US and Japan Successfully Conducts Test Flight of New Ballistic Missile Defence System

US and Japan Successfully Conducts (आयोजित) Test Flight of New Ballistic Missile Defence System The United States and Japan successfully conducted a flight test of a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, off coast Hawaii on February 3, 2017. The next-generation SM-3 Block IIA Interceptor has been jointly developed by the U.S. defence firm

Raytheon and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to destroy (नष्ट) an incoming ballistic missile target and is launched from US warship. The two nations have been working together since 2006 and America has so far spent about $2.2 billion on the system and Japan about $1 billion. The US warship USS John Paul Jones, a Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer detected and tracked the target missile with its on board radar using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile which intercepted the target. The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor is designed to destroy short-to intermediate-range ballistic missile threats (धमकी) and can be deployed (तैनात) at land-based Aegis Ashore sites and Aegis-equipped warships.  This was the third flight test and the first intercept (अवरोधन) test of a SM-3 Block IIA, the most advanced version of the SM-3 “hit-to-kill” interceptor.