North Korea about to launch ICBM test and/or space satellite

[LowlyPion]

"The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il' as well as measurement data back to Earth," it said, referring to the country's late founder and his son, its current leader.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7984254.stm

What station is that on again?

If a paean to Kim Jong Il is transmitted in outer space and no one is there to hear it, did it really send a paean? Even a LowlyPaean?

Apparently not, because it seems that ...

Two stages of the rocket and its payload landed in the Pacific Ocean, a US military statement said.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes.

First, don't let hindsight confuse you; knowledge of what the missle was actually carrying is irrelevant. The threat assessment has to be made on the information you have.

Secondly, even now that we now know what it was, it is still a threat (albeit not an immediate one); even though it was used this time to deliver a satellite, it is still a weapon, and one developed and tested in direct defiance of the U.N. and whatnot.

Yes. If people thought Iraq posed a threat, then how can they not see a missile fueling on a launch pad as a threat? It wasn't just a potential threat, it was potentially an imminent threat. Not only that, it was intended to be provocative - a demonstration of a delivery system for nukes. That was the whole point.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

However, it does seem that in many ways, NK is just a paper tiger.

... North Korea's missile and nuclear capabilities do not add up to a nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM. This third failure to create such a missile in as many attempts since 1998 likely represents the upper limits of what the country can do by stretching and adapting the Scud technology it acquired from the former Soviet Union.

This small, impoverished nation would need to make three key additional breakthroughs to turn this launch vehicle into a real nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the continental United States.

First, North Korea has to develop a bigger, longer-range missile. MIT scientist Ted Postol calculates that the failed satellite appeared to weigh 150 to 200 kilograms (330 to 440 pounds) and was intended for a low-Earth orbit about 550 kilometers (340 miles) high. It is puny by world standards

...According to a pre-launch analysis by David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists, this kind of rocket might carry a small warhead to parts of Alaska, 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) from Pyongyang, but it could not hit Los Angeles, 9,570 kilometers (5,945 miles) away. Building that larger missile would require major advances in metallurgy, rocket engines, guidance and propulsion, and probably foreign assistance.

Second, North Korea would have to miniaturize its warhead. The primitive nuclear device tested by North Korea in 2006 is estimated to weigh more than 1,500 kilograms (3,307 pounds). That means North Korea's current nuclear weapons are simply too heavy to be launched by a vehicle similar to the one tested Sunday...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/05/cirincione.north.korea/

They keep mentioning Alaska, but the Hawaiins have also been worried about NK for twenty years. Also, delivery systems must be viewed for not only their nuclear capacity, but also as a delivery system for biological or chemical agents.
.

 

[LowlyPion]

They keep mentioning Alaska, but the Hawaiins have also been worried about NK for twenty years. Also, delivery systems must be viewed for not only their nuclear capacity, but also as a delivery system for biological or chemical agents.
.

Honestly, if they want to deliver biological agents, parcel post is a wee bit easier than fueling and launching a 200 kg payload. (Not to mention it's a lot greener in terms of carbon footprint.)

 

[Count Iblis]

Honestly, if they want to deliver biological agents, parcel post is a wee bit easier than fueling and launching a 200 kg payload. (Not to mention it's a lot greener in terms of carbon footprint.)

Indeed! I think the Soviets had ICBM with a smallpox charge. The problem is that you don't want the smallpox to burn up when the warhead lands.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Honestly, if they want to deliver biological agents, parcel post is a wee bit easier than fueling and launching a 200 kg payload. (Not to mention it's a lot greener in terms of carbon footprint.)

Dispersing at altitude above a city could be far more effective than a parcel post. You want to expose a large population.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I can't help but wonder if we didn't take it out with a LASER.

 

[LowlyPion]

I can't help but wonder if we didn't take it out with a LASER.

It's possible. You know if they could they would and the CIA wouldn't let on that it happened for decades ... until the movie comes out.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It's possible. You know if they could they would and the CIA wouldn't let on that it happened for decades ... until the movie comes out.

Yep, and there is reason to think that we could. As you say, if we did, we probably won't know for a very long time.

In fact, a covert operation in a situation like this might be considered an ideal test of new technology. Given the flight path, it is the very situation for which we have been preparing. Thanks for the target NK! Even better, it leaves NK trying to figure out what happened.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The ABL is designed to target missiles in their boost phase
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/doc_src/ABL_overview.pdf

The team completed installation of the high-energy laser in the aircraft in July 2008 and began firing the laser onboard the aircraft in ground testing in September 2008. Additional ground firings of the laser will set the stage for flight tests of the entire ABL weapon system, culminating in an airborne intercept test against a ballistic missile in 2009.

and the boost phase seems to be up to 150-200 km.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_phase

Where would that put the missile downrange at the end of the boost phase?

I don't know if there is any reason why we wouldn't just fire it from a ship... I guess range would put some limits on that.

 

[Count Iblis]

I don't think the US tested any devices designed to down missiles. The reason is that a successful launch would have led to the satellite going into orbit. So, if it falls short for any reason, it could in theory just not make it into orbit and then fall back impacting in some residential area.


Instead the conventional ABM systems were on standby to attempt to shoot down any debris from a failed launch attempted if they would threaten to hit Japan.

 

[Count Iblis]

It looks like the West suffered a huge setback at the UNSC. China and Russia urged restraint, to them the launch was no big deal.

 

[Phrak]

Dispersing at altitude above a city could be far more effective than a parcel post. You want to expose a large population.

This is ineffective without a twofold delivery system, as discovered by Aum Shinrikyo, famous for their 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. Cities generate an updraft.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't think the US tested any devices designed to down missiles. The reason is that a successful launch would have led to the satellite going into orbit. So, if it falls short for any reason, it could in theory just not make it into orbit and then fall back impacting in some residential area.

It would have never deployed the satellite. Also, the trajectory would be determined by the timing of the LASER shot.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It looks like the West suffered a huge setback at the UNSC. China and Russia urged restraint, to them the launch was no big deal.

That's okay. Now its even less of a big deal.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Instead the conventional ABM systems were on standby to attempt to shoot down any debris from a failed launch attempted if they would threaten to hit Japan.

Source?

 

[russ_watters]

It is easiest to hit before the boost stage. I don't know the publically stated limitations beyond that; nor do we have anyway to know if the claimed limitations are true. Our true abilities here are certainly most highly classified.

I would guess that the publically stated limitations are those of the National Missile Defense program.

There are two important reasons why the publicly available information about our ABM capabilities is probably pretty close to accurate:

1. Technical reality: these systems are big and it is extremely difficult to hide them and keep them secret. You can't launch an interceptor ballistic missile from Kwajalein and have it fly 2500 miles and not expect people to notice.
2. Politics: ABM is a strategic deterrence issue. It can't do it's primary job (preventing an attack) if people don't know it exists.

There are actually quite a handful of ABM technologies under development by the US, most of which have gotten very little press. This year, Boeing will be testing their Airborne Laser (a 747 with a nose-mounted turret), capable of shooting down ballistic missiles at a range of somewhere around 300 miles. That's the one I'm most excited about. It makes scud-type missiles obsolte.

For this specific incident, however, the only ABM defense we have in service that is any good happens to be very good and it almost certainly was deployed by both the US and Japan to protect Japan had the trajectory looked suspect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_missile_3 [edit] a source of the claim about what we had in the area, requested by Ivan from someone else:

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.

Not completely certain of what we had there, just highly likely we had some good ABM defense ready if it was deemed needed.

The SM-3 is the best we have so far for the simple reason that it is mature technology: basically all that was done to make it was to add an additional booster to an existing SAM and change some software in it and the ship-based radar that controls it...and add the exo-atmospheric "kill vehicle" (warhead with guidance). In the case of the radar, the software change was simply the removal of an artificially inserted range limitation.

 

[russ_watters]

Iraq did have chemical weapons, although not during either of the Gulf Wars (IIRC). They also did attack Israel with Scuds (analogous to DPRK threatening Seoul), but these were neutralized quickly.

This is a minor side issue, but the post-war analysis indicates that the Patriot missile largely failed in its stated mission (shooting down scuds), it succeeded in its real mission (keeping Israel out of the war).

And yes, it is nearly certain that Iraq had chemical weapons in 1991. Less certain is when, exactly, they were gotten rid of and where they went.

How much damage, realistically, could DPRK inflict before its artillery units were neutralized by air strikes?

I am not sure how tough SK's air force is, but the difficulty here is that NK could probably launch attacks quickly, but the US would take days or even weeks to get even a small air force mobilization for air cover.

 

[russ_watters]

Regarding the issue of NK's motives and the prudence of our response:

Kim Il is widely held to be pretty much insane, and he certainly talks a good game. But if you look at his actual record, his batting average is so good that you can't ignore the possibility that his is purposeful insanity. That he's not really insane, but rather is manipulating the world with his show of insanity. He has been highly successful at creating bargaining chips with his threats, broken promises, and shows of defiance.

I fear that the world response will end up being what it always is with Kim: negotiate and give concessions in exchange for promises we know he'll never keep (CNN has a commentary that says we should do that: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/05/cirincione.north.korea/index.html ). A smart gambler knows that when you find yourself a sucker who will never call your bluff, you should keep bluffing. Kim has been running the table for decades. That CNN commentary holds the contradictory view that this launch isn't a big deal, but because of it, we should go back to negotiating with him. But i suspect that that's exactly what is going to come of this.

 

[russ_watters]

I would understand that a materialized threat would be Japan actually nuked. So I would interpret any action against a perceived threat as a preemptive strike.

The dictionary definition of the word "preemptive" is a little broad and the implications imply something that doesn't really work in reality. The way you use it implies that an attack has to be completed before a response can be considered an after-the-fact response. But the political/military reality of the situation doesn't work that way. A bomb going off is not a singluar event, it is the final part in a chain of events that constitute an attack. A fueled rocket on the pad with an announced launch pending can be an attack in progress. The difficulty with Kim is knowing whether it is an attack or if it is posturing. History is littered with examples of this reality in action, and the Cold War was particularly replete with cat-and-mouse games between the USSR and the US.

Had anyone had real intelligence that implied a real potential for attack, no one would have hesitated to strike while the missile was on the ground and no one would have faulted that response.

 

[russ_watters]

Didn't see this before i posted about the ABL...

I can't help but wonder if we didn't take it out with a LASER.

I speculated to a colleague at work that this would be a great target for its first full-scale test. I'd love to believe we did, but I highly doubt it. And I think it went too far for the ABL to have been a likely cause of the failure.

 

[signerror]

I am not sure how tough SK's air force is, but the difficulty here is that NK could probably launch attacks quickly, but the US would take days or even weeks to get even a small air force mobilization for air cover.

They have planes in South Korea. Not sure how much this is worth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osan_Air_Base

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsan_Air_Base

The closest carrier is in the South China Sea, which admittedly is pretty far away (days?)

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/where.htm

 

[BobG]

True, the sea is in the east, but why send it over Japan and cause commotion, when they could have sent it over China, or Russia and avoid world condemnation?

The obvious reason to launch to the East is the Earth's rotation. You really have to want that particular orbit to launch to the West. In practice, the largest inclinations satellites have is about 98.6 degrees (or, as some call it, 81.4 degrees retrograde).

Of course, for the altitude that NK claimed (490 miles or 104 minutes), 98.6 degrees is a very common inclination. That's the altitude and inclination that gives you a sun synchronous orbit.

For a nation's first satellite launch, launching due East at a low altitude of 200 to 300 miles would be a very significant accomplishment. At the lower end of that altitude (and especially anything lower), the satellite's orbit would decay within weeks, but it would still be a major step.

A long range missile that takes several days to be fueled is not a practical weapon. The North Koreans need to develop long range solid fuel missiles that can carry a nuclear warhead. Also, they need to develop thermonuclear devices.

While a few Hiroshima sized bombs would do huge damage, they won't win a war for North Korea.

A long range missile that takes days to fuel is not a practical defensive weapon. It was this same fact that made the US so nervous when the USSR deployed Korolev's liquid fuel ICBMs at the start of the cold war. In the case of the USSR, ICBMs that could be launched in less than an hour became the staple of their nuclear force; the same as the US. But it's very provocative to deploy missiles that are only effective as an offensive weapon.

Even though they were only used as ICBM's for a short time, Korolev's ICBMs weren't a total waste for the USSR. Those were the rockets that launched Sputnik and most of the USSR's other early satellites.

 

[misgfool]

The dictionary definition of the word "preemptive" is a little broad and the implications imply something that doesn't really work in reality. The way you use it implies that an attack has to be completed before a response can be considered an after-the-fact response. But the political/military reality of the situation doesn't work that way. A bomb going off is not a singluar event, it is the final part in a chain of events that constitute an attack. A fueled rocket on the pad with an announced launch pending can be an attack in progress.

I think that it is best to stick with the dictionary definitions. Just in case someone would try to redefine words to fit his/her rhetoric.

Had anyone had real intelligence that implied a real potential for attack, no one would have hesitated to strike while the missile was on the ground and no one would have faulted that response.

Yes, it would have been a justified preemptive strike. But having such intelligence is rare in today's world. And no offense, but the reliability of US intelligence has suffered a quite severe dent during this decade.

 

[Count Iblis]

Yes, it would have been a justified preemptive strike. But having such intelligence is rare in today's world. And no offense, but the reliability of US intelligence has suffered a quite severe dent during this decade.

I think it is more the way the intelligence was politicized to make propaganda that has backfired. If there had been reliable intelligence suggesting that Saddam had active WMD programs that were a threat, then you could imagine that Bush would be informed by the CIA about this unexpected news, and that the Bush adminstration would become really woried and would think hard about what to do about it.

Instread, the dynamics was reversed. It was Bush asking intelligence officials to find evidence that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11, even though all the evidence pointed to this not being the case.

Any intelligence that, pulled out of the context, could somehow be misinterpreted as suggesting that Saddam was a threat, would be welcome news to the Bush administration.

Yellowcake from Niger? Great news! This is what we so desperately needed. Let's open the champagne bottle!

 

[mheslep]

There are two important reasons why the publicly available information about our ABM capabilities is probably pretty close to accurate:

1. Technical reality: these systems are big and it is extremely difficult to hide them and keep them secret. You can't launch an interceptor ballistic missile from Kwajalein and have it fly 2500 miles and not expect people to notice.

Well the sea launched RIM can hide launch capability and event, if not flight.

2. Politics: ABM is a strategic deterrence issue. It can't do it's primary job (preventing an attack) if people don't know it exists.

There are actually quite a handful of ABM technologies under development by the US, most of which have gotten very little press. This year, Boeing will be testing their Airborne Laser (a 747 with a nose-mounted turret), capable of shooting down ballistic missiles at a range of somewhere around 300 miles. That's the one I'm most excited about. It makes scud-type missiles obsolte.

Press widely reports Gates is about the kill, or at least seriously cut, the airborne laser unfortunately.

For this specific incident, however, the only ABM defense we have in service that is any good happens to be very good and it almost certainly was deployed by both the US and Japan to protect Japan had the trajectory looked suspect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-161_Standard_missile_3 [edit] a source of the claim about what we had in the area, requested by Ivan from someone else: Not completely certain of what we had there, just highly likely we had some good ABM defense ready if it was deemed needed.

The SM-3 is the best we have so far for the simple reason that it is mature technology: basically all that was done to make it was to add an additional booster to an existing SAM and change some software in it and the ship-based radar that controls it...and add the exo-atmospheric "kill vehicle" (warhead with guidance). In the case of the radar, the software change was simply the removal of an artificially inserted range limitation.

 

[misgfool]

Instread, the dynamics was reversed. It was Bush asking intelligence officials to find evidence that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11, even though all the evidence pointed to this not being the case.

Any intelligence that, pulled out of the context, could somehow be misinterpreted as suggesting that Saddam was a threat, would be welcome news to the Bush administration.

Fact is that the president used false intelligence or intelligence falsely to justify a war. I would describe that as a total failure in the intelligence community. And I can't remember the CIA stepping up and saying that the president is intentionally using false intelligence.

 

[mheslep]

Former speaker Newt Gingrich from Sunday shows:

...We have been talking about this since the Clinton administration, and they have been building nuclear weapons and building better and better missiles while we keep talking.

And one morning, just like 9/11, there’s going to be a disaster, and people are going to look around and say, “Gosh, why didn’t anyone think of that?” Well, I’m telling you the time to think about it’s before the disaster, not afterwards.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003093570

 

[misgfool]

Former speaker Newt Gingrich from Sunday shows:

There should be a fallacy for this kind of argumentation. Mr Gingrich only has to provide the evidence, nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise decisions are based on faith, yes the same thing as religious faith, and we know where that road goes. Or at least we should know.

Additionally there are probably million other unknowns in the world and there is simply not enough resources to deal with every contingency.

"For what can war, but endless war, still breed?"
- John Milton

 

[Hurkyl]

Otherwise decisions are based on faith, yes the same thing as religious faith, and we know where that road goes. Or at least we should know.

:raise eyebrow: