WASHINGTON, Aug 17: The Pentagon announced on Friday it would conduct a test interception of a long-range missile over the Pacific on Aug 24 and track it for the first time with an Aegis cruiser.

The Pentagon also awarded an 869 million dollar contract to a firm to develop and produce satellites to track warheads through space and cue missile defence interceptors to them at all stages of flight.

The intercept test will be the seventh by what was once known as the National Missile Defense System and has since been renamed the Ground-based Midcourse Defense.

The test breaks new ground by using a Spy-1 radar aboard an Aegis cruiser, the USS Lake Eerie, to gather data on the attempted interception.

The use of a sea-based radar would have been barred under the 1972 ABM treaty.

But the United States withdrew from the treaty, which died on June 13, opening up new avenues in the US quest to develop and deploy defences against ballistic missiles.

“While the cruiser’s radar will not take part in directing the interceptor to its target, the data gathered will be used to confirm the potential role the SPY-1 radar and the Aegis weapon system could play against long-range missile targets,” the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said.

Four of the six previous tests have succeeded in intercepting a dummy warhead in space.

In the Aug 24 test, a target missile fired from Vandenberg air force base, California, will release a dummy warhead and an unspecified number of decoys, the Pentagon said. —AFP