The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and U.S. Navy successfully executed Flight Test Other-23 (FTX-23) or Stellar Sisyphus, a two-part developmental test of sensor tracking and communications link capabilities.
Conducted off the coast of the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, the first part of this multisensor test successfully demonstrated that the Aegis Weapon System tracked and discriminated a complex target scene of a medium-range ballistic missile target with countermeasures.
The second part of this test included the firing of a Standard Missile – 3 Block IIA (SM-3 Blk IIA), which intercepted the same medium-range ballistic missile target, verifying additional functionality of the SM-3 Blk IIA.
Together, this test demonstrated one of the most complicated target discrimination and intercept missions by the Aegis Weapon System to date.