Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, has said the live-fire test of the U.S. ballistic missile defense platform seeks to demonstrate the country’s readiness to counter intercontinental ballistic missile threats from potential adversaries, DoD News reported Wednesday.
MDA conducted the test Tuesday in which the BMDS’ ground-based midcourse defense platform helped guide a land-based interceptor with an exoatmospheric kill vehicle to engage and destroy an ICBM target that took off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Syring told reporters the developmental test sought to replicate an actual operational scenario and that the BMDS platform “performed exactly as designed†based on collected data.
“I was confident before the test that we had the capability to defeat any threat that [North Korea or Iran] would throw at us and I’m even more confident today, after seeing the intercept test yesterday, that we continue to be on that course,†Syring said.
He noted the interceptor used in the test is the same design that will support the deployment of 44 interceptors by the end of the year.
Syring said MDA intends to conduct the next intercept trial either by the fall of 2017 or later next year with a plan to test adversary ICBM weapons by 2023.
