On July 13 began the UNITAS LVIII-17 miltinational exercises and will be held until next June 26 in Peruvian waters.

In this edition of UNITAS, units from the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Spain, King Britain and Peru participate.

UNITAS will be developed in several phases in which anti-submarine, anti-surface, anti-aircraft, MIO, SAR exercises will be carried out

The present exercises UNITAS will count on the participation, among others, of the following units:

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the Japan Ministry of Defense and U.S. Navy successfully used a ship-launched Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target for the first time on Friday night in Hawaii.

In the Feb. 3 test, conducted at about 10:30 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time (3:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Feb. 4), a target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, according to a MDA statement. USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) detected and tracked the target missile with its AN/SPY-1D(V) radar and Aegis Combat System Baseline 9.C2 system. The ship fired a SM-3 Block IIA – being jointly developed by the U.S. and Japan – and intercepted the target.

Source: USNI News