PULL!!!!!!
Posted on 02/27/2009 4:12:40 AM PST by fallingwater
The U.S. military is prepared to shoot down a North Korean missile or rocket if President Obama should give the order, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command said Thursday.
"If a missile leaves the launch pad we'll be prepared to respond upon direction of the president," Adm. Timothy Keating told ABC News.
North Korea announced earlier this week that it was preparing to shoot a communication satellite into orbit as part of it space program. The U.S., South Korea and other neighboring countries believe the launch may be a cover for a missile test-fire, saying the action would trigger international sanctions.
"There's equipment moving up there that would indicate the preliminary stages of preparation for a launch," Keating said. "So I'd say it's more than less likely."
North Korea lashed out at critics warning it not to test a long-range missile on Thursday, saying that it would punish those trying to disrupt its plan to send what it calls a satellite into orbit.
Keating said the U.S. military is ready to respond to the missile launch with at least five different systems: a naval destroyer, Aegis cruiser, radar system, space-based system and ground-based interceptor, ABC News reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Slim and Fat have left town.
Exactly. And if he flinches, there will be many more ‘tests’. Oboomba is rightly perceived as weak; our enemies are watching and biding their time. When/if we become significantly weakened economically, they will be sure to act. Saw an article about Iranian presence in Mexico. Alarming is not the word I use to describe it. This hemisphere needs protecting, not just the 50 states.
Also, NK is not that good at missile technology - yet. They have had a series of failures on their long range TD-2s. There is a non-zero chance that even if they do shoot a "test shot" towards empty Northern Pacific ocean, that it could go astray and be a threat to come down in Alaska. Even an inert RV coming down at re-entry speeds is a threat to life and limb. Therefore, we have to be ready to turn it into an expanding plasma cloud.
I'm not real happy with the notion of the shooters having to go to the President for authorization. He should put ROE in place so that they can make decisions quickly without having to buck it up the chain. Generally they wouldn't have a tiny time window to shoot in, but they don't have a lot of time for hand-wringing either.
As for will O shoot or not. Yes, he will. Why? Because politically it is a can't lose proposition for him. Say it works (as I believe it would) and we take out the NK missile. He'll say the existing systems work just fine, and cut back on R&D and deployment. Say it misses for whatever reason. He'll cut deployment, and send MDA back to the drawing board, but with reduced funding for these "unproven" systems.
The web bots are predicting something disastrous happening around there. They said it'll happen this spring. According to them, it'll be devastating, and the world will be sending aid it'll be so bad. Scary, huh?
I certainly frigging hope so Admiral - how many years and billions of dollars have we put into our military? If Kathmandu fires a missile you better be ready.
“Beware the Ides of March!”
The smart move is to take it out on the pad with a B2 strike, but he won’t.
On the contrary. He'll use it for political gain. His own adviser is quoted as saying "Never waste a good crises."
PULL!!!!!!
He won’t shoot it down. He’ll send Proflowers.
Actually, target missiles are cheap. Range safety is expensive. In a ballistic missile live fire exercise, range safety chews up half the budget.
Target ballistic missiles can be had for about $125,000. Range safety might be $20,000,0000. Interceptors are a couple of million a pop. All the planning, logistics (moving stuff around and fuel for ships and aircraft and such) and staffing eats up the rest of the budget.
“Beware the Ides of March!”
For either government (”leader”), that’s a long range objective.
I’m pretty sure that if anything threatening looks like it’s going to land anywhere near any of the Fifty, standing orders are to shoot it down.
The recent Chinese ASAT test send debris into the United States and Canada and lit up missile defense radars along the West coast. The shooters held their fire because the it didn’t look like a plausible raid based on geometry and the radars correctly categorized it as debris based on target recognition algorithms. Still, the radar operators probably had to change their underwear right after their shifts.
I think this latest US gambit is something more proactive and aggressive. The North Koreans don’t participate in confidence building measures like launch notification and announce impact areas or issue NOTAMs and other internationally agreed to safety measures. I suspect the intention is to intercept the launch in boost phase, when it’s most vulernable and before the impact point can be determined with any precision.
The North Koreans are disadvantaged geographically. All the good launch directions are to the east, directly over the Sea of Japan, where the U.S. can easily intercept them with minimal danger to aviation and shipping.
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