In a move that could have ramifications for defending the United States from North Korean nuclear weapons, the U.S. said Monday that it had successfully conducted a "salvo" intercept of an intercontinental ballistic missile-class target — the first test of its kind.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency said that two ground-based interceptors (GBI) in California were used in the test, which struck the mock target over the Pacific. It said one destroyed the target's re-entry vehicle, while the other "then looked at the resulting debris and remaining objects, and, not finding any other re-entry vehicles, selected the next 'most lethal object' it could identify, and struck that."
The target was launched from a test site in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, some 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where the interceptors were launched, the MDA said.