Missiles Test U.S.-Japan Ties

July 19, 2006 -- ALTHOUGH U.S. policy toward North Korea is ostensibly about "keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes," the reality is that we haven't even come close to doing that. North Korea almost certainly has nuclear weapons, and it is slowly developing the missiles to carry them. And there is no prospect that, short of a regime collapse, North Korea will give up those weapons. Why would it? Nukes give the DPRK a decisive deterrent against its enemies and, as the record from the mid-'90s to today shows, behaving badly pays, with large amounts of food and cash flowing into North Korea from its former wartime opponents.

But pretending otherwise seems to be the order of the day, especially in Seoul and Foggy Bottom. As Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, remarked in a NewsHour interview on July 5: The "issue of North Korea and its nuclear program needs a diplomatic process. We have got a very good process. The fact that we haven't gotten there with a solution, I don't think really should reflect on the process." (snip)

Tokyo was counting on an equally strong reaction from the White House. After all, President Bush had announced before the missile launches that conducting such tests was "unacceptable." Instead, what Tokyo got were reprimands from South Korea for stoking a crisis and egg on its face as Washington dispatched Hill to the region, not to round up support for a tougher line but to ask China to push Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

Interesting how Japan is actually pushing for a better Aegis Missile Defense than our own Pentagon MDA intends to allow our forces...even as the crisis mounts! From the just-released Independent Working Group 2007 Missile Defense Report at page 21:

Deployment 21 The SM-3 Block 2 U.S.-Japanese joint program will lead to a capability of about five 5 km/sec. However, a velocity of 6 to 7.5 km/sec is needed to give a significantly larger especially in boost phase.This global defense objective can be accomplished for the least cost if 7.5 km/sec interceptors were made compatible with the existing VLS infrastructure and that of allies willing to participate in building a global defense capability (more below).
The fifty-three-centimeter-diameter SM-3 Block 2 will be the largest interceptor that can fit into the VLS. Fortunately, miniaturized light-weight SDI technology developed a decade ago can be used to achieve 6-7.5 km/sec with this VLS-compat ible interceptor. (The lighter the kill vehicle on a given missile, the faster the missile will accelerate – and the higher its final velocity.) Several years ago, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposed the use of SDI technology to demonstrate an ATKV. Because of its light weight,an ATKV outfitted on the SM-3 Block 2 could achieve the desired 6-7.5km/sec velocity. Unfortunately, this ATKV has not been funded, and the laboratory and industrial teams with the experience for development and production have largely been disbanded. It is necessaruy to revive the entire program.
Regrettably, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has failed to follow this path. Instead, it has opted to build a new, much larger diameter interceptor, substantially bigger than what the existing U.S. and allied VLS infrastructure can accommodate.
Initially,a seventy-nine-centimeter-diameter missile was the goal, but more recently its design diameter has grown to over eighty-nine centimeters. This approach will spawn an extensive program to build both a new missile and a new VLS, resulting in an expensive retrofitting program – one that will, in turn,lead to the creation of dedicated missile defense ships, “picket ships ” that over time can be expected to turn the Navy against the effort. Instead, a better alternative would be to mate the SM-3 Block 2 being developed in the joint U.S.-Japanese program outlined above, using the ATKV light-weight kill vehicle based on technology developed during the Reagan-Bush-41 years (but held dormant for a decade) to achieve the desired velocity in a way compatible with the existing Navy VLS infrastructure.
The eighty-nine-centimeter-diameter Navy interceptor,parently favored by some in the Pentagon, is clearly the wrong architectural choice. The Pentagon probably prefers this ap proach because of the emphasis placed on ground-based interceptors over the past decade and the fact that the exo-atmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) on the current GMD interceptor represents the most developed capability.
However, the GMD EKV is too heavy and large for use on the fifty-three-centimeter SM-3 Block 2. Despite these drawbacks, the Missile Defense Agency appears inclined to use the EKV technology for the Navy application, despite the fact that it requires a larger booster, has little or no boost-phase capability, and is likely to delay the Navy program by as much as ten years through the development of the new and larger (eighty-nine-centimeter) interceptor.
Fortunately, the Japanese, sensitive to the need to retain VLS and its associated infrastructure have insisted that the SM-3 Block 2 program focus on a fifty-three-centimeter-di- ameter missile – the largest diameter that will fit in the VLS.
This has led to a reduced interest in the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program, now centering on boost-phase intercept, and Congress has raised questions about the wisdom of maintaining both the KEI and the Airborne Laser (ABL) program, which also seeks to achieve a dedicated boost-phase. In fact, KEI funding was cut significantly in the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 2006 budget submission and by Congress, plummeting to $216 million (from the $1 billion forecasted just a year earlier in MDA budget documents), and delaying deployment from 2012 to 2013. Missile defense offi- cials said the cuts reflected a decision to focus on programs closer to fielding.

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