On October 12, South Korea‘s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) announced at a parliamentary audit their plan to purchase SM-3 interceptors to counter North Korea’s ballistic missiles. A decision “for something at the SM-3 level” was made during a JCS meeting in September 2017, according to head of the JCS force-buildup planning bureau Major General Kim Sun-ho. The SM-3 is an exo-atmospheric missile defense interceptor used for theater ballistic missile defense. Part of the the Aegis Weapon System, it uses a hit-to-kill kinetic kill vehicle to intercept ballistic missiles during the mid-course of their flight path.