Blame a Spark Plug for U.S.-Japan Missile Failure, Pentagon Says
- Raytheon missile to bolster Japan defenses against North Korea
- Missile Defense Agency says that no design flaw was found
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A device that’s like a spark plug, not a design flaw, was behind the high-profile failure of a U.S.-Japanese missile interceptor built by Raytheon Co. in a test launch in January, a Pentagon review board has found.
The “failure review board” confirmed that the “most likely cause” of the failure was a component in the third, or uppermost, stage of the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA model, according to a Missile Defense Agency summary obtained by Bloomberg News.