A Standard Missile-3 Block IA (SM-3 Blk IA) interceptor is launched from the USS CARL M. LEVIN (DDG 120) off the coast of Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, as part of Vigilant Wyvern/Flight Test Aegis Weapon System-48, a joint test of the U.S. Navy Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems and the Missile Defense Agency conducted October 25, 2023. (DVIDS)
WASHINGTON — The US military announced today the first-ever test intercept of a ballistic missile from its Guam-based missile defense system, in what a military official called a “critical milestone” for what’s seen as America’s first line of defense in the case of war with China.
The test just off shore from the US territory “confirmed our ability to detect, track, and engage a target missile in flight, increasing our readiness to defend against evolving adversary threats,” Joint Task Force-Micronesia Commander Rear Adm. Greg Huffman said in a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) release.
The release said that during the “experiment,” the Aegis air defense system used a new AN/TPY-6 radar to track the target and a Vertical Launching System to fire a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA at an incoming, air-launched medium-range ballistic missile flying over the ocean near Andersen Air Force Base. “The AN/TPY-6 radar tracked the target shortly after launch to intercept in the first end-to-end tracking use of the radar during a live ballistic missile flight test,” the Pentagon said.
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The MDA described the event as a “pivotal step” towards a larger, more holistic Guam Defense System designed to take on multiple threats at once — a “persistent layered integrated air and missile defense capability.”
According to CSIS missile defense expert Tom Karako, that will be where the rubber meets the road for an island that lies 9,000 miles from the California coast but a relatively scant 3,000 miles from mainland China.
“The defense of Guam is one of the most important and hardest missile defense development challenges underway. While these engagements are eye watering in many respects, today’s test was comparatively routine in terms of a single ballistic missile target,” he told Breaking Defense. “The Guam Defense System will ultimately integrate multiple independent fire control systems into something that can cope with complex and integrated attacks with salvos across the air and missile threat spectrum.”
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Such a robust defense would be necessary if war breaks out with China. Karako said Beijing can be expected to launch missile salvos that are “an order of magnitude greater than what we saw in [Iran’s] April 14 attack on Israel.”
For several years, US military leaders from the Indo-Pacific region have emphasized the need to build up Guam as both a military staging point and an air-defense hub. However, the process hasn’t been easy, and in October, the MDA proposed scaling back the number of missile defense sites on the island from 22 to 16 due to environmental impact concerns.
In today’s announcement MDA chief Lt. Gen. Heath Collins praised the “tremendous group effort” and coordination between different Pentagon organizations, but the US military is still sorting out exactly who will be responsible for what when it comes to standing up the different elements of the broader, complex missile defense system on Guam.
“Not only do I have to get those individual programs across the goal line, they all have to work together,” Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Missiles and Space, said at a CSIS event in August.
Aaron Mehta, Ashley Roque and Theresa Hitchens contributed to this report.
