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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a second delay of routine intercontinental ballistic missile tests to avoid provoking a Chinese reaction, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
This is the second time the routine test of the Minuteman III missile, referred to as a “Glory Trip” and used to assess the reliability of missiles, has been delayed this year, the WSJ reported. The U.S. first delayed the test in March, when Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country’s nuclear forces were at heightened readiness, to avoid an escalation, according to the WSJ.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby, who announced the delay, stressed at a Thursday briefing that the delay would only be “a couple of weeks” and that a new test date had already been chosen, according to Defense News.
“The decision [to postpone] came in light and in context of the tensions that we’re seeing right now, and they’re pretty escalated,” Kirby said, according to Defense News.
