guided missile destroyer, successfully launched a interceptor missile which intercepted the target fired from a base near kawai. it was designed to send a message to north korea. a day after it fired a ballistic missile over japan. defense secretary jim mattis hosted his south korean counterpart at the pentagon. we are never out of diplomatic solutions. that was not a message from the white house today. president trump tweeted the u.s. has been talking to north korea and paying them extortion money for 25 years. talking is not the answer. north korea s leader promised to fire more missiles, describing the most recent launch as a meaningful prelude to pyongyang s effort to contain guam which a north korea newsreader described as an
the uss john paul jones, a guided missile destroyer, successfully launched a interceptor missile which intercepted the target fired from a base near kawai. it was designed to send a message to north korea. a day after it fired a ballistic missile over japan. defense secretary jim mattis hosted his south korean counterpart at the pentagon. we are never out of diplomatic solutions. that was not a message from the white house today. president trump tweeted the u.s. has been talking to north korea and paying them extortion money for 25 years. talking is not the answer. north korea s leader promised to fire more missiles, describing the most recent launch as a meaningful prelude to pyongyang s effort to contain guam which a north korea newsreader described as an
of the year. that s a finite number. it s a limited number. stephanie? even just one, you and i discussed, this is like a bullet hitting a bullet. yeah. hard to do. yesterday was a success. but does it mean that the u.s. is fully protected? no way. no. i think that s a good way to put it. to give you a sense of how precise they are, i figuring out what happened, they want to figure out the point of impact down to the centimeter. this collided outside of the earth s atmosphere, the kill vehicle released from the interceptor missile. it happened they just said it was northeast of hawaii. thank you. extraordinary, those images. we re going to take a break. when we come back, we ll take you down to louisiana for senator bill cassidy s town hall. it is taking place at this moment. he is pushing his own health care bill. we re going to get live reaction from the ground. you are watching msnbc. stay with us.
that, the two met in space, hundreds of miles above the pacific ocean. what happens then is that a small part of the interceptor missile effectively a precision guided five foot chunk of metal breaks off, slammed into the icbm according to the missile defense agency and completely obliterated it. so that was the process that was happening. it was spectacular to see the launch here at vandenberg. everybody at the pentagon mightedly relieved that it was a success, jenna. jenna: amazing to see, what little we were able to see. this isn t just one and done be other improvements and tests as well? reporter: yeah. they have no choice but to keep testing and improving this system, given that north korea is clearly improving its missile capability. we ve seen all the launches of north korean missiles this year and they have stated that they plan to get an icbm with which
from the interceptor missile and hits the icbm, destroying it completely hundreds of miles up in space. clearly, not an easy task. admiral james searing who is director of the missile defense agency, very pleased and very relieved last night, saying in a statement, this system is important to the defense of our homeland and this test demonstrates that we have a capable, credible deterrent against a very real threat. i m incredibly proud of the war fighters who executed this test and who operate this system every day. this system will be expanded. there are currently 36 of those interceptor missiles, four of them were i am right now at vandenberg air force base, 32 of them in alaska where our cameras got an exclusive look at the 70-foot deep silos in which those missiles are stored. we also met the crews who were