March 15, 2002 :: Department of Defense :: News
The Missile Defense Agency reports the fourth successful test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Segment, in the most complex missile defense test to date. At 9:11pm Saturday, a modified Minuteman ICBM was launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, fired out into the Pacific. Twenty minutes later, a prototype interceptor was launched from the Ronald Reagan missile site on the Marshall Islands, some 4,800 miles away. The interceptor destroyed the missile in midcourse at 9:40, over 140 miles above the earth.
Like the sea-based test of January 25, this test also used an exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV), destroying the target warhead by impact alone. In this test, the interceptor distinguished the target from three decoy balloons. (A previous test had involved only one decoy.) The test also demonstrated the complete integration of space- and ground-based sensors and radars, including a prototype of the X-band radar.
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