Defense News:

The U.S. Navy has shot down an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean with an SM-3 Block IIA missile, in a milestone test that demonstrated a potential scheme to defend Hawaii, the Missile Defense Agency announced on Tuesday morning.

The test, which comes on the heels of the revealing of a larger North Korean ICBM, in October, that could potentially strike the U.S. East Coast, is the first time the United States has shot down an ICBM with anything other than a ground-based interceptor, an MDA official said.

Just before 1 a.m. Eastern Time, MDA oversaw a test where a missile was fired from Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, on Kwajalein Atoll, toward the open ocean northeast of Hawaii. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer John Finn, equipped with Aegis Baseline 9, received a track from an external sensor through the Command and Control Battle Management Communications network.

The ship then fired on and destroyed the target with the SM-3IIA, the release said…

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