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North Korea Missile Launch: How Serious a Threat?
By Nathan Hodge March 26, 2009 | 11:02:44 AMCategories: Missiles, Those Nutty Norks
As North Korea preps a long-range missile for launch, we're seeing a lot of screaming headlines. Our friends at the Drudge Report are giving this one the bold, 36-point type treatment: OMG OMG North Korea has a missile that can reach the western United States! But is that, y'know, true? And how well prepared are we to respond to a missile launch, anyway?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that a missile firing by North Korea would be a "provocative act"; Pyongyang has said it would consider an attempt to shoot down the missile an "act of war." And a launch test would probably mean the end of the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament as well: North Korea has vowed to restart plutonium production if the United Nations punishes it for a rocket launch.
But that assumes they can get it off the ground. The missile -- described by North Korea as a satellite launch vehicle -- is believed to be a Taepodong-2 derivative. North Korea has been developing the Taepodong-2 since the 1990s, but has yet to successfully launch the thing. Back in July 2006, North Korea fired off a Taepodong-2; the missile failed less than a minute after launch.
The response of the Pentagon at the time was instructive. In late 2006, Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge, then-deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system on full alert; interceptor crews at Fort Greely, Alaska, were in place to react to a possible launch; and Rumsfeld personally took part in training exercises meant to test the rules of engagement. When the launch was detected, conference calls with command authorities quickly got underway. But the "threat track" for the missile, however, disappeared before any decision to engage.
Back in 2006, the U.S. military had a very a good picture of what was going on at the launch site; the North Koreans started building up the site almost two months in advance. This time around, we should have plenty of advance warning about a possible Taepodong-2 launch. The missile's first stage uses a liquid propellant; the North Koreans would need several days to fuel up the rocket on the pad. A U.S. official told ABC News yesterday there was "no indication" they had begun the fueling process.
So if the North Koreans moved toward a launch, the U.S. military should have time to weigh the options. The U.S. Navy has at least two ships in the region that may be prepared to track and intercept a missile, including the USS John S. McCain, configured for ballistic missile defense; Japan also has two Aegis destroyers equipped with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3). A reconfigured SM-3, incidentally, was used in the shoot-down of a disabled spy satellite by a Navy cruiser last year. So the bottom line seems to be: If we have a fair amount of warning, the odds may be pretty decent that we can shoot something down.
North Korea Missile Launch: How Serious a Threat?
By Nathan Hodge March 26, 2009 | 11:02:44 AMCategories: Missiles, Those Nutty Norks
As North Korea preps a long-range missile for launch, we're seeing a lot of screaming headlines. Our friends at the Drudge Report are giving this one the bold, 36-point type treatment: OMG OMG North Korea has a missile that can reach the western United States! But is that, y'know, true? And how well prepared are we to respond to a missile launch, anyway?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that a missile firing by North Korea would be a "provocative act"; Pyongyang has said it would consider an attempt to shoot down the missile an "act of war." And a launch test would probably mean the end of the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament as well: North Korea has vowed to restart plutonium production if the United Nations punishes it for a rocket launch.
But that assumes they can get it off the ground. The missile -- described by North Korea as a satellite launch vehicle -- is believed to be a Taepodong-2 derivative. North Korea has been developing the Taepodong-2 since the 1990s, but has yet to successfully launch the thing. Back in July 2006, North Korea fired off a Taepodong-2; the missile failed less than a minute after launch.
The response of the Pentagon at the time was instructive. In late 2006, Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge, then-deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system on full alert; interceptor crews at Fort Greely, Alaska, were in place to react to a possible launch; and Rumsfeld personally took part in training exercises meant to test the rules of engagement. When the launch was detected, conference calls with command authorities quickly got underway. But the "threat track" for the missile, however, disappeared before any decision to engage.
Back in 2006, the U.S. military had a very a good picture of what was going on at the launch site; the North Koreans started building up the site almost two months in advance. This time around, we should have plenty of advance warning about a possible Taepodong-2 launch. The missile's first stage uses a liquid propellant; the North Koreans would need several days to fuel up the rocket on the pad. A U.S. official told ABC News yesterday there was "no indication" they had begun the fueling process.
So if the North Koreans moved toward a launch, the U.S. military should have time to weigh the options. The U.S. Navy has at least two ships in the region that may be prepared to track and intercept a missile, including the USS John S. McCain, configured for ballistic missile defense; Japan also has two Aegis destroyers equipped with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3). A reconfigured SM-3, incidentally, was used in the shoot-down of a disabled spy satellite by a Navy cruiser last year. So the bottom line seems to be: If we have a fair amount of warning, the odds may be pretty decent that we can shoot something down.
Mr. Obama has not proposed a radically different approach to North Korea than the one Mr. Bush has pursued for the past two years.
During Mr. Bush’s presidency, North Korea has tested its first nuclear weapon and has accumulated enough nuclear fuel to build eight more weapons, according to American estimates.
The deal in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program was first struck in February 2007, but it has been fragile from the outset. Only five months ago, the administration officially removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in a bid to salvage the deal.
Michael J. Green, a former National Security Council adviser under President Bush who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the administration had erred in removing North Korea from the list without extracting a more concrete step on verification.
“The United States expended its carrots, including delisting North Korea from the terrorist list, in exchange for a verbal promise that Pyongyang would sign on to these verifications,” he said. “We now know the North Koreans tricked us.”
A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the administration would not restore North Korea to the list because the decision to remove it had been made “based on the law and the facts.”
At the White House, Ms. Perino suggested that the United States would reconsider some of the assistance it had provided under carefully calibrated agreements over the past two years. The aid includes fuel oil that the United States — along with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, who are the other parties in the talks — had offered in exchange for North Korea’s steps toward dismantlement, but she emphasized that no decisions had been made yet.
Even as the administration pushed to conclude a final deal, it had appeared that North Korea wanted to stall, perhaps to seek different terms from Mr. Obama’s administration.
As a candidate and president-elect, Mr. Obama has pledged to take aggressive steps to halt nuclear proliferation by North Korea, criticizing Mr. Bush’s handling of the confrontation with North Korea as unnecessarily belligerent in the beginning and ad hoc later on.
In a debate against Senator John McCain in September, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Bush’s initial hostility toward North Korea, saying it resulted in that country’s decision to abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to test a nuclear weapon in 2006, but he also acknowledged the diplomatic effort that has since followed.
“When we re-engaged — because, again, the Bush administration reversed course on this — then we have at least made some progress, although right now, because of the problems in North Korea, we are seeing it on shaky ground,” Mr. Obama said at the time.
Mr. Obama’s transition office declined to comment on the latest breakdown in talks over the North Korean nuclear program.
North Korea’s hard-line posture in recent talks has prompted some officials to question whether its reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, was fully in charge after a stroke in August, creating a leadership vacuum that made North Korean negotiators unwilling to complete an agreement. A French doctor who treated him, François-Xavier Roux, confirmed in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that Mr. Kim had a stroke but that his condition had since improved.
Mr. Green, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said North Korea might be balking at vigorous verification measures because it was not forthcoming in its declaration of nuclear activities this summer. He said the uncertainty surrounding the country’s intentions posed an enormous challenge for the incoming administration. He advocated a “very carefully calibrated” balance between incentives and punitive actions, like halting fuel oil shipments.
The latest breakdown in talks came after American and North Korean negotiators had reached what officials described as a verbal agreement on the conditions for inspections of the North’s nuclear facilities, including its main plutonium reactor at Yongbyon.
North Korea has clearly shown a determined path to their continued stockpiling of nuclear arsenals. Mr. Bush seemed defeated in his ability to control this nation's government.
The United States also wanted measures to verify North Korea’s proliferation and other nuclear activities.
Administration officials said that the other nations in the talks had agreed on a written proposal, presented by the Chinese this week, but that North Korea continued to object to some of the verification measures.
“Well, it’s the same old problem,” the American negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, said in Beijing, according to a State Department transcript. “The North Koreans don’t want to put into writing what they are willing to put into words.”