WASHINGTON Ñ The United States, after two straight failures, has achieved a successful test of its missile defense system.

The $100 million test was that of an interception of a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile. A two-stage intercept missile released a kill vehicle that destroyed the missile over the Pacific Ocean on late Saturday.

"The kill intercept was confirmed by all our sensors," Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said. "There are many more tests that we need to accomplish. We've got a long road ahead in all of the missile defense activities that we have ahead of us."

The Minuteman was tracked over the Pacific by a network of satellites and radars soon after it was launched at 10:40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday. Twenty minutes later, the kill vehicle was fired from a U.S. Air Force base in California.

"The intercept took place approximately 10 minutes after the interceptor was launched, at an altitude in excess of 140 miles [225 kilometers] above the earth, and during the midcourse phase of the target warhead's flight," a Pentagon statement said on Sunday. "Over the next several weeks, government and industry program officials will conduct an extensive analysis of the data received during the flight test to determine whether anomalies or malfunctions occurred during the test, evaluate system performance and determine whether or not all flight test objectives were met."

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