A ground-based interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on May 30.
The missile was fired at a “threat representative” intercontinental ballistic missile launched from a test site in the Marshall Islands, U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement released by the Department of Defense. It was meant to test the accuracy of the interceptor system in the event an actual ICBM was launched at the U.S. The missile test was the first of its kind, according to Davis.
The missile was launched in partnership between the 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg, U.S. Northern Command, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which is a part of the Department of Defense and controls the interceptor system.
According to its website, the MDA’s mission is to “develop, test, and field an integrated, layered ballistic missile defense system to defend the United States” and “friends against all range of enemy ballistic missiles.”
The MDA controls several other missile defense systems throughout the world, including the terminal high altitude area defense system currently deployed in South Korea to defend against missile attacks from North Korea, according to janes.com (which follows the defense industry).
“North Korea has expanded the size and the sophistication of its ballistic missile forces from close-range ballistic missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Davis said in the statement. “They continue to conduct test launches, as we saw even this weekend, while also using dangerous rhetoric that suggests that they would strike the United States homeland.”
Davis added that the test wasn’t conducted in response to recent events involving North Korea.
The missile test came weeks after an unarmed Minuteman III ballistic missile was launched from Vandenberg on May 3 and days after North Korea claimed it successfully test-launched its most recent ballistic missile on May 29, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
The Santa Barbara-based Nuclear Peace Foundation, which opposes missile launches from Vandenberg, released a statement in anticipation of the May 30 test.
“There is simply no good prospect for this kind of weapons testing, especially with rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” David Krieger, president of the foundation, said in the statement. “What is needed is an all-out diplomatic push for the true security to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.”
This article appears in Jun 1-8, 2017.
