March was a good month for the US THAAD program as it recorded a successful flight test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF):
The US military successfully shot down a short-range ballistic missile near Hawaii in a test of its ground-based missile defense system, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The target missile was “more likely to be classified as a short-range ballistic missile” because it had a range of less than 621 miles (1,000 kilometers), Ricker Lehner, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency told AFP.
The Pentagon’s announcement came amid growing concern over North Korea’s scheduled April 4-8 rocket launch that the United States suspects is designed as a test of a long-range ballistic missile that could theoretically reach Alaska.
It was the first time the US military fired two interceptors at a target missile in a test of defense weaponry designed to knock out missiles in their last stage of flight, Lehner said.
In a genuine attack, it would be more likely to fire more than one interceptor in case one failed, he said.
The first interceptor struck the target and the second was then destroyed by missile range safety officers, Lehner said.
The test was carried out on Tuesday at a missile range off the island of Kauai in Hawaii at 2:30 local time (0230 GMT), according a statement from the Missile Defense Agency.
In the test, the warhead on the target missile was separated from the rocket motor, requiring the interceptors to distinguish between the two.
The dummy warhead was shot down in its last minutes of flight, Lehner said.
The soldiers who operated the system did not know when the target missile would be launched and more than 20 radars and sensors were employed on the test range to collect flight test data from the interceptor and the target, Lehner said.
The exercise was a test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), which is designed to intercept short to medium range ballistic missiles. [Associated Press]
The BBC has some pretty good video of the intercept as well that is worth checking out.
THAAD is a system in a much more advanced stage of development then other systems in development such as the multiple kill vehicle. These various system are being developed to defeat the various tactical ballistic missile threats out there. You are going to have failed tests in the early stages of development just like the THAAD system back in the 1990’s failed 7 of its initial 11 tests. Now the THAAD has proven to be an extremely successful system. Likewise the AEGIS SM-3 system had its growing pains and now it is an extremely successful system as well.
