A Japanese navy destroyer shot down a ballistic missile in space Dec. 17 in a test over the Pacific, a first for a U.S. ally, a witness said.
“They got it. It’s an historic moment for Japan,” Riki Ellison, a prominent U.S. missile-defense advocate, told Reuters by telephone from a range in Kauai, Hawaii, where he monitored the event. Officials were scheduled to brief reporters on the outcome shortly. Ellison, president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, has proven reliable in the past.
The shootdown marked a success for a shipboard detection and tracking tool called Aegis built by Lockheed Martin Corp and the Standard Missile-3 interceptor, produced by Raytheon Co.
The interceptor was fired by JS Kongo, the first of four Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers due to be outfitted to counter missiles that could carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
The medium-range target missile was launched from a U.S. range on Kauai. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, said Japan paid entirely for the $55 million test. U.S.-Japanese missile-defense cooperation has grown greatly since North Korea fired a three-stage Taepo Dong 1 missile over Japan on Aug. 31, 1998. The Kongo will now return to Japan with its load of SM-3 interceptors to start defending against ballistic missile attacks. The test was termed a major milestone by MDA, which is building a multibillion-dollar, layered shield designed to defeat warheads that could be fired by Iran and North Korea.
The U.S. and Japanese navies have worked out common rules for their Aegis-equipped ships outfitted to shoot down enemy missiles, the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet said last week. Such cooperation has angered Beijing, which fears it could help the United States defend Taiwan if China used force to try to bring the self-governing island under mainland rule.
The Kongo “is emblematic of a complex weave of U.S. and Japanese anti-missile capabilities,” said Paul Giarra, a former Pentagon senior country director for Japan who inaugurated a U.S.-Japan missile-defense working group in the early 1990s. “Any system that can check China’s growing ballistic missile clout is problematic for Beijing,” he added.
The Lake Erie, a Pearl Harbor-based U.S. guided-missile cruiser, tracked the missile target and fed data on it to a command center while simulating a shootdown of its own, said Chris Taylor, an MDA spokesman.
This is awesome news for the JMSDF and the USN..
