The US Navy conducted a failed ballistic missile intercept on Thursday with its SM-3 Block IIA off the coast of Hawaii. The destroyer John Paul Jones, running the Navy’s top-of-the-line Aegis Baseline 9.C2 combat system, failed to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii.
The destroyer detected and tracked the target on the AN/SPY-1 phased array radar but was unable to intercept it. It was the second test of this latest iteration of the SM-3. The John Paul Jones successfully shot down a target in February with it. That test was the first intercept using Baseline 9.2C. “Program officials will conduct an extensive analysis of the test data,” a news release for the US Missile Defence Agency said on Thursday.
The test also marked the fourth flight test of the SM-3 Block IIA and the second time it was launched from a ship. John Paul Jones is the Navy’s missile defence ship; it replaced the cruiser Lake Erie in 2014.
The missile is being developed by Raytheon and is a joint project between the US and Japan, designed to counter rising missile threats from North Korea.
Late last month the U.S. military successfully shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile target in outer space using an interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
