News Story: False Alarm May Have Triggered U.S. Navy Warship's Missile Defense System

USS Mason (Image: Wiki Commons)

By: Andrew Tilghman

After several days of investigation, the U.S. Navy believes an urgent warning about an incoming missile aboard a destroyer Saturday night may have been a false alarm, defense officials said Tuesday. 

The guided-missile destroyer Mason, underway in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, detected a “possible inbound missile,” prompting the ship’s commander to activate the missile defense system and launch interceptor missiles, defense officials said. 

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the commander’s decision to fire the missile defense system was “appropriate,” but there has been no confirmation of an inbound missile posing a threat to the U.S. ship. 

“We have not actually confirmed that that happened,” Davis said Tuesday. 

“We are not ready to call it an 'attack',” he said. “We are going back and reviewing the information to see what happened.” 

Read the full story at DefenseNews