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 holds—nuclear 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.)
I can not understand why China puts up with that little toad in north Korea? If this keeps up, Japan will rearm then with south Korea and start down the road to their own A-bomb! [japan has a lot of plutonium from their power stations.]
If I lived in China the thought of a rearming japan armed with nukes would scare the hell out of me. Especialy with japan’s history in the 30th’s with both those countries.
One would think the leaders of China would rather have a wealthy korean peninsular under south korian rule. A wealthy trading partner, looking to do some buisness, instead of a dirt poor neighbor with his hand out picking your pocket for a hand out!
Earlier this year, some of the more militant of Japan’s political chattering classes warned that any unannounced overflight of Japanese territory would constitute an act of war.
Is it too hard to believe that the DPRK military was under instructions to 1) point the missile in the direction of Russia and 2) not fuel the rocket’s second stage, thus guaranteeing a splashdown in the Sea of Japan?
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.
dave –
The source of the Hawaiian waters story is the Sankei Shimbun, a hard right daily with a history of fantasy headlines.
Moose –
Look at the splashdown location and the launch site. Remember we are dealing with a ballistic missile. The direct line course makes a sincere effort to avoid the main inhabited Japanese islands.
Consider: the Taepodong “failed” and landed in just such a way as to avoid real political trouble, right smack dab in open water in the North Korean/Russian half of the Japan Sea.
Remember also the June 21 Washington Post report of South Koreans mocking U.S. and Japanese predictions of a Taepodong launch:
…A South Korean parliamentary panel concluded that North Korea “does not seem” to have completed injecting fuel into the missile, citing information from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
“The NIS reported that it is hard to believe the missiles have been fully fueled already,” Rep. Chung Hyung Keun, secretary of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, told reporters in Seoul. The lawmaker made the remark after emerging from a briefing by the NIS. “The 40 fuel tanks spotted at the site do not contain enough to launch a missile that needs 65 tons of liquid fuel,” the lawmaker said.”…
Failure…or willful underfueling?
Your serve, Moose.
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?
Moose –
Thank you for the great arc traces. I thing the globalsecurity.org trace is angled too far south…but then again that may be because I do not trust much of anything coming out of the Community and the DoD post “Slam-dunk”.
You are, of course, right about the separation issue. It had to come down in one piece–which makes little sense except if you are trying to avoid a political showdown.
My point on the Sankei still holds. Japanese newspapers live by different standards. Even the Nihon Keizai Shimbun prints complete fabrications on its front page.
The concept of a launch failure leaves us with a political conundrum: how could Kim be lucky enough that his toy should fail in just such a way as to prevent the Chinese and the South Koreans from abandoning him?
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.
_______________
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.
“In her suit, Margie Schoedinger states that George W. Bush committed sexual crimes against her, organized harassment and moral pressure on her, her family members and close relatives and friends. As Schoedinger said, she was strongly recommended to keep her mouth shut. . . . Furthermore, she alleges that George Bush ordered to show pressure on her to the point, when she commits suicide” (blog of drizzten).
“One of those ‘very leasts’ [was] George Bush’s personal complicity in the death (murder to be precise) of my friend Margie Schoedinger in September of 2003. Determining the exact whereabouts and contacts of [then] president-elect George Bush on September 21 thru 22, 2003, should be entirely lacking in difficulty” (Leola McConnell—Nevada Progressive Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010).
McConnell is correct: Bush applying pressure (continuously criminally stalking Margie Schoedinger) purposefully to force Schoedinger to commit suicide does in fact constitute murder where it culminated in her death.
Bush is a racist hate criminal and hates black people (please feel free to see my “GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” blog). (Schoedinger was an African-American woman.)
BEWARE: If the president of the United States hates one—for whatever reasons—he can continuously criminally stalk one to the point that one cannot get away from it, and one ultimately commits suicide in desperation to escape. He can murder people in this way.
Bush is getting away with his murder of Schoedinger—with no sheriff, prosecutor, or court willing to uphold the rule of law.
Bush’s method of murdering Schoedinger cannot exist in a vacuum: he must have murdered other people in the same way.
Bush should confess, come out with the names of all of the people whom he murdered in the disgusting way he murdered Schoedinger, undergo execution, and accordingly find himself at the intersection where he would be free.
(There are thousands of copies of the information above on the Internet. It exists very extensively in all major search engines. Please feel free to go to any major search engine, type “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” or “Bush applying pressure (continuously criminally stalking Margie Schoedinger) purposefully to force Schoedinger to commit suicide does in fact constitute murder where it culminated in her death,” hit “Enter,” and find innumerable results.)
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Andrew Wang
(a.k.a. “THE DISSEMINATING MACHINE”)
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993