 minutes later about 7,775 kilometers (4,800 miles) away from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The incoming warhead was hit and destroyed about six minutes after the launch of the interceptor, at an altitude of more than 227 kilometers (140 miles), according to the Pentagon.

"What these tests do is they greatly improve our knowledge of missile defense technology for our development of a missile defense system against long-range ballistic missiles," Lieutenant Colonel Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, told AFP.

The experiment marked the fifth successful and fourth consecutive intercept in seven flight tests conducted by the United States since October 1999, as part of efforts to develop a national missile defense system.

US President George W. Bush has made building this system a cornerstone of his national security policy, despite criticism at home and abroad leveled by those who believe the project will be destabilizing.

Administration officials have brushed off the criticism, insisting an anti-missile shield could help protect the United States from attack by "rogue" states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The United States formally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia last June to pave the way for a stepped up testing program of the concept.

Under a Department of Defense appropriations bill, Senate and House of Representatives negotiators last week earmarked 6.9 billion dollars for missile defense programs in fiscal 2003, which began October 1.

For the first time, the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty has allowed the participation of a US Navy Aegis destroyer, the USS John Paul Jones, which was positioned "somewhere between Hawaii and California" and used its SPY-1 radar system to track the warhead, according to defense officials.

"It's a very valuable addition," Lehner said. "Possibly in the future we can incorporate that radar in the missile defense system. It gives us an alternative we could not test under the ABM Treaty."

To hit the incoming warhead in space, the US military relied on a so-called exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which separated from its rocket booster more than 2,268 kilometers (1,400 miles) from its target and used on-board infrared and visual sensors, as well as signals from a Kwajalein-based X-band radar to home in on the mock warhead.

Sensors aboard the kill vehicle were able to successfully select the warhead from among five objects in the target area, including three decoys, the defense officials said.

It will take specialists several weeks to fully analyze data collected during the test to determine whether malfunctions have occurred and all the objectives established before the launch had been met.

But it did not prevent the Pentagon from declaring that its new success will help Washington get closer to its ultimate goal.

"This test is a major step in an aggressive developmental test program, and we will continue to pursue this testing regime to achieve a layered approach to missile defense, using different architectures to deter the growing threat of ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction," the department said in a statement.

As part of that approach, Boeing Company is already testing in Kansas a jumbo jet retrofitted to carry a laser gun that military planner believe will be capable of shooting down ascending enemy missiles.

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