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US To Deploy Ballistic Missile Interceptors In Response To North Korean Threats
New submitter dcmcilrath sends this quote from the NY Times:
"The Pentagon will spend $1 billion to deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors along the Pacific Coast to counter the growing reach of North Korea's weapons, a decision accelerated by Pyongyang's recent belligerence and indications that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is resisting China's efforts to restrain him. ... The missiles have a mixed record in testing, hitting dummy targets just 50 percent of the time, but officials said Friday’s announcement was intended not merely to present a credible deterrence to the North’s limited intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal. They said it is also meant to show South Korea and Japan that the United States is willing to commit resources to deterring the North and, at the same time, warn Beijing that it must restrain its ally or face an expanding American military focus on Asia."
I believe this problem would largely go away if the media just stopped covering North Korea's every temper tantrum. An exception would be The Onion and maybe Colbert, but even that might be enough to reinforce their "Terrible Twos" sort of behavior. I do give some credit to the administration for ceasing to play the stupid game that has been going on since the early 90s:
1. Provocation
2. Talk
3. Cough up food aid or the like
4. Promise to be nice
5. Lather, rinse, repeat
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
It is time to stop appeasing the North Koreans and take action. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have contributed many $100s of billions to our debt, the result of wars of attrition. Our current response to North Korea continues this pattern and actually validates the North Korean threat. This has got to stop.
A country should be able to feed its people. If it cannot then it is a failed country. North Korea cannot feed its people, at least it seems as such.
Here are some steps I would recommend.
Step #1: Discontinue all aid until nuclear observers are allowed into the country and can operate freely (with NK observation but no interference). No aid without compliance, the blood and death is on those causing the problems, not on those who would try to help.
Step #2: Restore aid with the explicit requirement that aid distribution is controlled by a UN agency (with NK observation but no interference, I can't believe I'm supporting the UN...)
Step #3: I'm not sure, but the first two would placate the world in terms of North Korea's nuclear ambitions, and could result in the restoration of aid to the population (could, this is not guaranteed, the blood is on their hands). After that the next move is on the North Korean leadership. Have a couple of US carrier groups nearby and possibly bolster South Korean defenses as well...
BlameBillCosby.com
It just seems like another excuse to prop up our bloated military-industrial complex. Do they really think NK will launch a missile our way, or is this just another example of security theater?
If you post it, they will read.
So, the Obama administration scrapped the prior administration's plans to increase the number of interceptors from 30 to 44 at Ft Greely, AK in 2009. Now the Administration plans to increase the number of interceptors from 30 to 44 at Ft Greely, AK. By 2017. Idiots.
that starts with the premise that north korea will only do things that are rational and make sense, and never anything stupid, is a losing argument
citation: the behavior so far of north korea
it's rather weird that anyone is depending upon rationality, common sense and intelligence, in attempting to understand the behavior of north korea
of course they can't win. but they can do a lot of damage on their way out, and this is the problem. to not understand this is to not understand that control is not absolute, and behavior is not perfectly rational. in any country, nevermind the likes of basket case north korea
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...warn Beijing that it must restrain its ally or face an expanding American military focus on Asia.
I wonder if they'll be borrowing money from China in order to support that expansion :)
Will 'resolve' the situation themselves to prevent South Korea, USA and other countries to have to intervene when North Korea goes to far. They would be able to establish a government friendly to China and preserve their interests in the region. Also, they would be able to show their military power in a war every other nation will find just.
China. They're big allies of North Korea, and I don't think they'd take kindly to America having significant military presence right there.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Go, NK. Stand up to those capitalist lackeys.
Millions of people regularly resorting to eating grass to ward off starvation is socialism at its finest?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
My theory:
These missile interceptors aren't for North Korea. That is the excuse. They are actually a bargaining chip for China. If China reels in North Korea, then these missile interceptors near their borders will be removed. Until then, Obama can simply claim that he is trying to defend against an aggressive North Korean threat to nuke the US (even if North Korea doesn't actually have the capability to do so).
Kim Jong Un overstretched his threats and gave the US the perfect opening to do this. He is obviously much stupider than his father. At this point, he has given the US an excuse to build up its military power right on China's borders (including the deployment of more ships). And he has scared Japan and South Korea enough that they won't resist the continued US presence on their shores. China is NOT going to be happy about this. Not one bit. If I were Kim, I would be worried about the possibility that China might have him kidnapped or assassinated for this stupidity.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
"Its the brainwashed "minority" and leader that is the problem."
If you had watched recent videos of people visiting North Korea, you would know that the brainwashed are not the "minority" there. For generations now they have been constantly inundated with propaganda about how the United States is the epitome of evil, and apparently the majority actually believe it.
No, but I find it's best not to respond to the strawmen that the McCarthyists like to hold up. They usually find some other grand flaw in socialism when you bother to point out that it's been working well for decades in Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, China, and most of South America, and that many of the countries under that umbrella enjoy a better average standard of living and healthier economy than the US, too.
So, somewhere around ten times more accurate than most other munitions then?
Nordic Europeans countries, Australia, and Canada have successful "socialist" programs due mostly to the fact that they have small populations and have robust resource extraction industries. Take away their oil/coal/natural gas and they would suffer just like Japan, China, and many South American countries, which counter to your claim, have either stagnant economies (Japan, S. America) or have abandoned socialism altogether (China). If you didn't know, China got rid of public health care way back in the 90's. Everything is private (well, except for government workers).
If by standing up you mean "give the DoD yet another excuse to flush billions down the shitter so their MIC buds can buy some more hookers and blow" you are correct. This "interceptor" is another Sgt York, looks good on paper but doesn't work IRL but hey, as long as the MIC can bleed more billions out of the pentagon its all good, see the F-22 and F-35 for examples.
To me the fucking sad part is our MSM is so damned bought and paid for they are ignoring all the evidence that shows NK is about as big a threat as those WMDs in Iraq. For those that didn't read the report, you know that "sat" that NK put in orbit, which just FYI but uses the SAME ROCKET that they would use to launch a nuke? Yeah we recovered the first and second stage, turns out its just an uprated SCUD. "Well so what?" you ask? Simple the USSR wasn't stupid and they didn't hand out their good shit to third stringers and lets be clear on this The SCUD is NOT a missile in the conventional sense, its rocket artillery. Its not designed to go any real distance but to be used in a artillery barrage similar to "Stalin's Organs" in WWII. Neither its fuel nor its engine is designed to be a SRBM much less an ICBM and is frankly more likely to explode on the pad (as several did in NK before the sat launch) or fall apart in flight. The ONLY ones that have to fear this is SK because any farther than that and this POS is gonna fall out of the sky in pieces. Hell they'd be lucky to even hit the North American continent, much less any city in the USA.
So yet again we get a "threat" that is all bullshit and hype so the DoD and MIC can play Scrooge McDuck and swim in pools of money while the American people get stuck with more garbage. Hell at least with something like SDI (which also didn't work) you were looking at a REAL threat in the USSR, the NK "military" if you can call them that are using 40+ year old ex-Soviet junk that frankly wasn't top line when the Soviets sold it, just as we sold the F-5 to those countries we didn't trust with the good stuff so too did the Soviets keep "export versions" which they actually called "monkey models" to sell to third stringers like NK. At the end of the day NK is a bad joke, the little fatty "dear leader" has nothing more than bodies to throw into any conflict as their tech is so old and shitty, remember how well that worked for the Japanese empire in the Pacific?
This is just more empty threats in the hopes of wrangling more aid but never let it be said the DoD ever missed an opportunity to crap more money away.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Up until recently, North Koreans literally had no other sources of information than state-controlled propaganda. While I'm sure there were enough cases where propaganda disagreed with local reality for them to be skeptical of everything they read, if you hear a message stated as fact from the moment you're born through adulthood, and hear nothing to suggest that this might be a lie, why would you (much less the majority of people there) ever seriously consider it to be a lie? In the US we grow up hearing dissenting viewpoints for everything, causing us to be skeptical of everything. North Koreans don't have that.
There have been tens of thousands of people over the last few decades escape from North Korea to tell us about their experiences. Their perception of the world is essentially entirely drawn from state propaganda.
Increasingly, however, a market economy is beginning to fluorish, driven by trade mostly from China. Many parts of the border are largely open between the two countries. With trade in products comes trade in information, and so the propaganda machine is only now starting to lose power. But there are many people still quite insulated from this and who have no reason to believe anything other than what the state tells them.
These missile interceptors aren't for North Korea. That is the excuse. They are actually a bargaining chip for China. If China reels in North Korea, then these missile interceptors near their borders will be removed. Until then, Obama can simply claim that he is trying to defend against an aggressive North Korean threat to nuke the US (even if North Korea doesn't actually have the capability to do so).
That's what I was thinking - China has a huge amount of bargaining power with North Korea (ie. even if NK stops listening to them, the vast majority of their "slush fund" accounts are in Chinese banks and currently China is ignoring the UN resolution it *supported* to freeze them. Until then, the US can pretty much attribute anything it does in the Western Pacific to countering North Korean threats...
If that analysis is wrong and it really is just to about North Korea, they clearly have won this pissing match, as the US would be spending the equivalent of ~10-20% of NK's entire yearly military budget just to counter a ridiculous idle threat.
And Un is definitely not the brightest bulb - not only has he given the US an excuse, but he has the majority of South Korea's population in favor of developing their own nuclear weapons. Given SK's GDP is $1.1T and NK's is approx. $20B, a high tech arms race is absurd.
"You've committed one of the classic blunders, only the most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia. Slightly less well known is that you should never go in against a Scicilian when Death is on the line! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Plop)"
Or the system as a whole?
If the success rate is per interceptor, meaning that they have several chances to hit a warhead by using several interceptors then 50 percent isn't too bad. Fifty percent success (or failure) means that shooting say five interceptors at each warhead will result in a 95 percent chance of shooting it down, not perfect but certainly enough to make Kim Jung-Un realize he probably isn't going to inflict ANY damage with a suicidal nuclear attack. NK probably wouldn't be able to get off more than a few before the launch sites and command bunkers were nuked (can you say close to shore submarine based missiles on depressed trajectories?).
Of course if the success rate is for the system as a whole (doubtful) for example due to some basic limitation of the targeting radars, then adding more interceptors isn't going to deter Mr. Kim. He probably realizes that his attack is a long shot (ha ha) anyway and having 50 percent odds on taking out, say San Francisco is pretty good. So let's hope that the system is capable of targeting multiple interceptors at a single warhead so the odds are in our favor.
The best scenario is for to add more layers to make a multilayer defense. In addition to the Patriot missile batteries in South Korea and the Aegis missile cruisers offshore (can either of their missiles overtake an ascending ICBM launched hundreds of miles away?) whatever happened to the laser equipped 747s?
Now if Kim Jung-Un really wanted to make the U.S. worried, he should use his much more powerful (but extremely vulnerable and time consuming to launch) liquid fueled rockets to put a disguised nuke INTO ORBIT. Not only would it completely bypass the ABM defenses that are only protecting the U.S. from direct trajectories but it would reduce the warning time from 30 minutes to maybe 5 (or zero if an EMP blast was the goal). The only thing the U.S. could do would be to pre-emptively knock down EVERY satellite put up by NK which while easily doable, would really raise tensions. Of course NK would be violating the 1967 treaty banning weapons (especially nukes!) in Outer Space which is probably the only thing that kept us from accidental thermonuclear war but NK doesn't seem to pay to much attention to treaties.
So if NK starts orbiting largish satellites and testing re-entry vehicles, be afraid.
One side effect of all this is that the improvements in ABM systems is forcing China to upgrade its ICBM force. Unlike the Russians, the Chinese only had a few hundred (?) ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S. and no subs or bombers. They worried that if the shit REALLY hit the fan, the U.S. could launch a first strike taking out most of their missiles (not to mention iPhone production). The few surviving missiles would not make it through even the modest shield that is being built and thus the U.S. woud survive unscathed. So the Chinese are following the Russian model of bolstering their ICBM forces so that even after a first strike they would be able to overwhelm the limited ABM defenses in place.
This fear of an enhanced ABM system is one reason why China is (trying to) keep Mr. Kim from building ICBMs. Not to mention the fear that South Korea and Japan and possibly Taiwan(!!!) will decide they need a nuclear deterrent against North Korea. That would really complicate China's desire to become THE power in Asia (and make reunification with Taiwan much more perilous).
Having government-regulated economies is different than having government-regulated political systems. Right-wingers tend to mix these two up in their heads, but in fact they are orthogonal traits.
Singapore has a more or less capitalist economy, but has heavy gov't control over political decisions (no democracy), which demonstrates that economic control and political control are different things both in theory and in practice.
Table-ized A.I.
You can see China from here.
Well, Chinatown anyway.
A number of them will be in Alaska - not all that far away from parts of China. I'm not sure that this is a terribly credible reason, however. We already *have* lots of things to point at China. ICBMs, subs, long range bombers. We can turn China into one large glass museum if we wanted to. So having more IRBMS (which we have plenty on the subs) doesn't change much. Having marginally competent interceptors doesn't help all that much either. China isn't stupid enough to threaten us with nucs, only Un thinks it's possible (get it, Un possible.... I crack me up).
China is happy to play the grand game of resource wars and the occasional little war / police action. They won't be able to go head to head with us for a long time. By then, we'll have blown off both of our own legs. We don't need China, we're our own worst enemy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They are going to Alaska with additional radar tracking installations in Japan. Play with a great circle map for a little while. You will see that if China wanted to attack the west coast of the US, most of those paths from their missile bases would pass over Alaska, just like North Korea's paths. And the descent stages would be able to be targeted by interceptors launched from Alaska.
Here are two examples (note, I used nearby airports since this mapper requires ICN codes which are hard to find for nuclear weapons launchpads--I don't claim to be exact since China is fairly secretive).
[1]
[2]
Play with it yourself. West coast attacks will generally go over Alaska.
The Democrats have been saying for the past 30 years would not work?
"The report to this bill specifically notes the possible threat from the North Korean Taepo Dong II missile, which the report claims may have the range to hit Alaska. Since this weapon is in development, we do not in fact know that this missile will be capable of that range. But with North Korea in such dire straits economically and the growing possibility of its opening, with reunification with the south increasingly likely, should we spend billions on a missile defense system that probably won't work to counter a threat that may never exist?" - John Kerry
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1995/s950804f.htm
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few subs or something of the sort nearby capable of launching a bit more than interceptors...
This is a purely defensive installation, and the cost isn't huge by military proportions. No need to even name an enemy. In fact, they could probably install three layers of this system for $3 billion and have 87 % success rate (if the probability of success does not depend on the trajectory). The chance for a nuclear strike is small, but nukes are a "holy grail" for all small totalitarian regimes, of which there are a couple in east Asia, and it's better to not be taken by surprise.
Not unlike propaganda in the US made the majority of americans think Sadam Hussein was behind 9/11...
To write such a thing is an insult to oppressed North Koreans. You can watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera and YouTube. You can listen to Rush & NPR, read blogs, The New York Times and The Onion You can go to a rally or fly to London and visit on Speaker' Corner in Hyde Park. You can call your friend on the phone and say "Man, the government sucks, doesn't it?"
North Koreans can do NONE of those things. NONE.
many of the countries under that umbrella enjoy a better average standard of living and healthier economy than the US, too.
Sure, pick on the US when it's down. It wasn't so long ago that the US enjoyed a sub-6% unemployment rate while Europe looked on in envy with 25% of their youth out of work. And for every Germany or Norway in Europe you have an Italy or Spain (Greece is too easy). For every Brazil in South America, you have a Venezuela. Socialism can quickly send your country over a cliff when the voters run up the debt and the financiers decide to make borrowing more expensive. Even the US has gone down this road - can you imagine the carnage if our Treasury yield suddenly were in the 7% range? We'd be in a austerity spiral like half of Europe.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They won't be able to go head to head with us for a long time.
Five years maybe? Ten at the outside. The Chinese industrial base is so far beyond America's, both in terms of total productive capacity and terms of manufacturing technology, that it will be almost impossible for America to maintain it's current military superiority in the medium term.
North Korea is Juche which is a perverted form of Communism which in turn is a perverted form of socialism. You could argue that North Korea is a socialist society in the same sense that fascist Spain was a conservative society.
Socialism is the school of thought that's based on the idea that unfettered capitalism will infiltrate and ruin every aspect of society and act over time to concentrate wealth into ever fewer, ever more incompetent hands. This basic belief is shared by everyone from the centrist middle of the road Social democrat all the way over to the hard line Stalinist-Maoist, but the conclusions that people within socialism come to are very different. One reason why most socialists don't call themselves socialists today is because the Soviet Union and its vassal and client states and their horrible crimes against their own populations made it necessary to drop that term.
Socialism can go very, very wrong, obviously, but it's difficult to dismiss the basic premise that capitalism does destructive things.
After thinking over my previous (long) post a little, it occurred to me that the X-37 was probably designed with NK in mind.
For those of you not familiar with it, it is a extremely flexible winged spacecraft (looks like a mini-shuttle) operated by the Air Force. By extremely flexible I mean it can be launched into any orbit (including polar ones), has demonstrated orbital maneuvering capability, (very) long life in space, and considerable cross-range capability. And it can return objects from space with its cargo bay! It's too small to retrieve large commercial satellites (but not too small to retrieve a warhead) and can gently land on a runway with rubber tires not skids. It is not man-rated and does not have a docking port or any other features that would make it useful as a rescue vehicle.
It was rumored that it was sent up to spy on the Chinese space station but for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that the Chinese would see it coming and would be pissed, that was dismissed.
So when Mr. Kim starts launching more reliable "satellites" (the first one failed after achieving orbit), I imagine the U.S. will send up one of these with a good camera and radiation detectors to give it a close inspection. Maybe it'll even come into physical contact and probe it with robotic arms! If it really looks suspicious, perhaps it will stow it on board and retun it, presumably to Guantanamo bay (that way if there's a nuke on board it won't go off on U.S. soil). (Perhaps that's why it's a WINGED re-entry vehicle, in addition to giving it cross range capability, I'd imagine the g-forces would be less not to mention no annoying "thump" when it splashes down or lands).
Unlike China, it is highly unlikely that NK has developed space based radar that could detect something sneaking up on its "Satellite" from ANY direction. (Also, here's a question, does anyone know if the X-37 is stealthed?). In addition, even if the NK satellite did detect the X-37, it couldn't easily communicate that fact to the ground; I'd bet NK has only the most rudimentary communications and tracking support, probably limited to only when it's passing over NK. I'd even doubt their few "friends" in the world (China? Iran?) would be willing to help, especially if the North Koreans were using it as a cover for putting nukes in orbit! (That's not something you want to be associated with). So it's basically blind and dumb for most of its orbit, a sitting duck for the X-37.
If the next time NK puts a working satellite in orbit the U.S. follows with a launch of the X-37 remember: you read it here first!
It's a stretch to call what they have in Europe, Australian, Canada, Japan or even China socialism. Those are capitalist economies with varying amounts of socialist elements. The same is true of the USA. North Korea is a whole different thing and the system they have there is very broken.
What was China trying to get out of allowing NK to keep it's accounts anyway?
Simple: NK is a buffer state. If SK +NK would join, then American troops would be standing, on SK soil, right on the border with China. They obviously would hate that.
So what China does, is to keep the NK regime alive no matter what. But, they really hate what is happening now too: anti-ballistic systems in the US, and probably soon as well in Japan and SK. Because the GP is absolutely right, this weakens the militairy capabilities of China itself.
I prefer to use a wheel rather than a line for the political spectrum, because at the extreme "ends" (fascism/communism) it basically looks the same.
Of course, I'm generalizing. Even in areas that have relatively free media, there are plenty of people that happily choose to live in an information bubble and lap up propaganda. Life can be easier that way. But I suspect that there are more information skeptics in the USA than North Korea, which was largely my point. That may not be true in the future as Kim's information monopoly starts to wither.
Well, Socialism was created as a sort of cry for help. Is it a legitimate cry for help? The most common counter argument is that there has never been a truly free society and that if there had been such a society, Capitalism would have been all good. The only reason why Capitalism is destructive in our societies is because of our biased and corrupt systems of government.
I personally don't think it's possible to create a government that is above corruption and bias, but I think it is worthwhile to strive towards that as an ideal. I think people who have done it in the past have made things better. I think that history will go on forever and there will never be a point in time when people can lay down and say that everything is fixed forever, but we can improve society temporarily. As for ideology I think it's interesting to think in terms of ideology, I'm mainly interested in Liberalism (in the classical sense) and socialism, but I don't think that any ideology can be the ultimate solution to all of people's problems.
Well, that sounds a bit like 'the political compass' where you have a left-right axis and a authoritarian-libertarian axis. You have left-wing authoritarians and right-wing authoritarians.
I tend to think about people's political beliefs and attitudes in terms of two personality types: hawks and doves (or a spectrum between hawks and doves), of three ideologies: Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism, and of countless political movements that people (ideally) join in order to try to get things done.
It's easy to bring up the images of the stereotypical hawkish conservative who's involved in furthering religion and the right to bear arms, and of the equally stereotypical dovish liberal-socialist who's a feminist and an environmentalist, but I think most people are a lot more complicated than that and probably a lot more complicated than my amateur model accounts for. I know that research in countries with multi party systems has consistently shown that voters can switch from any party to any other party from one election to another, so it's pretty complicated.
Wrong. Sweden, Finland and Denmark doesn't have any of the natural resources you mentioned. In fact, they have very limited natural resources but their awful socialist school systems produce well-educated employees for their high tech industries. The right mixture of socialism and capitalism is a quite well working formula.
Not unlike propaganda in the US made the majority of americans think Sadam Hussein was behind 9/11...
While I share the apparent sentiment that this is a sorry state of affairs, the sad fact is that most of those idiots believe the way they do because they choose to. The truth is out there, readily available, with spin or without. One need only have the will to watch, listen, or read. And still, the largest single block seems to get their "truth" from Fox News. I take it back; that's not sad. It's plain fucking scary.