Successful Aegis BMD Shot

A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) is launched from the Pearl Harbor-based Aegis cruiser, USS Lake Erie (CG 70) on November 6, 2007 enroute to an intercept as part of a Missile Defense Agency test of the Sea-based capability under development, yet tactically certified and deployed with the U.S. Navy. This was a multiple simultaneous engagement involving two ballistic missile targets. The SM-3 was one of two interceptors, launched from the ship, that collided with two ballistic missile targets launched from the Pacific Missile Range Test Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii, within minutes of one another. The intercepts occurred about 250 miles from Kauai and approximately 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It marked the tenth and eleventh intercepts of thirteen scheduled attempts, for the program, and the 32nd and 33rd intercepts for the Agency’s hit-to-kill technology development. With the successful Ground-Based intercept test in September, the Terminal High Altitude Area Program (THAAD) intercept, the end of October, today’s intercepts mark four successes in the past 40 days for the Agency. (U.S. Navy Photos)

Video of the target and interceptor launches is below — the money shot, as it were, is in the final frame (view from the interceptor of the target just before impact)