800 miles apparently.
BMD Watch: Japan makes BMD breakthrough
Published: Dec. 24, 2007 at 9:26 AM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:By MARTIN SIEFF
UPI Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 (UPI) — Japan’s ballistic-missile defense program took a giant leap forward last week with its first successful interception of a ballistic missile with a U.S.-built Standard Missile-3 off Kauai Island, Hawaii.
The SM-3 was launched from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Aegis destroyer Kongo, the MSDF said last week.
The test indicates Japan already has the capability to intercept and destroy in flight North Korean ballistic missiles such as the Rodong, or even the Taepodong-1, that Pyongyang could fire at its densely populated cities, experts told the Daily Yomiuri last Wednesday.
The Daily Yomiuri reported details of the test. It said tests began at 12:05 p.m. Monday when a real ballistic missile with a fake warhead was fired from the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.
The Kongo picked up the target missile right after its take-off and responded rapidly, firing an SM-3 Block IA standard missile four minutes later. The SM-3 struck the target missile and eliminated it in an exoatmospheric interception more than 60 miles above sea level three minutes after the Kongo launched it, the newspaper said.
Although the test was a success, it was the first for Japanese BMD forces; the Aegis-SM-3 systems are now a relatively mature and very reliable technology. The paper noted that U.S. forces have now racked up 11 successful interceptions in 13 tests.
The target missile was a multistage one that was designed to have the flight characteristics of a North Korean Rodong intermediate-range ballistic missile with a range of just under 800 miles, the paper said.
IRBMs fly far more slowly than intercontinental ballistic missiles and therefore are technically much easier to intercept. SM-3s cannot destroy ICBMs in flight once they have accelerated to high speeds. But the SM-3 missiles do have the capability to intercept and destroy old Scud-type missiles, which do not jettison their early stages and therefore remain lower and larger targets. The Daily Yomiuri said the Rodong could fly at speeds of Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound. That is about half the velocity of an ICBM.
The newspaper said the successful test was personally watched Japanese Vice Defense Minister Akinori Eto, who was on the Kongo. It said the SM-3s’ interception and destruction of the target missile were recorded on an infrared camera.
“The success of this experiment is symbolic of close security relationship between Japan and the United States,” Eto said, according to the report.
Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering III, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, welcomed the Japanese test and said it reflected and would further strengthen the U.S.-Japanese partnership.
Japan’s drive to develop effective ballistic missile defenses goes back to the alarm caused by North Korea’s August 1998 firing of a Taepodong-1 intermediate-range ballistic missile over the Japanese islands into the Pacific.
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