"The US Defense Department conducted the missile defense system test as North Korea continued the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the USA mainland", reported Global Security.
The latest test cost close to 250 million USA dollars, and Pentagon has not ruled out more tests in the near future.
The kill vehicle, or external kill vehicle (EKV), is a almost two-metre-long device that is jettisoned from a ground-launched missile before colliding with the incoming ICBM. The EKV uses kinetic energy, not explosives, to destroy its target. Since the category of "ICBM" applies to missiles with a range of 5,500 km or more, the interception test appears to have been performed for a missile at the short end of that range.
But intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) mid-flight is technically challenging, and the GMD program has met with mixed success since its inception in 1999.
In Tuesday's test, seconds after a mock nuclear missile targeting the continental United States was launched from the Marshall Islands, a new-age, "high speed" US interceptor missile was launched from southern California. The test involved launching a target meant to simulate an ICBM from a base in the Marshall Islands and then shooting it down with a ground-based interceptor launched from Vandenberg AFB in California. Multiple sensors, including Hawaii's Sea-Based X-Band Radar in the Pacific Ocean, provided target acquisition and tracking data, according to the agency.
Chris Johnson of the Missile Defense Agency told Business Insider that while they managed to shoot down the ICBM with just a single interceptor missile, "in an operational scenario we'd likely use more than one".
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In Washington DC, the new missile test that was planned to launch on Tuesday got a suspicious eye from the foe of United States, the North Korean government, who thinks this is another attempts to show the U.S. might focus on the communist Korean nation.
Syring said that current projections based off of intelligence reports indicate that the GMD could handle any threat launched by a U.S. adversary through 2020.
The long-planned test vindicated the expensive, complicated effort to defend the United States homeland from missile attacks -but there's still no stopping a real attack from a determined foe like North Korea. The North Korean concern of the U.S. attack will again be confirmed if the test were done because they might also begin to conduct long-range missile tests against the present tests done by the US.
"Having this success was very important", Coyle said in a statement. In the last four attempts to test the CE-I, only two have been successful, most recently in 2008.
"In several ways, this test was a $244-million-dollar baby step", he added.
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