Defense & Intelligence Policy, Business and Technology

With eyes on North Korea, U.S. successfully destroys mock ICBM over Pacific

The Washington Post: The U.S. military destroyed a mock intercontinental ballistic missile thousands of miles over the Pacific for the first time Tuesday, a step forward for a missile-defense program that has taken on new significance in light of North Korean threats.

The ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system used a five-foot “kill vehicle” released from a larger ground-based interceptor missile to obliterate the mock ICBM, defense officials said. The mock threat was launched from the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site in the Marshall Islands, and it was met by an interceptor launched from a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

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