Quick. Somebody fetch Madeleine Albright, and tell her to bring her bestest dancin’ shoes!
North Korea has positioned a Taepodong-2 missile on the launchpad at its facility in Musudan in the east of the country, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
Pyongyang has said it intends to use the missile to launch a satellite into space. The North Koreans issued an international notice that the launch may occur sometime between April 4 through the 8th.
According to the U.S. officials, while two stages of the missile can be seen, the top is covered with a shroud supported by a crane.
But now that the missile is on the pad, the launch itself could come within a matter of days, a likelihood that has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity as the event would be in violation of a U.N. ban prohibiting the country from ballistic activity. Some fear the launch is a cover for the test-fire of long-range missile technology.
North Korea has described the pending launch a “peaceful space launch,” but U.S. officials and experts say it would employ the very same technology used to launch ballistic missiles, and if successful it would be the first proof that North Korea would have the ability to launch a ballistic missile against at least Alaska or Hawaii.
[…]
The Commander of U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Timothy Keating warned recently that the U.S. has the ability to shoot down the missile should it threaten either the United States or its allies, but Pentagon and military officials believe that scenario is highly unlikely.
Japan, on the other hand, has said it is prepared to shoot down the missile with its Patriot anti-missile defense systems acquired from the United States.
(h/t Closing Velocity, who has more)
Oh goody. Isn’t there any good news today?
Little Kim is getting desperate, so he wants to change the topic.
“Some fear the launch is a cover for the test-fire of long-range missile technology.”
Say it ain’t so, Doh!
Those UN bans sure work wonders, don’t they? Hey, I know, lets talk to them some more. If we talk to them enough, they will see the error of their ways and repent. I just know it.
Oh goody. Isn’t there any good news today?
Oh come on now, Carin, isn’t a maniacal dwarf with a pompadour rattling a sabre high comedy?
Kim Jong Il knows how to deal with the UN.
That is why he is banned at Patterico!
Only when he plays golf and gets 18 holes-in-one.
Quick, someone get them the reset button!
Another fun development, which recieves very little news, is the increase maratime patrols by China over vasious known petroleum deposits in Asiatic water. While thier navy isn’t near the same ability as ours is, in projecting force for extended periods of time, they are causing an increased drive in Japan’s SDF leadership to re-militarize to a higher level, due to uncertainty of support from the Obama administration.
The One, bringing the US more “world respect!!!”
Having the strongest military by far, while expensive, gives us a lot of leverage, should we need to use it yet again. Capitulation, as being practiced by Our President, weakens that position and generally makes the world less safe. But everyone here already knows that.
From Joe’s link:
) Future Manpower Crisis: The longer-term impact of the food crisis on North Korea’s military is that the chronic malnutrition among the population at large is decimating the ranks of potential future recruits. According to findings of the NIC, around 25 per cent of those eligible for military service will be rejected due to mental retardation caused by lack of proper nutrition. Overall, intellectual deficiencies caused by hunger among the young will make future economic development of North Korea problematic. Thus, not only political subservience to the regime, but also the future viability of the military as a credible fighting force is at risk.
oops!
wait, i’m confused. didn’t the vice-chairman of the joint chiefs and a ranking member of the house armed services committee just declare missile defense unnecessary because ICBMs were passe, no one does them anymore.
Looks like target practice to me. I’d guess we’ve got a number of Arleigh Burke-class ships in the vicinity just waiting to splash this bird.
The Tapered Dong 2 can reach Hawaii. The forthcoming Tapered Dong 3 has a range of 25,000 miles, and can hit North Korea from North Korea. It doesn’t even matter which direction they point it; it will always hit the target. Insidious.
Tapered?
That missile is just sitting there, out in the open. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
Nah, target practice is best when you’ve got a live target.
I’d just as soon they took out the Pueblo while everyone was distracted by the launch, but that’s probably too close to being an overt attack on the seat of government.
It would certainly be regrettable if that obsolete airborne laser that we’re going to get rid of anyway happened to malfunction and hit that Korean missile. It would just prove the administration’s good judgement in disarming us.
We could have Hillary dance with the man.
Or have the UN send a strongly worded admonition to please cease and desist.
How about re-programming the missile to hit his house, and then disable the destruct system? Not easy, but poetic.
Dear Leader is, at best, in a coma. His time has passed.
Question is, how long before the NK government admits he’s gone. They are maintaining his figurehead status for the time being, photoshopping him into photos of current activities etc. He does not have an heir as far as I know. Possibility that his generals and subordinates turn on each other in a struggle for power. After all, his succession was in play for quite a while after his father died. It was not a sure thing by any means.
Fun fact: N. Korea has about 10,000 long range, heavy artillery pieces aimed at Seoul and the rest of the Han River Valley. This is where most of S. Korea’s industry, and much of its population are located. The guns are well dug-in and bunkered. A few hours bombardment could do at least as much damage as a couple of fission warheads.
#11 Carin
Why South Korea might figure they can wait it out and the North will collapse on its own.
#21 SpinyNorman, I’d bet that possibility is regarded as sub-optimal by the ROK. Mere contemplation of the expense and problems generated for Germany by the process of having to absorb the Ossies, probably gives the South the vapors, when thinking about reuniting with the North. They probably figure it’s in their best interest to maintain the status quo.
#16 cranky-dThat missile is just sitting there, out in the open. It would be a shame if something happened to it.Damn! Another launch failure!
#22 Mike James
Yeah, probably true.
Missing from above, apparently.
^^^ [close blockquote] ^^^
If I was the South Korean Government I’d be spending at least some R&D looking into this.
Even better from Jan. 30, 09.
geoffb, the problem has been getting enough power out of the laser to do any good. The target for years was 100 KW, and they just recently achieved that. They could do more, but only with chemically pumped lasers — and the chemicals involve such
innocuoussubstances as fluorine, not exactly what you’d like to have a tank of in the back of your humvee.The artillery-killing laser has been a dream in the military’s mind for a long time. We may actually see one in the near future. This is not necessarily a good thing.
An actual defense against artillery, including missiles, would completely change the military picture in a way that hasn’t happened since approximately Gustavus Adolphus. There are a lot of people who think the result would be similar to what happened when former Roman possessions started building castles to defend against infantry and cavalry, and that eventually allowed the construction of the whole kings-and-princes system that didn’t even start to get busted up until guns came along.
IOW, beware of unintended consequences…
Regards,
Ric
From Insty on another potentially fruitful research field at DoD.
and that eventually allowed the construction of the whole kings-and-princes system that didn’t even start to get busted up until guns came along.
Hmm… didn’t the development of the feudal castle system actually reduce the power of centralized authority? Post-Rome, we didn’t see the rise of large-scale, monolithic empires again until after the feudal barons had been brought to bay. Sure, there were guys called “kings” and “emperors”, and in theory the barons held their lands as vassals of the king, but in practice the king’s authority was somewhat constrained, as John Lackland was forced to admit.
There were both good and bad consequences of that, of course. It was a state’s rights versus strong federal government sort of situation.
Well, yes, that’s right. The Roman Empire was an infantry — offense — empire, based on meeting opponents in the field and defeating them, and they did that very well. The invention of curtain-wall castles put paid to infantry conquest, allowing the individual polities to set up as autarkies. The change from offense-dominating (infantry) to defense-dominating (castles) allowed the breakup of Europe into teeny autarkical States. (Note that the Chinese handled a similar problem by nipping castle-building in the bud — if you started one, you got a visit from the Imperial Army before it was finished. Result: stasis.)
Guns swung the pendulum back the other way. For centuries defense had dominated; with guns, especially artillery, offense was back in the saddle again. The result was the (messy and bloody) collection of the mess of baronies and teenyweeny kingdoms into the large States we see today. Offense has been the dominant ever since then, with ICBMs as the ultimate — you can hide from an ICBM, you can run away from one, and in some cases you can protect yourself from getting hurt when it hits, but up to now you couldn’t defend against it in the sense of stopping it from hitting. It is perhaps not obvious that the same is true of ordinary artillery and small missiles, unless of course you live in Sderot. So we have large, basically conquest-based States.
If laser anti-artillery and anti-missile systems become practical and cheap, it might very well swing the pendulum back again, to the point where defense is easy and reliable, and offense is hard and expensive. The last time that happened the result was autarky. This time…
Regards,
Ric
What was funny was that the BBC article I saw on the man who survived both atomic bombings had on its sidebar that NK was erecting a missile.
By funny I meant eerie. Like seeing a clown on your front sidewalk at midnight.
The second link is about a solid state laser system. Being developed to replace the 20mm Phalanx.
There are always unintended and unexpected effects from technology. The back and forth battle between offense and defense will always be with us as it is in nature also.
Carin – those rejected soldiers can still serve as mine-detectors. The Iranians pioneered the ‘human mine-detector’ in the 1980’s.
Ric – I don’t disagree with what you are saying about Rome being infantry based. However, they did have a heck of an engineer corps that could reduce a fortification pretty quickly, and they did just that as many places that they conquered had strongly fortified places. And Rome’s Army did become a balanced fighting force with the core of heavy infantry, with light infantry and light and heavy cavalry added to them. If an AD 200 Roman Legion with its auxiliaries had appeared in, say England in AD 1100, it would have made very short work of most of the castles available. What medieval European monarchs did not have that Rome had was a professional army that was always available.
What cannon gave the monarch was a trump card that had not been available since the fall of Rome in the West – a siege breaker that was too expensive for any but the most wealthy to put together, and one that made existing castles obsolete. Infantry could be called up as needed, cavalry could come from loyal fuedal households, but creating and maintaining an artillery park required more funding than most nobles could afford. There also had to be an economy that could support that and in the late medieval period the economies of Europe became strong enough. I won’t even get into navies, as Rome maintained a permanent fighting fleet to chase down pirates and keep the sea-lanes open.
And then came Vauban and his fortifications – the answer to the cannon, and that was too expensive for a noble to refit his castles to. But the key was having enough wealth to keep the professionals on staff during peace in order to have them for war. And Rome could do that, up until they damaged themselves so much with civil war.
Ric, if you aren’t familiar with David Drake’s Hammers Slammers series, it has a reasonable take on what that future military would look like. Bottom line: aircraft simply go away. Satellites stay up only because both sides want them to. Artillery and rockets are still around, but they only get used against enemies without enough artillery defense to keep them out. Note that that includes any unit that suddenly has its’ AAD destroyed by long range direct fire. Tanks / AFVs and infantry are basically the only factor. Drake really doesn’t do naval scenarios (wet or space) so that is left up in the air.
Sherman. The NK miltary is out dated.Kim has put so much money and other resources into his nuclear and rocket programs that there has been little left just to maintain his current force structure. They may have 10,000 canon or 100,000 canon, but the ones they have need basic maintenance. This holds true for the whole NK military.
The ongoing theme that visitors have been getting from Nkoreans that they have been able to talk to has been; When are going to invade so we can get enough to eat. NK will collapse under its own weight.
NK will collapse under its own weight.
And that, I bet, is what everyone in the neighborhood fears – millions of refugees moving across their borders, refugees with nothing left to lose. NK is China’s attack poodle, they need to find an answer other than ‘kick the can down the road because it ties up the Americans’, because PRC, if NK goes paws-up they’re heading your way.
A nice fascist general that will let things down slowly would be ideal, but that creature may not exist in NK.
That’s a whole lot of dogma. Goes well with kimchee, I’ve heard.
I love kimchi!
Ric,
I dunno. Having been on the receiving end of entirely too many 107 and 122mm rockets, mortar rounds and even some JAM jackass shooting a 240mm rocket(!) I find the idea of arty defense, well, heatening. I wouldn’t expect it to be cheap or easy any time soon either. Most of the world has a hard time keeping trucks running, much less lasers…
Er, heartening that is…
quote of the day
See my missire raunch bitchez! Telr me you ruv it! I raunch my missire in yor face! I am man!
Ju-che!
Future Manpower Crisis: The longer-term impact of the food crisis on North Korea’s military is that the chronic malnutrition among the population at large is decimating the ranks of potential future recruits
I’ve seen emaciated NK soldiers approach the guardtowers on the DMZ. We didn’t shoot, we threw them MREs. It was pitiful.
I’ve seen attack ships burning off the Shoulder of Orion.
(the first statement is true)
#39
I loved that movie!
I’m sure the NKs can lob one, but as to the state of their telemetry……….well, I’m guessing 1960 ish.
Ric–An actual defense against artillery, including missiles, would completely change the military picture in a way that hasn’t happened since approximately Gustavus Adolphus.
High power lasers will do to airpower what the machinegun did to horse cavalry.
Is there a coincidence that Ellen Tauscher’s district includes the families and vales where Adam Gadahn (Azzam al Amriki) and Johnny Taliban came from?
Feh. IIRC, the last time the PRiKs tried something like this they called it a “nodong”; then they were insulted when everyone laughed and then laughed again when it fell limply into the ocean. Anyone want to put money on this little sputnik actually achieving a stable earth orbit?
On the other hand, blowing the thing out of the air a hundred feet above the launch pad would be a good object lesson — and not just for the PRiKs — but I’m thinking our Amateur-in-Chief doesn’t have the cajones for that.
Gray, see my comment at #36.
Here’s an article on a notable advancement in the field of rocket interception at JPost. The citizens of Israel’s south no doubt say “Faster, please!”.