US ballistic missile defense assets shot down two target missiles in a “complex” live-fire test in the Pacific Ocean area on Tuesday local time, announced the Defense Department. Flight Test Operational-01, conducted in the vicinity of the Reagan Test Site in the Kwajalein Atoll and in surrounding areas of the western Pacific, “demonstrated integrated, layered, regional missile defense capabilities to defeat a raid of two threat-representative medium-range ballistic missiles,” states DOD’s Sept. 10 release. After receiving cues from other sensors, radar aboard the Aegis destroyer USS Decatur (DDG-73) detected and tracked the first target missile, and sailors aboard the ship then launched a Standard Missile-3 Block IA missile that intercepted it. Meanwhile, soldiers fired a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptor that brought down the second target. “Initial indications are that all components performed as designed,” states the release. Airmen in a command center in Hawaii supported the test. DOD officials said the test, planned more than a year ago, was not connected to events in the Middle East. (See also Reuters report.)
No sooner had the Defense Intelligence Agency issued its North Korean Military Power report, in which it predicted Pyongyang would resume ballistic missile tests, than North Korea did exactly that, lofting a submarine-launched ballistic missile Oct. 19. The test, in which an SLBM launched from the port of Sinpo into…