Tuesday’s ballistic missile intercept test off Kauai represents another success in the development of missile defense systems that are increasingly in demand, are often tested in Hawaii, and whose development is being ramped up to meet an otherwise vexing threat from North Korea.

A day after North Korea launched a ballistic missile over northern Japan, infuriating the U.S. ally, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced that an SM-6 missile fired from the Pearl Harbor destroyer USS John Paul Jones had successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target.

The SM-6 can perform anti-air warfare, anti-surface warfare and, now, said missile maker Raytheon, even more advanced ballistic missile defense at sea.

“Earlier this year, our customer requested an enhanced capability to deal with a sophisticated medium-range ballistic missile threat,” Mike Campisi, Raytheon’s SM-6 senior program director, said in a release. “We did all this — the analysis, coding and testing — in seven months, a process that normally takes one to two years.”

Raytheon said it has delivered more than 330 SM-6s, with production continuing.

How the systems being developed and deployed would fare in real-world missile defense is unknown. The Arms Control Association notes that apart from Patriot missile defense — used in both Iraq wars — no systems in the U.S. arsenal for ballistic missile defense have been used in combat.

The Pentagon’s chief weapons testing office said for fiscal 2016 that ballistic missile defense demonstrated a “limited capability” to defend the U.S. Pacific Command area of responsibility from small numbers of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and a “fair” capability for short-range ballistic missiles.

A medium-range ballistic missile target was successfully intercepted by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System in a test out of Alaska on July 30, and an intermediate-range missile was shot down on July 11. The system is 15 for 15 in intercept tests.

THAAD batteries are now deployed to Guam and South Korea and have been talked about for the defense of Hawaii. Japan has four destroyers with missile shoot-down capability and Patriot mobile batteries with short-range effectiveness.

Japan also is seeking to install up to two Aegis Ashore sites that replicate ship-based missile defense capability on land. An Aegis Ashore site is operational at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai for testing purposes only for similar land-based defensive sites in Romania and Poland. Increasingly, the activation of Kauai’s Aegis Ashore site is being discussed for the defense of Hawaii.

Riki Ellison, chairman of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said “it will be years” before Japan’s Aegis Ashore sites and an additional four ballistic missile ships are operational, and in the meantime is advocating for a THAAD system for Japan.

In Tuesday’s test of SM-6 missiles off Kauai, the John Paul Jones, a test bed for the Aegis ballistic missile defense program, detected and tracked a medium-range ballistic missile target launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar.

The test marked the third time an SM-6 missile successfully engaged a ballistic missile target in its terminal, or final, phase of flight.

“We are working closely with the fleet to develop this important new capability, and this was a key milestone in giving our Aegis (ballistic missile defense) ships an enhanced capability to defeat ballistic missiles in their terminal phase,” Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves said in a release. “We will continue developing ballistic missile defense technologies to stay ahead of the threat as it evolves.”

The United States and Japan, meanwhile, are co-developing the SM-3 Block IIA missile, which has also been tested at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, and is seen as having implications for the defense of Hawaii from North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency said the SM-3 IIA could add a second layer of defense for the state beyond the ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that theoretically protect Hawaii and the mainland.

With growing concern over Hawaii’s potential vulnerability to North Korean ICBMs, plans also are being fast-tracked for a new medium-­range radar here by 2023 that could cost $1 billion.