Three recent reports confirm that multiple missile threats facing the United States are worsening, threats that years ago prompted Washington to institute a $100 billion, multi-year, multi-layered missile defense development program led by the Missile Defense Agency.
Iran, North Korea and China pose palpable and worsening threats, with both missile and nuclear programs, according to new assessments. And Russia continues to pose a formidable strategic threat.
One assessment was delivered by Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to the Senate Armed Services Committee. To view Maples’s testimony titled “Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States” in full before the committee, please go to http://www.dia.mil on the Web and click on Testimonies & Speeches.
Another other newly-presented perspective, by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, was an airing and discussion of its 2007 annual report to Congress that experts outlined on Capitol Hill earlier this month. The U.S.-China commission report, a 351-page bound volume, can be viewed in full, along with testimony presented to the commission on Capitol Hill last week, by going to http://www.uscc.gov on the Web and looking for the 2007 “Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission” at the Web site home page.
And a third report was prepared by the office of the secretary of defense, an annual report to Congress titled “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” that can be viewed in entirety by going to http://www.dod.mil on the Web and clicking on Press Advisories.
On Iran, while it is improving its military to counter any attack by a larger adversary such as the United States, Iran also can conduct offensive operations with ballistic missile and naval forces, Maples reported.
For example, Iran is procuring fast missile patrol boats and anti-ship cruise missiles and underwater mines, Maples noted.
And, since early last year, “Iran has begun to invest heavily in advanced air defenses,” he added, “taking delivery of the advanced SA-15 tactical surface-to-air missile systems,” and at the end of last year “announced it will acquire the strategic, long-range SA-20.”
Not only are these weapons intimidating, they will permit Iran to defend key facilities, such as nuclear program centers, according to Maples.
While Israeli aircraft in 1981 demolished the Osirak plant where Iran was thought to be working toward nuclear weapons production, the Arab nation since has decentralized its nuclear processing facilities and moved them deep underground where they are resistant to air strikes.
Iran also is moving ahead with offensive missile capabilities.
As for North Korea, it has long-range artillery close to the demilitarized zone border with South Korea, “complimented by a substantial mobile ballistic missile force with an array of warhead options to include WMD that can strike U.S. forces and our allies in [South Korea] and Japan,” Maples reported.
Some analysts and lawmakers see the threat from North Korea diminished because a test of its longest-range missile ended in failure, with the missile destroyed. But Maples is not reassured by that.
“Development of the Taepo Dong 2, which has the potential to reach the continental United States with a nuclear payload, continues despite a failed July 2006 test launch,” Maples warned “North Korea also continues work on an intermediate range ballistic missile.”
He also is not totally convinced that a six-party agreement means North Korea is guaranteed to surrender and hand over its nuclear weapons and production facilities.
“Although North Korea has halted and disabled portions of its nuclear program, we do not know the conditions under which Pyongyang would entirely abandon its nuclear weapons capability,” Maples said.
He cited some worrisome points.
North Korea “could have stockpiled several nuclear weapons from plutonium produced at Yonbyon [reactor] and it likely sought a uranium enrichment capability for nuclear weapons. It may also have proliferated nuclear-weapons-related technology abroad.”
“North Korea may be able to successfully mate a nuclear warhead to a mobile ballistic missile,” he cautioned.
Aside from nuclear weapons, North Korea has expertise in other weapons of mass destruction. “North Korea has had a longstanding chemical warfare program and we believe North Korea’s chemical warfare capabilities probably included the ability to produce bulk quantities of nerve, blister, choking and blood agents,” Maples told the lawmakers.
The three reports issue similar findings that China constitutes a rising military threat.
China “is building and fielding sophisticated weapon systems and testing new doctrines that it believes will allow it to prevail in regional conflicts and also counter traditional U.S. military advantages,” Maples reported.
This Chinese rising military might is multifaceted, encompassing the entire panoply of weaponry.
“The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is building its own sophisticated aircraft, surface combatants, submarines and weapon systems while still buying others overseas,” such as from Russia, Maples reported.
He listed a few of the myriad new cutting-edge weapon systems that China is acquiring.
“China is integrating Russian-produced Kilo-class submarines and Sovremenny-class destroyers into the (PLA navy, or PLAN) as well as S-300 PMU2 surface-to-air [SAM] missiles and Su-27 aircraft into the air force,” Maples noted.
“China has developed and begun to deploy indigenous SAM systems which, together with SAMs imported from Russia, provide Beijing with a modern, layered, ground-based air defense capability to defend important assets,” Maples observed. “China bought four S-300 PMU-2 (SA-20) air defense battalions and intends to buy four more.
“This increases its engagement range out to 200 km,” or 124.3 miles.
That is more than the 100 miles of water in the Taiwan Strait separating Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, where China has assembled 1,300 radar-guided missiles aimed at Taiwan.
A similar ominous portrait emerges from the Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
According to the report, China brandishes not one but three types of long-range ballistic that can strike targets in the United States from launch sites in China (see map on page 99 in the report).
One, the JL-2, with a range of 8,000 kilometers (4,971 miles) can hit targets as diverse as Minneapolis, Maui and Malibu; Los Angeles and Las Vegas; Seattle and San Francisco. Further, when mounted in a submarine launching tube, such as the nuclear-powered Jin Class, the JL-2 can be fired from beneath the Pacific Ocean and strike any target on the East Coast of the United States.
Two other Chinese ballistic missile weapon types, the DF-31A (which can be road-mobile and thus hard for an opponent to target) and the CSS-4, can be launched from within China and strike any target in the 50 United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, all of Europe, Asia including of course Japan, and Africa.
In other words, all three of these Chinese missile types hold at risk all of the highly industrialized nations in the world.
The report discusses the daunting Chinese capabilities in a section on catastrophic warfare.
Finally, the third study examining Chinese military might, the secretary of defense annual report, also delineates the threat.
This last report stresses that there is a vast disconnect between China’s stated explanations as to why it is engaged in a gigantic military buildup, and the facts of that rising rearmament.
“Much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, in particular in the area of its expanding military power and how that power might be used,” the Department of Defense report notes.
“The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short duration, high intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries,” such as the United States.
Moving to the bottom line for what this all means, the DoD report quotes another Pentagon report that was issued two years ago, saying that its findings still are true.
“As noted in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, [China] ‘has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages.'”
China clearly is planning to develop capabilities that would be used not just to invade and conquer Taiwan, but also to project force elsewhere, the DoD report concludes.