Goodness me, people on this site are losing their perspective.
If it was a missile, it was a US missile. To send a message about strength capability power.
Something tells me that yes it was ours, and it was a snapshot launch, and I think it wasn’t timed for any political leverage, I think it was done to take out a possible very dangerous piece of orbital hardware, something that if it hit in a populated area would have caused major damage.
I’m actually thinking of the movie “Space Cowboys” except we decided we had to shoot something down now and then keep quiet about it.
There is still an unknown amount of birds we have launched with payloads of radioactive fuels aboard. Or worse.