The Air and Space Forces conducted a successful test launch of a "new modernized interceptor of the Russian missile defense system" at the Sary-Shagan test site. According to a VKS spokesman, the new interceptor has better accuracy and range and extended service life.
China has successfully carried out another test of an anti-missile intercept system, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, describing it as defensive and not aimed at any country.China has been ramping up research into all sorts of missiles, from those which can destroy satellites in space to advanced nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, as part of an ambitious modernization scheme overseen by President Xi Jinping.The Defence Ministry said in a brief statement the “ground-based midcourse anti-missile intercept technology” had been tested on Monday within China’s borders.“The test reached its expected goals,” the ministry said. “This test was defensive and not aimed at any country.”It provided no other details.
On November 23, 2017 the Air and Space Defense Forces (VKS) conducted a successful test of an interceptor of the Moscow missile defense system. The test took place at the Sary-Shagan test site. The launch was conducted by the crews of the VKS air and missile defense army.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Dec. 8 conducted the second developmental flight test of its Standard Missile (SM)-3 Block 2A interceptor and awarded Raytheon a contract to build 17 more.
Two days later, the MDA carried out the first intercept test involving a land-based variant of the SM-3 Block 1B, a smaller interceptor deployed primarily on ships at sea. The land-based SM-3 Block 1B variant is being developed as part of the MDA multiphased plan for defending Europe against missile threats.
In the Dec. 10 test, the Block 1B interceptor, cued by a remote AN/TPY-2 radar, lifted off from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Complex on Kauai, Hawaii, and destroyed a ballistic missile target that had been launched from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft. The test’s success keeps the MDA on track to begin deploying SM 3 Block 1B interceptors in Romania next year, Raytheon said.
“This test proved that no matter how you launch it, an SM-3 can hunt down threats in space and destroy them,” Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems of Tucson, Arizona, said in a Dec. 10 release. “The flexibility to deploy SM-3s from land or sea expands protection options for our combatant commanders and allies around the world.”
Meanwhile, on Dec. 8, the MDA conducted a flight test of the SM-3 Block 2A, being developed jointly with Japan, from the Point Mugu Sea Range on San Nicolas Island in California. The test did not include the launch of a target.
The Russian Aerospace Forces will receive a modernized missile defense system in the near future, Colonel Andrei Cheburin announced.
"I’m sure that in the short-term perspective we will receive an upgraded missile defense system," Cheburin told RSN Radio.
The expansion of the United States' ballistic missile defense system is a threat to Russia's nuclear capability, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
Putin added that U.S. ballistic missile shield bases in Eastern Europe could also be used to station offensive weapons and that he was worried about NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia's borders.
Lockheed Martin is hoping that the maturing threat of hypersonic re-entry vehicles from ambitious adversaries will spark interest in the company’s dormant plan to design a more powerful booster for the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) air defense system.
China last month confirmed it conducted what officials there say was the third test of a hypersonic strike vehicle that U.S. officials worry could outsmart its defenses. The U.S. has spent well more than $100 billion on various missile defenses to perfect hit-to-kill technology and improve connectivity among disparate systems fielded for protection against air-breathing and ballistic missile threats. The Army plans to field at least six Thaad batteries; the $3.8 billion program was designed to field an area defense system capable of interceptors both inside the atmosphere and in the low regions of space.
Development of offensive hypersonic systems is "one of the key reasons" that a Thaad-ER (extended range) missile should be considered for introduction into the Pentagon arsenal, says Mike Trotsky, vice president of air and missile defense for Lockheed Martin, which produces Thaad.
Russia has successfully test-launched a long-range interceptor missile which will be brought into service of a promising air defense missile system S-500, a source in the defense and industrial complex told ITAR-TASS on Monday.
“Test-launches were made in late June. All goals and tasks set within this event were fulfilled completely,” the source noted.
He noted that air defense system-producing concern Almaz-Antey was developing an air defense missile system of new generation S-500 fully in line with the deadlines set in the state-funded armament program until 2020.
Canada has not changed its position on not joining the U.S. missile defense shield, but is examining its stance given changing global circumstances, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Thursday.
Speaking in Brussels at the end of a meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, which was dominated by the crisis in Ukraine, Harper said Canada regularly examined defense policies, including the missile shield.
"It was our judgment in the past that Canadians did not need the security of participation in the anti-ballistic missile defense system," the Conservative prime minister said.
"Obviously there are changes occurring in the world and we will continue to examine whether that does or does not serve Canadian interests and we'll make whatever decisions are in the best security safety interests of Canadians, but obviously at the moment, we have not decided to revise the position."
THE best time to shoot down a hostile missile is straight after take-off. During this initial “boost phase” it moves more slowly, is easier to spot (because its exhaust plumes are so hot) and presents a bigger target (having not yet ditched its first-stage fuel tanks). A bonus is that the debris may come crashing down on the country that launched it—your enemy—rather than you.
But the main advantage of “boost-phase missile defence” is that a missile that has breached the atmosphere and begun its midcourse glide can throw off lots of decoys. In the vacuum of space, tinfoil balloons, or clouds of aluminium strips known as chaff, will keep pace with the missile that released them. Not even the American military can distinguish sophisticated decoys from a warhead (though it might manage with crude ones designed by Iran or North Korea, say).
The downside, though, is that such an approach requires speed. Interceptors (anti-missile missiles) fired from sea or land will probably be too late. Ronald Reagan’s proposed solution was “Star Wars”: armed satellites orbiting above hostile nations’ launchpads. It cost a packet, didn’t work and was scrapped in the 1990s. But some experts say the moment has arrived for a sequel: high-altitude drones.
India successfully test-fired a new anti-ballistic missile on Sunday in a step towards developing a missile defence system which only an elite club of countries has built.
India, which shares borders with arch-rival Pakistan and giant China, both of whom are nuclear-armed, is developing the system that aims to shield it against a ballistic missile attack.
The test was conducted off the east coast on Sunday morning, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) told the Press Trust of India news agency.
“The trial was conducted successfully and all the mission objectives were met,” said DRDO spokesman Ravi Kumar Gupta.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has unveiled its Iron Beam high-energy laser (HEL) system designed to defeat rockets, mortars, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at short ranges.
The land-based system, which was unveiled at the Singapore Airshow on 11 February, uses a pair of multi-kilowatt solid-state lasers to defeat incoming projectiles out to a range of about 2 km, a company official told IHS Jane's .
The mobile Iron Beam battery is comprised of an air defence radar, a command and control (C2) unit, and two HEL systems, Senderovits Ezra, deputy general manager of marketing and business development at Rafael, explained.
Russia's defense ministry plans to deploy in 2017 a sophisticated new air missile defense system that can hit targets in space, a senior ministry source told Russian news agencies on Friday.
"The promising S-500 air defense missile system is at the development stage. It's planned to be deployed in 2017," the source was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The long-range system will be able to destroy targets even if they are in space and cover the whole Russian territory, the source added.
Russia is developing more and more effective missile defense systems for use as a deterrent while opposing plans by the United States to build a missile defense shield in Europe.
