The United States Missile Defence Agency on Wednesday announced that it had successfully conducted a missile test off the coast of Hawaii, Reuters reported. This comes a day after North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan, though the US agency said the test had been planned for a long time.

US warship John Paul Jones detected and tracked the medium-range ballistic missile, launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, and shot it down using Standard Missile-6 guided weapons, the defence agency said in a statement.

This was a key milestone for the US Navy, giving it “an enhanced capability to defeat ballistic missiles in their terminal phase”, said Director of the US Missile Defence Agency Lieutenant General Sam Greaves, according to Fox News. He added that they will continue to develop “technologies to stay ahead of the threat, as it evolves”.

North Korea had said that its the missile launch was to counter military drills conducted by the US and South Korea. Pyongyang called the test its first move to increase military action in the Pacific Ocean to contain the US territory of Guam. The United Nations had strongly condemned North Korea’s “outrageous” actions.

US President Donald Trump had said the world had received North Korea’s message “loud and clear”. “Threatening and destabilising actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,” Trump had said. “All options are on the table.”