Let's just make sure that there are no Charlies in the way of our test fires
I will orbit the planet and scan it with sensors, before backing off 100 m-km for the test-firing.
EDIT:
A few words on exactly what I'm testing, what I hope to accomplish, and why I'm leaving the Solar System to do it.
I hope to develop a technique for bombarding hostile worlds from a safe distance. Since our current propulsion tech (Ion engines) limits our practical missile range to about 100 m-km, I'm going to tentatively assume that 100 m-km is a "safe" distance, and perform my tests based on that.
In order for this theoretical technique to work in practice, at least four conditions must be met:
1) It must be possible to attach a way-point to a moving world, and have it "stick" to the planet, rather than get left behind as the planet orbits its sun.
2) It must be possible for a warship to "blind fire" at a way-point that is far outside its sensor and fire control range, without the missile self-destructing as it leaves fire control range.
3) The upper stage of a MIRV-ed rocket needs to deploy as it reaches the way-point, even if no target is detected.
4) The Planetary Defense Complex that we intend to attack must have a missile range of less than our "safe" distance, 100 m-km.
The first three conditions can be tested in safety, in live-firing tests. I'm doing that now. The last condition is an unknown, and we won't find that out until we start shooting drones (or sending recon ships) towards the Prix world. If it turns out that 100 m-km is NOT a safe distance... then we'll have to come up with a Plan B, probably involving Drones.
I'm doing the tests in the Ross 248 system in order to get out of the radius of Earth's Deep Space Surveillance Network, which might otherwise give us a false-positive result.