Vandenberg AFB To Test Missile Designed To Take Down Incoming Warhead

The interceptors are, in essence, the last line of USA defense against an attack by an intercontinental-range missile.

A South Korean military official said the North fired one missile on Monday, clarifying an earlier assessment that there may have been more than one launch.

“Conducting ballistic missile launches three weeks in a row is an overt defiance of the worldwide community”, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters at the ministry’s office on Monday morning, condemning North Korea. The interceptor struck the mock warhead as it traveled outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

“North Korea has conducted nuclear tests twice and has launched more than 30 ballistic missiles in just over a year”.

It flew 450 kilometers (280 miles) toward Japan, according to South Korean military officials, with the government in Tokyo saying it may have reached waters in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress, “North Korea is an increasingly grave national security threat to the United States because of its growing missile and nuclear capabilities combined with the aggressive approach of its leader Kim Jong Un”. North’s launch of the missiles is in defiance of worldwide pressure, including the United Nations which has imposed several sanctions on the country considering its increasingly ambitious nuclear and ballistic missiles programme.

Monday’s launch followed two successful tests of medium-to-long-range missiles in as many weeks by the North, which has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States.

President Donald Trump has now ordered a third aircraft carrier – the USS Nimitz – to proceed to the West Pacific area where there are already two big U.S. warships with their attack groups. The event planned to test the missile and the specially designed tracked launcher. The canard is used to maintain the missile’s altitude and help guide it to the target. The interceptor launched Tuesday from Vandenberg AFB will target a simulated ICBM launched from a test range on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.

A specific time for the Pentagon’s ground-based interceptor test has not been announced. If the report is true, North Korea has likely developed its short-range missiles enough that they can strike South Korea and parts of Japan. “They continue to conduct test launches, as we saw even this weekend, while also using risky rhetoric that suggests that they would strike the United States homeland”. Experts said the missile would have flown much farther if it had been launched on a maximum trajectory – perhaps capable of reaching USA military bases in Guam.

United States forces, using data from satellites and radar, will fire a ground-based interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. “It’s much easier to launch a missile than it is to shoot one down”.

In the fiscal year 2018 budget proposal sent to Congress last week, the Pentagon requested $7.9 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, including about $1.5 billion for the GMD programme.