The Pentagon says Tuesday’s planned test of the ground-based missile defense test isn’t timed specifically to send a message to North Korea, yet it will no doubt do just that.
Sometime between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern time, a target missile with a mock warhead will launch from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, and an interceptor will be fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The nearly quarter-billion dollar test is the most realistic test yet, designed to show the U.S. could knock a North Korean nuke out of the sky, if it threatened the U.S. homeland.
“This is the first time we have ever conducted a test against an actual ICBM-class target for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis.
The success rate so far has been spotty for the system. The last three tests of the system were conducted in 2014, and two of the three were failures.
But Davis insists, hit or miss, the test will send a strong message to North Korea.
“The system that we test today is a developmental system that’s being flown for the first time, and we look forward to understand the results so we can mature the system and stay ahead of the threat,” Davis told reporters at the Pentagon. “While this is not a test that is timed specifically to the current tensions in North Korea, in a broad sense obviously North Korea is one of the reasons why we have this capability,” Davis said.
The details of the test are classified, but modifications to the system include changes made after years of computer simulations.
Pentagon officials are hoping for a successful intercept, which occurs when a non-exploding “kinetic kill vehicle” collides with the dummy warhead, destroying it in space. But even a failure will yield valuable data, officials said.
“This is part of continuous learning curve,” Davis said. “We improve and learn from each test regardless of the outcome.”
Davis also said the ground-based system is only “one element of a broader missile defense strategy,” and that the U.S. military has other defense including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system recently deployed to South Korea, and ship-based anti-missiles systems that have been highly effective in testing.
