Japan, U.S. Forces, Don’t Try To Shoot It Down; Instead, Obama, Others, Frown On Outlaw Launch
Illicit North Korean Missile Launch Proves Need For U.S., Japanese Missile Defense;
Missile Flight Aids Lawmakers Supporting U.S. Missile Defense
North Korea Didn’t Launch A Satellite
North Korea again defied world opinion, and again got away with it, perhaps even setting itself up for yet another reward from the West.
The communist regime yesterday fired a long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile that arced over Japan and traveled more than 1,243 miles before the nose of the device and one or more stages splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, heralding to the world that Pyongyang is advancing its missile technologies rapidly. That launch also may mean that the major missile arms proliferator has a new product to offer rogue states.
At the same time, the launch was not a complete success, because the missile is seen having an eventual range of roughly 4,000 miles, with refinement and better fuel. It is possible that the second or third stage malfunctioned, according to U.S. officials.
Still, this Taepo Dong-2 launch was a vast improvement from a 2006 launch that destructed within seconds of leaving the launch pad.
North Korea said the missile launched a satellite, but that was untrue. Rather, Pyongyang tested a long-range ballistic missile. Stage one of the missile fell into the Sea of Japan, and remaining stages along with the payload itself landed in the Pacific Ocean, according to U.S. military authorities. No object entered orbit
While top-level U.S. and Japanese officials complained and fretted about the North Korean provocation, both before and after the launch, the two nations didn’t use their missile defense systems to annihilate the missile. The insular regime earlier had threatened Washington and Tokyo before the launch, saying if the missile was shot down it would be an act of war. President Obama deplored the missile launch as a “provocative act” and as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolution language, saying that the launch “further isolated” North Korea. He urged other nations to provide a “strong international response” to the launch. But he didn’t call for specified, concrete actions against Pyongyang, aside from favoring continued talks with the North.
With the semi-successful ballistic flight of the Taepo Dong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), North Korea now has a missile technology to offer other rogue nations, for a price. That is a prize which Pyongyang wouldn’t now hold if the United States or Japan had shot down the missile, because that would have degraded the value of ballistic missiles. Some military experts say key officials in some rogue nations journeyed to the launch site in northeastern North Korea to witness the launch. (To be sure, Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked who would buy the missile from North Korea after it failed to reach maximum range.)
As well, the peninsular power has built and detonated a nuclear weapon in an underground test, and possesses several atomic bombs. Although North Korea has promised repeatedly to turn over those weapons to international inspectors, the North hasn’t even revealed their location, much less surrendered them. Further work would be required to miniaturize such weapons so they would fit atop the new missile.
The North Korean launch action came at a most inconvenient time for the fledgling President Obama, on his first major international tour, just as he was visiting the Czech Republic to speak on nonproliferation and the need for defense against possible Iranian missile attacks. (Please see separate stories in this issue.)
The North Koreans may have seen the missile launch not only as a way to insert a major distraction into Obama’s first foray into a major multinational meeting, the Group of 20 Nations session in Europe. Further, the ICBM launch also may have been seen as a means of taking a measure of the man, to see whether Obama would have the steel to order the North Korean missile to be shot down by U.S. forces. If so, he did not. (More on this below.)
Rather, Obama spoke again, as he has before, about hopes of coaxing North Korea to surrender its arms and nuclear program, and of wishing to halt proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technologies that are creeping across the globe, along with reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Obama also complained that the North Korean launch was illegal under international rules.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. “Trey” Obering III, former director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said in a press briefing Friday that U.S. systems can detect whether a missile launch is a space shot carrying a satellite into orbit, or an ICBM blasting off, by the angle of the ascent.
Relating to his European trip, Obama had been widely expected to propose killing plans for the future European Missile Defense (EMD) system that also would include interceptors in ground silos in Poland. But the North Korean launch makes such moves difficult at this time. Instead, Obama said that Iranian missiles do pose a threat.
Nonetheless, under a plan released today by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the EMD will have to limp along in fiscal 2010 on funds unused in fiscal 2009. The plan also nixes any new interceptors for the related Ground-based Midcourse Defense system now installed in Alaska and California to guard against North Korean missile attacks. And the Airborne Laser missile defense program — designed to kill missiles of any range, anywhere, in their most vulnerable phase of flight, just after they launch — was downgraded to a technology project. (Please see full story in this issue.)
Iran, which already has received missile-technology assistance from North Korea, recently launched a satellite that 30 minutes later was over the United States, proving that Tehran now possesses the technology to build an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Further, Iran has thousands of centrifuges whirling to produce nuclear materials, which it claims would fuel electrical power reactors but which Western leaders fear will be used to build nuclear weapons. Further work would be required to mount them atop missiles.
Both the programs in Iran and the North Korean missile launch show that the United States and its allies confront a more dangerous world, where the most calamitous military capabilities are or soon will be wielded by rogue nations headed by unstable regimes.
“A new security era has begun for our nation and that of our allies in the world. North Korea has successfully tested a long range ballistic missile,” said Riki Ellison, president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, an industry-related group.
“This success coupled with the North Korean nuclear weapons makes North Korea a nuclear threat of a rogue nation with an irrational leader that will have the capability to project a nuclear weapon to the territory of the United States and its allies,” Ellison warned after the launch, placing “millions of lives at risk.”
The launch shows this is no time to savage funding for U.S. missile defense programs, Ellison asserted, saying Gates should provide full funding for the defensive systems, programs that receive but 2 percent of U.S. defense-spending dollars.
“It is affordable and a required capability to defend our citizens and territory,” Ellison argued. “A robust multi-layered missile defense will also give our president a much needed real capability to counter and provide a valuable option to deal with this new era of nuclear rogue nations with irrational leaders that can project power through ballistic missiles.”
One positive factor, from Ellison’s viewpoint, might lie in a statement by White House coordinator for arms control Gary Samore, who was quoted in news reports as stating that “the North Korean test illustrates the importance of continuing to develop missile defense in order to protect both the [United States] and our allies in Asia.”
Missile Defense Was Unused
Obama didn’t detail just why the United States elected not to use missile defense systems to knock down the North Korean missile, though it may have related to the fact the missile trajectory didn’t go to Hawaii or other U.S. states.
However, the missile did pass over Japan.
The disuse of the missile defense systems, including two U.S. Navy destroyers stationed off North Korea and a Japanese missile defense destroyer on duty as well, wasn’t because Obama never thought of using the defensive shield.
For example, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee with jurisdiction over missile defense programs, said Obama should order missile defense systems to destroy the missile, even though North Korea had claimed it was merely a satellite launch, if it appeared that the missile was headed toward U.S. territory. It is unclear whether that was the case at any point in the North Korean missile trajectory.
Franks, co-chairman and a founder of the bipartisan Congressional Missile Defense Caucus, also said U.S. missile defense action against the North Korean launch was fully warranted by the fact that it was illegal under United Nations resolutions and other rules.
While North Korea threatened war if the United States or Japan used missile defense systems to obliterate the missile, Franks argued that “blustering by belligerent nations must not intimidate the Obama administration or deter the president from authorizing the moral and constitutional response from our government” of initiating protective action against the missile.
“I strongly urge President Obama to authorize the interception of any missile the Department of Defense determines is on course [toward] the American homeland.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was even more pointed, as he appeared yesterday on Fox News Sunday. Gingrich said he would have authorized a preemptive attack on the missile, to demolish it before the launch. As well, the former speaker said that worrisome as the prospect might be that North Korea soon may be able to use a nuclear-tipped missile to attack an American city, it’s worse than that.
Gingrich said a single nuclear weapon could trigger an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which would knock out U.S. electrical generating capacity of the United States.
Actually, other experts say a single nuclear device detonated, say, 300 miles above North Dakota or Iowa could generate an electromagnetic pulse that would kill the entire U.S. electrical generating and distribution system. Trucks, cars, trains, mass transit and other systems wouldn’t run, except for those so old they contain no computer chips. Planes would fall from the sky. Electronic devices ranging from computers to cell phones would cease functioning. Food couldn’t be produced or shipped to cities, and millions would starve.
Gingrich said the scale of threat posed by EMP is not understood by most Americans.