Shorter-Range Missiles Also May Launch
North Korea as early as Saturday plans to launch a missile that it says will orbit a satellite, but which many military analysts say will be a Taepo Dong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching targets in North America.
In its last attempt to launch a Taepo Dong-2, in 2006, the missile destructed shortly after liftoff from northeastern North Korea.
An unknown now will be whether Japan will attempt to take the missile down with sea-based Aegis weapon control system ships using Standard Missile interceptors. The United States, which has Aegis ships in the area, won’t attempt to take down the missile unless it is headed for North America, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
That runs counter to the view of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. The MDAA leader asked Gates to employ “all available missile defense assets to the maximum capability to prepare in the face of the uncertainties of the North Korea ‘Space Launch’ that might pose a threat to Alaska, Hawaii and other regions of the United States.”
Riki Ellison, the MDAA leader, noted that a major U.S. missile defense asset sits in the Pacific
“The Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) has not been deployed and has been docked for the past several months at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The SBX was the main sensor in the recent successful long-range ballistic missile intercept on Dec. 5, 2008, providing the primary targeting information for the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. that successfully intercepted a long-range ballistic missile from Kodiak Island, Alaska.
That test “simulated a North Korean long-range missile threat using the current U.S. missile defense deployed assets designed for a long range ballistic,” the MDAA official observed.
Ellison noted the SBX also was used in an Aegis sea-based missile defense system test, and that system as well was used to shoot down a malfunctioning U.S. intelligence satellite.
“The SBX cost $950 million dollars to build and costs additional tens of millions of dollars to maintain and operate annually,” Ellison stated.
He noted that North Korea has laid out a planned path for the long-range missile that could mean it could strike close to Hawaii if the missile fails during its flight.
“The SBX is the most powerful and most capable sensor to discriminate the debris, payload and a possible reentry vehicle in detail from a North Korean long range missile or rocket launch traveling at extreme high speeds across the Pacific Ocean.”
Aside from the long range missile, North Korea also is readying the launch of short-range ballistic missiles, according to the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun., which quoted a South Korean TV station, KBS.
In the 2006 test, the rogue regime successfully launched six short- and medium-range missiles in addition to the Taepo Dong-2,
North Korea claims it has a right to peacefully launch a satellite, but Japan and the United States note that existing international rules forbid the rogue regime from making such a launch.
As occurred before the 2006 Taepo Dong-2 launch, U.S. Navy ships have assembled in the area near North Korea, and Japan also has deployed anti-missile ship assets.
If North Korea develops an ICBM capability, that would add to its nuclear capacity. The North already has built and test-detonated a nuclear weapon underground.
Once Pyongyang has an ICBM, all that would be left would be to miniaturize atomic weapons to fit atop missiles, a challenging but obtainable goal.
While North Korea has agreed in writing to denuclearize, it has yet to turn over even one atomic bomb to international inspectors. As well, the insular communist regime, which admits to producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, has yet to explain how traces of highly enriched uranium were discovered on pages of documents that the North furnished to Western inspectors.
Though North Korea accepted limits on its missile technology, it is ignoring that by surging ahead with the test set for a window of Saturday through April 8.
Japan, South Korea, the United States and other nations have condemned the imminent launch, even as North Korea continues assembling the missile on a launch pad.