Cheers erupted as the explosion, picked up by an infrared camera from an aircraft, was beamed back to video screens at the launch control room in Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands and at a Pentagon conference monitored by reporters.

Military officers in camouflage uniforms and civilians clapped each other on the back and shook hands in celebration moments after the intercept, which occurred precisely 42 seconds after 0309 GMT.

"The kill intercept was confirmed by all our sensors," said Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

It was only the second time that the Pentagon has succeeded in intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead after more than two years of trying, and it represented a big boost for program that has been dogged by failure and controversy.

Kadish cautioned that Saturday night's success was only "one stop on the journey."

"There are many more tests that we need to accomplish. As I've said before in this room, we've got a long road ahead in all of the missile defense activities that we have ahead of us," he said.

All aspects of the tests performed "nominally," but it was not known for certain whether all objectives of the 100 million dollar test were fully met, Kadish said. "No test goes perfect," he said.

Once the results are in, the Pentagon will consider whether to make the next test in October more difficult, possibly by adding more countermeasures than the single balloon decoy deployed Saturday, Kadish said.

The interception came just under half an hour after a modified Minuteman missile roared into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, boosting into space a dummy warhead with a balloon decoy.

A network of early warning satellites and radars tracked the simulated warhead across the Pacific.

When the target came over Kwajalein's horizon, the bulbous intercept missile blasted off from a seaside launch past and streaked into space, closing with the target at speed of more than 15,000 miles per hour.

The two-stage intercept missile released a kill vehicle which steered into a pulverizing collision with the dummy warhead, using data from a high-powered ground-based targeting radar and its own onboard infrared sensors to set its course.

The only apparent glitch came when the countdown for the target missile's launch was stopped for 40 minutes. Kadish attributed it to "normal test delays."

Two Greenpeace swimmers were arrested at about the same time after landing on a beach close to the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, according to the group.

Kadish, who had said Friday he was "quietly confident" of success, said, "Today, I feel quietly very good."

Two of three previous attempted intercepts have failed.

The last test on July 8, 2000 was dashed when the kill vehicle failed to release from its booster rocket. In a test on January 19, 2000, it missed its target when a clogged cooling pipe blinded its infrared seekers seconds before impact.

Last year's test failure convinced then-president Bill Clinton not to proceed with the deployment of a limited national missile defense test.

President George W. Bush's Pentagon has taken a radically different approach, accelerating testing and development of a whole range of missile defense systems in defiance of the 1972 ABM treaty with Russia that kept the nuclear balance through the Cold War.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a newspaper interview Saturday that Washington would seek a new, comprehensive nuclear weapons agreement with Russia to allow the United States to develop its missile defense program, which has drawn angry protests from Moscow.

"We need an understanding, an agreement, a treaty, something with the Russians that allows us to move forward with our missile defense programs," Powell told the Washington Post.

Under the new scheme, the ground-based system being tested late Saturday will be only one component of a layered defense that also would include sea-based, airborne and space-based defenses capable of attacking missiles along the entire arc of its trajectory.

While it has no schedule for deploying any of the systems, the Pentagon says the testing programs are designed to provide "interim" missile defense capabilities as early as 2004.

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