Pentagon successfully tests U.S.-Japan missile interceptor

It's not an accident that this show of Japan-US military cooperation was carried out on the very day when Japan and China announced a "historical" agreement of mutual economic cooperation.

The successful test firing doesn’t guarantee that the new missile defense system will work in real war. It’s easy to shoot down a missile if you know where it’s coming from.

good news. this missile had failed in last two tests, a success was badly needed to boost the confidence in the project.

MeiyouwentiToday 09:13 am JST

It’s easy to shoot down a missile if you know where it’s coming from.

Well land based ballistic missiles site locations are known as well so what is your point?

33.3% success rate against a single missile, then.

YET Abe is opening up free Trade ro China.. Stock up on those missiles for the future

"It’s easy to shoot down a missile if you know where it’s coming from."

No, it's extremely difficult to shoot down a missile whether you know where it's coming from or not. Those things travel at very high speeds and don't have a whole lotta surface area to hit.

Putin and Xi aren't going to like this.

land based ballistic missiles site locations are known

-Triring

Not so. Potential adversaries use mobile launchers.

gaihonjinToday 03:01 pm JST

Not so. Potential adversaries use mobile launchers.

You don't need exact coordinates you just need a general area to point the radar 5~1000Km away since the radar is going to be below the horizon for the first 10~30Km during accent anyways.

That is what I mean when I said land based ballistic site locations are known. These missiles are not for preemptive strikes, they are to shoot down the missiles that had already been launched.

33.3% success rate against a single missile, then.

50% - Test #1 (Feb 2017) success, Test #2-3 (June 2017, Jan 2018) fail, Test #4 (Oct 2018) success

The successful operation comes after two failed intercept tests, in June 2017 and January 2018.

A test firing in February 2017 had been successful.

Baby steps - can't shoot down more advanced missiles if they can't shoot down the easier ones

Once they learn as much as they could from this, only then can they move on to the next level

Nobody could do the next level without doing these tests first

The fact that it failed twice is irrelevant, that is what testing is all about, you learn far more from the failures than the successes. You fail now so you don’t fail when you need it.