A U.S. interceptor missile shot down a target missile on Friday, the seventh successful test of our long-range missile shield:
The test marked the sixth successful downing of a target in 10 full-fledged intercept tests since October 1999 in which knocking down the target was the primary objective, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.
The interceptor was launched from the Ronald W. Reagan Missile Defense Site, located at Vandenberg Air
Force Base, Calif. The threat-representative target missile was launched from Alaska's Kodiak Island.
The Bush administration is building a layered shield to thwart ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and that could be tipped with chemical, germ or nuclear warheads.
It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate) with funding subject to the annual authorization of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for National Missile Defense.
--National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-38)
You can watch a video of the shoot down below:
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