The Missile Defense Agency recently notched an important win in its effort to produce a workable system. Officials declared success of the latest sea-based “hit to kill” intercept of a target that had separated from its booster. The feat was a first, said MDA. In the test, a Navy Aegis cruiser, USS Lake Erie, launched a Standard Missile-3 against a medium-range dummy missile target. The Aegis crew fired its intercept missile about four minutes after detecting the threat missile. Six minutes later, the SM-3 intercepted the target warhead more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, destroying it on impact. Raytheon produces the SM-3, and the Lockheed Martin-Orbital team supplied and launched the target missile. It was the SM-3’s sixth successful test, with only one failure.
In the final few hours before the Senate adjourned for its Memorial Day recess on May 26, lawmakers approved a raft of some 3,400 pending military nominations, including a number of high-profile Air Force and Space Force generals to assignments that will significantly reshape some of the upper echelons of…