The New York Times and others are framing North Korea’s busted missile test as a major problem for the U.S. — especially with China and Russia refusing to take a hard line against Pyongyang, for now. “President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of ‘familiar bad choices,’” the Times said.
That seems a little upside-down to me. Isn’t Kim Jong-il the one with the bad choices here, now that his supposedly-intercontinental missile flopped less than a minute into its flight?
“Over these past few years, [Kim] has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holdsnuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday’s dud raises the possibility that the missile card’s a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) ‘no there there,’” says Slate’s Fred Kaplan.
“Seems to me their ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] capability has gone no better than sideways the past eight years, if not down,” retired Adm. Dennis Blair, a former chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, tells the Washington Post.
“Less threatening, because less capable,” agreed Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), who tracks North Korea.
At the same time, South Korea — which had been keeping the U.S. at arm’s length — is now drawing us in a little closer. Reunification talks with the Norks will continue. But the South is now looking to put some of our short– and intermediate-range anti-missile systems into place. Seoul’s “Defense Ministry… announced it plans to introduce 48 Patriot missiles between 2008 and 2009,” according to the Chosun Ilbo. “After 2009, it will introduce SM-2 Block-IV sea-to-air interceptor missiles to be carried on Aegis ships to counter the North Korean missile threat.“
Japan, meanwhile, is barring North Korea ships and flights — after agreeing to install new missile interceptors of its own, last month.
So: allies better defended, and adversaries shown to be weak. That’s all good news, right?
UPDATE 11:14 AM: Unlike Phil Coyle, William Arkin thinks the American warning system did a good job of picking up on those Nork launches.
Within seconds of North Korean rocket engines igniting on their launch pads, infrared cameras aboard Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites detected the heat and transmitted an alert back to U.S. command centers in Colorado Springs, where the trajectory was calculated and the type of missile determined.
Those U.S. infrared satellites had been primed for over a month by activity at the launch sites, intelligence sources say. Movement was detected by spy satellites and U-2s, signals were intercepted by NSA. North Korea even reportedly issued a standard public “notice to mariners” announcing a military exercise and missile test.
UPDATE 11:39 AM: Plus, the Missile Defense Agency has to be psyched that it didn’t have to fire off its ICBM interceptors, since they haven’t been successfully tested in nearly four years. “The apparent failure of a North Korean long-range missile gives the Pentagon some breathing room as it prepares two critical tests for a U.S. missile shield,” the Wall Street Journal notes.
To bolster military and political confidence in the shield, the Pentagon next month plans to launch an interceptor missile in California to counter a mock enemy missile fired from Alaska. The primary goal of the trial isn’t to destroy the dummy warhead, said Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency. Instead, it is to test the shield’s command-and-control system and ensure that a key radar system tracks the warhead and transmits information to the interceptor.
Later this year, the agency plans a so-called hit-to-kill test that will aim to destroy a dummy warhead. Pentagon officials say the two tests, which will cost between $85 million and $100 million each, make 2006 the key year for validating the missile-shield concept. “We believe that we have demonstrated that the hit-to-kill technology works. What we’re going to do is try to show that we can do it reliably and that we can sustain it,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in an interview earlier this year.
UPDATE 1:49 PM: One other nice thing about the North Korean launch is that it gives the U.S. military a whole lot of data about a missile it didn’t know much about before. Thanks, Kim!
We’re apparently well defended, and militarially in a good position. But how are we in terms of actually working toward a resolution to the whole conflict? If NK tossing missiles around cannot dislodge China and Russia, what can?
The Bush admin, or the next one if Bush can’t be bothered, needs to find a way to break this stalemate Russia and China are imposing on every conflict out there, whether through negotiations with them or with the priniciples involved, or this potentially deadly Status Quo will continue to reign.
A few things.
Are we sure that N.K. didn’t set this up to fail?
Also the fact that we detected it, sounds good but weren’t we staring right at that point w the I.R. sat’s?
Another thing I think that gets lost is that both sides learn about the other even if there is a failure. We learn about there capabilities and they learn what went wrong.
Over all it seems that N.K. has egg on there face and we learned a bunch about there program, seems like a win for us.
Where did the TD-1 and TD-2 landing areas shown in http://www.defensetech.org/images/lat_nork_graphic.jpg come from?
They are not consistent with other information that I know of (z.B., the TD-2 couldn’t have landed very far from the launch site if it failed at less than a minute into flight.)
Yes, beucase a full burn of the stage-1 booster would still have gone over Japan, and if was on a ballistic trajectory for a pacific splashdown when launched. it failed, period.
Allen:
The graphic is from the L.A. Times.
nms
The most interesting of the latest news (reuters) is that “data from U.S. and Japanese Aegis radar-equipped destroyers and surveillance aircraft on the missile’s angle of take-off and altitude indicated that it was heading for waters near Hawaii”.
All that blue water and they still have to try to stick a thumb in our eye.
MTC,
First, we’ll never be sure exactly what happened. This is all speculation, and any half-way plausible theory is as good as any other half-plausible theory. That’s what makes dealing with North Korea so hard. No one ever really knows what “Dear Leader” is thinking.
It’s like the mind of Dale Gribble (King of the Hill). With Kim Jong Il, EVERY conspiracy theory is possible. Is he a brilliant schemer? Is he a madman? Both? No one knows exactly how crazy he is, nor exactly how much support he believes he has from China.
Would Kim Jong Il fire a missile over Japan, even if hardline Japanese said it would be an act of war? He would if he thought China had his back.
MTC, Look a the ballistic arc projections here:
http://www.physicstoday.com/pt/vol-57/iss-1/images/p30fig1.jpg
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/td-2-trajectory.htm
An ICBM’s arc over the globe produces an arced path on the globe, an ICBM aimed at the West Coast couldn’t overfly Japan, the trajectory would be all wrong. An ICBM aimed at hawaii (or the vicinity), would just cut across Hokkaido on its way. The projected splashdown zone is perfect for a failed launch at Hawaii’s vicinity. And the area of the crash is very close to the splashdown of the TD-1 first stage splash from 1998, the second stage of which DID overfly Japan. I don’t think they were trying to not overfly anyone, I think they were aimed at Hawaii.
As for improper fueling, this was a (probably) three-stage booster. Even if stages 2 and 3 were unfuelled, they still would have separated from stage 1 after S1 burnout, and without the extra mass and aero disadvantage they would have glided along a ballistic arc farther downrange than stage one. Yet all information so far says the missile came down in one big wreck. Did they also intentionally sabotage their stage separation mechanism? To what point?
We have seen a remarkable few weeks of successes for the U.S. Missile Defense System:
–The National Missile Defense System was successfully activated and stood “on alert” during the face-off with North Korea. Though not needed because the North Korean Taepodong-2 failed, we were ready.
–The same can be said of U.S. and Japanese AEGIS ships at sea.
–THAAD had a successful flight test.
Suggested reading: http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060625–112553-8880r.htm
North Korea should relax.
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SCANDAL! SCANDAL! SCANDAL!
EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!
George W. Bush continuously criminally stalked Margie Schoedinger to the point that she could not get away from it, and she committed suicide in desperation to escape: he murdered her.