The US Navy and the Japanese ministry of defense have unsuccessfully attempted to intercept a ballistic missile in a test of a jointly built system off Hawaii, the US military said Wednesday.
The two nations have been working together since 2006 to develop a variant of the Standard Missile-3, a ship-launched missile that operates as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.
Tuesday evening's test saw a medium-range ballistic target launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, the US Missile Defense Agency said in a statement.
The USS John Paul Jones guided-missile destroyer detected and tracked the target missile with its onboard radar using Aegis.
"Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, but the missile did not intercept the target," the MDA said.
This was the fourth development flight test using an SM-3 IIA missile, and the second such intercept test.
The previous test, in February 2017, was successful.
According to the MDA, America has so far spent about $2.2 billion on the system and Japan about $1 billion.
The test comes amid heightened tensions around North Korea's continued advances in its ballistic missile program.
Suspected N.Korea drone filmed missile defence site: Seoul
South Korea said Tuesday a drone believed sent from North Korea had been spying on a US missile defence system before it crashed.
The remains of the small drone, which was equipped with a camera, were retrieved by the South's military last week from a hillside where it had crash-landed close to the heavily-fortified inter-Korean border.
The military analysed the contents of the camera's … read more
