New North Korean Missile Could Hit Anywhere in the US

Bloomberg Business Wire and the Associated Press ^ | Sept. 12, 2003 GMT | wire staff

[meg70]

North Korea has been using Russian technology to develop a ballistic missile that could theoretically strike anywhere in the US, the Associated Press reported, citing a Bush Admistration official.

The potential range of the missile is 9,400 miles, AP said, citing the unidentifed offical. The distance between Pyonyang the North Korean capital and San Francisco is about 5,500 miles, the AP reported.

[samtheman]

Exactly. The left's line is that Iraq was a mistake because Korea is a bigger threat. Not very bright of them, but anything to bash Bush with, right?

Wrong.

Their own words will come back to haunt them in coming debates on missile defense.

[bmwcyle]

Not until the Clintons went over and help them out.

[Dirk McQuickly]

This is patently unacceptable. North Korea must be dealt with and SOON. O'Reilly was right last night when he said that most people don't realize we are in the middle of World War III. At some point, we're going to have to drop gloves with North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and Hamas if we want to avoid an unthinkable catastrophe. N. Korea having short range nuclear capabilities is one thing. Developing missiles that can take out Chicago, New York, and Washington is a matter of the utmost urgency. At this rate, the alternative to conflict by allowing these monsters to shift the balance of power is dreadful at best.

Most people don't realize the new wrinkle in the global nuclear arms race is this -- the participant who indicates he is willing to use their weapons in spite of MAD will win in the end. N. Korea is confident it can play the blackmail card in the face of MAD since they've shown little or no concern for their own population. Unless we are willing to pre-emptively destroy their weapons capability, we will be faced with making much more horrible choices down the road.

[backhoe]

-The Atomic Genie- what we know about North Korea's Nuclear program--

[Publius6961]

Let's wait until this lunatic has enough nuke missiles to anihilate all our large cities, and then say that we should have nuked him years before.

You moron. Idiot. Jumping to conclusions like that.

Us morally superior intelligent types got just one thing to say to you.
You don't have any proof!

We want videos, photographs, 18 notarized confessions, a note from El Nutso's mother, then get back to us.
Warmonger!

where are the WMDs dammit!

[Bogey78O]

I'm doubting this severely.

China, which has been developing missiles for ages is just starting to breech that threshold. The longest ones they have can hit maybe 2-3 states in. To believe Korea has better missiles than China seems rather odd.

[Publius6961]

Absolutely!
Plus they haven't discovered WD40, so those rockets probably won't work anyway.

[JustAnAmerican]

"There are many reasons for building a star wars missle defense system. It's good that one of those reasons is out in the open for all the American people to see.

And the DIMS are solely to blame for it not being designed and deployed by now.

[sarasota]

Makes me wonder how we can believe that any of the members of the axis of evil know how to keep their word. Total farce.

[judicial meanz]

This is a mirror article just posted on WWW.Globalsecurity.org....has a little more detail


____________________________________________________________





N. Korea Working on Missile Accuracy;
If developed, the new nuclear weapon could increase the communist regime's chances of striking the continental U.S., an analyst says.

By Sonni Efron

North Korea is developing a long-range missile that could hit U.S. targets with greater accuracy than its old missiles, a U.S. official confirmed Thursday.

The missile is based on the old Soviet navy's SS-N-6, a submarine-launched missile, the official said. North Korea is believed to have acquired it between 1992 and 1998, then added technology to improve the missile. It can now be launched from the ground, the official said.

North Korea is already believed to have long-range missiles, but "what it increases for them dramatically is the accuracy," the official said.

There is no indication that the Russian government sanctioned the missile technology transfer or has had any involvement in North Korea's missile program "in at least the last five years," the official said.

"We've had hints of this for several years, but it's only within the last year that we've been able to confirm that this did exist and it's derived from Russian technology," the official said, adding that the development "makes you wonder what else they might have been able to access" during that period.

As described, the missile "increases the probability that North Korea could achieve the capability of launching nuclear weapons against the continental U.S.," said John Pike, an intelligence expert who runs GlobalSecurity.org, a Web site focusing on national security issues.

If true, "it significantly changes our security situation, because for the first time they would have a missile with a proven capacity to deliver a warhead to U.S. soil," said a Capitol Hill source. "They don't have that capability absent such a missile."

Because the SS-N-6 is based on 40-year-old Soviet technology, the North Koreans could more likely deploy it "without having to farm out the testing to their buddies in Pakistan and Iran" or "blow up a lot of hardware," Pike said.

"They're going with something tried and true rather than trying to invent it themselves... They basically let [former Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev pay for all the exploding rockets 40 years ago."

Pike said he could not comment on the U.S. assertion that the SS-N-6 would be more accurate than North Korea's Taepodong 1 or Taepodong 2 missiles.

"I don't know who told them [U.S. intelligence] how accurate the old one was," Pike said.

There were conflicting news reports Thursday about the range of the new missile.

North Koreans fired a Taepodong 1 missile over Japan in 1998. But the Taepodong 2, which is a Taepodong 1 on top of a larger rocket, has never been field-tested.

In 1999, U.S. intelligence estimated its range at 4,000 miles, far enough to hit Alaska or Hawaii.

The SS-N-6 is estimated to have a range of 1,497 to 1,920 miles. If that is true, the missile alone would not be powerful enough to hit Los Angeles, which is about 5,900 miles from Pyongyang. The question is whether the new North Korean missile is a three-stage missile -- an SS-N-6 with the two-stage Taepodong 2 on top of it, Pike said.

If so, it might be able to deliver a nuclear warhead to Los Angeles or other U.S. cities. North Korea is believed to be attempting to miniaturize its nuclear warheads, based on relatively sophisticated, smaller designs tested by Pakistan in 1998, Pike said.

"Anybody who thinks North Korea's nuclear weapons weigh thousands of pounds rather than hundreds of pounds might be surprised," he said.

A CIA spokesman Thursday declined to comment on the existence of the missile. No other officials contacted would describe the nature of it or discuss whether it was sold to North Korea by a Russian rogue enterprise or stolen by Pyongyang.

However, the congressional source, who asked not to be named, noted that 1992-98 was a period when the Russian Pacific Fleet, which used the submarine-launched missiles, was desperately underfunded and disorganized.

"Everything was on the chopping block or the auction block," the source said.

Pike said the SS-N-6 could have been sold to North Korea in 1992 by the Makeyev design bureau of the old Soviet Ministry of General Machine Building, which had previously supplied missile technology to its communist client state. That year, Russian officials stopped a group of Makeyev scientists at the airport as they were headed to Pyongyang, he said.

News of the missile first appeared in the South Korean press and began circulating in Washington on Wednesday. It was the latest in a series of leaks from Washington over the past year that have raised alarms about North Korea's progress toward a nuclear arsenal. The political motivation behind the leaks remains unclear.

"All of [the reports] have a 'hawk' reading, that the North Koreans are going to get us and we should get them first ... and a 'dove' reading, that war with North Korea is not an option because North Korea has effectively deterred us," Pike said.

Administration officials say they expect that the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan will meet for a second round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program, probably this fall.

---

© Copyright 2003 The Times Mirror Company

[Consort]

I'm glad I live somewhere and not just anywhere.

[Treebeard]

Yeah, but WE have missiles that can hit EVERYWHERE in North Korea. All at once. Repeatedly. :)

[Kevin Curry]

The North Korean government has named the new missile type Jimmy Carter, in honor of the Nobel Prize-winning former US president whose intense last-minute diplomatic efforts in 1994 spared the country from suffering a military strike and gave its scientists and engineers sufficient time to develop the missile.

[meg70]

unbeliveable!

[Kevin Curry]

I was joking, of course.

But not by much. The North Koreans played Carter like a used kazoo. What an idiot Carter was and is. He gets the Nobel Prize in recognition of setting up this fisaco while Ronald Reagan, who defeated the Soviet Union and destroyed the Iron Curtain (seeting free hundreds of millions from the blackness of communist slavery) is vilified and scorned by the "peacemakers" of the liberal intelligentsia.

[Labyrinthos]

With the Russian technology, it could end up in the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific.

Or Pyonyang

[inPhase]

Nukes work, can pre-empt or meet a launched missile.

Airborne laser (Boeing ABL) cannot take out anything ie will never work.
See e.g.
http://optics.org/articles/ole/7/5/5/comment/view/53


and also note (quick search google?) that the engineers are not able to get 6 laser chemical (COIL) modules on board, they need 14. These are individual lasers, next to impossible to make one coherent beam. Jitter requirements are such that the laser can not meet them on a plane. ABL is mega heavy, beam breaks up at much shorter range than desired, and the plane is shaking like mad from a lasers point of view.

ABL is a cash cow. That's all.

Army's THEL (tactical high energy laser, do search?) works, has taken out multiple katuysha's and artillary, some missiles albeit at close range. THEL works, worked quickly.

ABL cash cow has been going on for over ten years under this name. Will never do a test (moved from 1999, 2001,2002, 2003, 2004, to 2005!), will never work, and "Jerry's kids" (MDA) has staked its hopes on ABL, although backing off somewhat lately.

[caltrop]

I can't be sure of the left's approach but I know this conservative thinks we're on a fool's errand in Iraq and that's particularly true since there are genuine threats out there like North Korea. Our War in Iraq not only hasn't impressed our adversaries, it's emboldened them. We've got half our Army in Iraq, we're spending a fortune and Iraq's dividing itself into the three regions it's always been made of. In the final analysis, we'll have squandered GIs lives, thrown away mountains of money and hindered our defense all in the same idiotic exercise.

My guess is the country will recognize we were suckered into fighting this war and that none of the half truths and optimistic forecasts offered up to get us into this mess were at all realistic. The upshot, IMHO, is that those who encouraged this policy will be thoroughly discredited and the country will bring its ground troops home from the Middle East - clearly the right move but the exact opposite of the objective the cheerleaders of this war thought they were accomplishing.

[inPhase]

Thanks caltrop for comment below, admirable move.

quote
but I know this conservative thinks we're on a fool's errand in Iraq and that's particularly true since there are genuine threats out there like North Korea. Our War in Iraq not only hasn't impressed our adversaries, it's emboldened them. We've got half our Army in Iraq, we're spending a fortune and Iraq's dividing itself into the three regions it's always been made of. In the final analysis, we'll have squandered GIs lives, thrown away mountains of money and hindered our defense all in the same idiotic exercise.

[putupon]

North Korea has been using Russian technology to develop a ballistic missile

So, are the ChiCom's holding back on No. Korea, or is the Rooskie missile technology better than what Bubba sold?