A Navy guided missile destroyer (DDG) successfully shot down a ballistic missile target in a joint exercise with the U.S. Army simulated a two-missile ballistic missile raid, according to a Tuesday statement from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
The test combined the Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system with the Army’s ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) weapon system to, “defeat a raid of two near-simultaneous ballistic missile targets,” near the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll/Reagan Test Site in the South Pacific, according to the MDA.
USS Decatur (DDG-73) fired a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA while the Army’s Alpha Battery, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment fired a THAAD interceptor coordinated by satellites and the Raytheon Army-Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance and Control (AN/TPY-2).
“Initial indications are that all components performed as designed. MDA officials will extensively assess and evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test,” according to the statement.
The test is the third straight successful Aegis test according to the MDA.
According to agency, the “U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System programs have completed 62 successful hit-to-kill intercepts in 78 flight test attempts since 2001.”
