WASHINGTON, Jan 26: A sea-based US missile defence system test was sucessfully carried out late on Friday in a test range in the Pacific, Pentagon officials said.

The USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser stationed several hundred kilometres offshore, tracked a target missile with an Aegis Spy-1 radar and then fired an interceptor missile at it, the officials said.

The target missile was fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands on western Kauai, in Hawaii.

The test “met its objective,” said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Major Michael Halbig.

Officials had said that the goal of the test was to gather data, not an interception — but the missile nevertheless sucesfully hit and destroyed the target missile, Halbig said.

The test marks the first launch of a Standard Missile-3 (SM3) booster from a ship into space with a prototype warhead designed to intercept and destroy a warhead outside the earth’s atmosphere.

Halbig said the test began at 0200 GMT, and the interceptor missile was launched eight minutes later.

Officials say the test is in keeping with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because the target is a short-range missile.

“This test is in full compliance with the ABM treaty. Absolutely,” said US Air Force Major Cathy Reardon said.

The treaty bars testing and development of sea-based, mobile land-based, air-based and space-based missile defences against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The United States notified Russia last month that it intends to withdraw from the ABM treaty in six months to pursue unrestricted development of missile defences. But the Pentagon has pledged not to violate the treaty in the meantime.

The test had been delayed by four hours to allow for the vessel’s passage through the safety zone. —AFP