Saturday's ballistic missile interception test by the US was not as successful as it first appeared, Patrick Smyth reports from Washington. The Pentagon has confirmed that while the mock warhead launched from California was destroyed over the Pacific, the new radar system which guided the missile interception, and was crucial to helping to distinguish between the warhead and decoys, was unable to register the destruction of the incoming missile.
The failure was attributed to an overload of data following the explosion.