MDA:
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and U.S. Navy sailors aboard USS John Finn (DDG-113) successfully conducted an intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target with a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile during a flight test off the west coast of Hawaii.
The SM-3 Block IIA is being developed cooperatively by the U.S. and Japan and operates as part of the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense system.
On October 26, 2018, the target missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii. The USS John Finn (DDG-113) detected and tracked the target missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile which intercepted the target.
