"U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- From: ppp@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 04:22:29 GMT
On 23 Jun 2006 07:58:29 -0700, "Mike" <yared22311@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
U.S. set to down Korean missile
Senior Bush administration officials said publicly for the first time
yesterday that the United States is set to shoot down any North Korean
missile launch that threatens the United States.
at http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060623-120347-7331r.htm
Hollow US defense for an empty threat
By David Isenberg
June 24, 2006
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HF24Dg01.html
WASHINGTON - The news that North Korean is preparing to test-fire an
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time since
1998 is the latest "threat" to roil the international scene.
Predictably, duly certified experts have gone public to wring their
hands, intone what a grave menace such a launch represents, and
prescribe solutions. Thus far, the most ludicrous is the June 22
Washington Post op-ed by Ashton B Carter and William J Perry, who were
respectively assistant secretary of defense and secretary of defense
under US president Bill Clinton and are now professors at Harvard and
Stanford universities, who wrote that the United States should
immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North
Korean Taepodong 2 missile before it can be launched.
This is premature, to say the least, considering North Korea may
not even have an ICBM. According to DefenseTech, a leading website on
military technology, the North Koreans have previously launched
exactly one intermediate-range ballistic missile. That missile, a
combination of smaller Nodong and Scud missiles - went about 2,000
kilometers or so.
Now, US intelligence assumes the North Koreans have been working on
strapping together more Nodong and Scud engines for an ICBM -
something that can reach three to five times as far, and hit the
United States. But no one has actually seen the missile. Even how many
stages the mystery missile has is unknown; some folks say two, others
say three.
But, by far, the most laughable news is the US government announcement
that it is activating its missile defense system. This, no doubt, is
causing the North Korean leaders to shake - in fits of laughter. One
can only imagine some flunky saying, "Good news, Dear Leader: the
American imperialists have activated their missile defense system. Now
we can launch."
The activation of the system is what one can only call a Pyrrhic
readiness gesture, considering the system has a particularly
distinguished record of failures in its operational tests to date and
is still considered to be in the laughing-stock stage by most
impartial experts.
As most people have learned in the 20-plus years since the late
president Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative in
1983, shooting down an incoming ICBM even under the best of conditions
is a daunting challenge.
And the US missile defense system is far from perfect. Phillip Coyle
III, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information and former
assistant secretary of defense and director, operational test and
evaluation, said this in January:
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has not had a successful flight
intercept test with its Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) system for
three and a half years. In the most recent two flight-intercept tests,
the interceptor never got off the ground. Nevertheless the GMD system
is being deployed in Alaska and California. The MDA plans 20 or 30
more developmental flight-intercept tests before they will be ready
for realistic operational testing. At the current rate of success it
could take over 50 years before the system was ready to be tested
under realistic operational conditions.
If spending rises as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, US
taxpayers could spend more than a trillion dollars on missile defense
in that period. This does not include the roughly US$100 billion
already spent on missile defense since Reagan's "Star Wars" speech in
1983.
Currently, the Pentagon spends about $8 billion a year on national
missile defense. The ground-based missile-defense component was over
budget by more than $365 million last year and delivered fewer
interceptors than planned without proof they would work, according to
a review by the Government Accountability Office this year.
Even the few so-called successful tests of the GMD system are dubious.
According to Coyle, flight-intercept tests have been conducted under
artificial and unrealistic conditions.
Examples include prior knowledge by the defender as to the time of
attack, the type of attacking missile, its trajectory and intended
target location, and the makeup of its payload. No real enemy would
ever knowingly provide such information to the US military in advance
of an attack.
As a result, while there have been 10 flight-intercept tests of the
GMD system since 1999, five of which were successful, the GMD system
has no demonstrated capability to defend the US under realistic
operational conditions. In fact, the system has not successfully
intercepted a single missile in its current configuration.
The Washington, DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
put out a news release noting that the past tests of the system prove
an intercept is feasible only:
When operators know in advance the location of a single target
missile, the date and time of its launch and its flight trajectory.
When a surrogate booster rocket launches the missile, which flies at
slower than normal speed in daylight and good weather.
When the target re-entry vehicle is equipped with global-positioning
technology and a radar beacon to send its position to a surrogate
ground-control radar.
Actually, things are even worse. According to Victoria Samson, also of
the Center for Defense Information, the GMD program has nine
interceptors on the ground in Fort Greely, Alaska, and two more in
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. And the last test intercept was
made in October 2002. The past two times - December 2004 and February
2005 - the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) tried to attempt an intercept,
the US rocket didn't even leave the launch pad. (For the latter, it
turned out that the arms holding the missiles up in their silos
weren't properly built for the salty environment in which they were
fielded, so the MDA is replacing those components in all the silos.)
Furthermore, Samson notes, the radar system that is needed to help
detect missile launches, the sea-based X-Band Radar (SBX), is still
undergoing tests outside Hawaii - nowhere near its home port of Adak,
Alaska. The satellite network being built to track missiles once
they're launched - the Space-Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) -
isn't planning its initial launch of two test satellites until next
year, with the goal of getting the system up and running somewhere
around 2012.
And the command and control system necessary to link everything
together was cited in a recent report by the Pentagon's Inspector
General's Office as having such poor network security that it very
well could be hacked. That report proved so embarrassing that the
Pentagon subsequently removed it from the inspector general's website.
However, there is one bit of good news. Samson said the program did
have significant success in that last December the MDA held a flight
test where the major goal was to get the rocket off the ground. That
they were able to do.
David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British
American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background
in arms-control and national-security issues. The views expressed are
his own.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- From: Allen Thomson
- Re: "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- References:
- "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- From: Mike
- "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- Prev by Date: Re: Speaking of Border security
- Next by Date: Re: Battlecarriers (historical question)
- Previous by thread: Re: "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- Next by thread: Re: "U.S. set to down Korean missile"
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
