The United States military successfully intercepted an ICBM mid-flight on Monday, the first time the US has successful used a ship-based missile to destroy an intercontinental missile, the Washington Post reports.
USS John Finn, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, launched a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor in the ocean northeast of Hawaii, which destroyed an ICBM launched from the Marshall Islands.
The successful test of this interceptor system provides another potential way to destroy incoming threats from countries like North Korea. Previously, the US military, through the Missile Defense Agency, had relied on land-based silo-stored missiles to intercept ICBMs far off-shore.