Talk about burying the lede: A missile-defense test today successfully intercepted its target. Here’s a press release from Boeing, with the best news at the bottom.

Boeing-led Team Conducts Successful Missile Defense Flight Test
ST. LOUIS, September 1, 2006 – The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA], working with industry teammates and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, today successfully completed a missile defense flight test that demonstrated the increased operational capability of the nation’s only defense against long-range ballistic missiles.
The test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system began at 1:22 pm when a long-range ballistic missile target lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. Seventeen minutes later, military operators launched an interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. After flying into space, the interceptor released its exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, which proceeded to track the target warhead. Due to earlier program accomplishments, several test objectives were accelerated and included in this test.
The test achieved several significant objectives for the first time:
· An operationally configured interceptor was fired from an operational GMD site;
· An operationally configured interceptor tracked a ballistic missile;
· A newly upgraded missile-warning radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., provided target data to an in-flight interceptor;
· The mission-control center at the Joint National Integration Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., controlled a live GMD engagement.
Although not a primary objective of the test, the kill vehicle intercepted the warhead and destroyed it. This was the first intercept with an operationally configured interceptor.