A kill in the Pacific

In this article, crewmembers from the USS Lake Erie describe the SM-3 missile attack that knocked out the malfunctioning recon satellite U.S. 193. While the strike was controversial, it's also quite a display of technical prowess, using as it did an interceptor designed to hit incoming missiles, not satellites. As Captain Randall Hendrickson described the results, "The radar scope went wild. At that point, there was a lot of debris, a lot of pieces and, at that point, we thought we had a pretty good impact. Then that was confirmed by the aircraft that were airborne, the radars ashore and some other sensors that it was pretty much obliterated. Over the next three to four hours, a lot of it was burning up as it was coming down, which was the whole point of it."