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Dear Members and Friends, In an interview with CBS This Morning released on April 26, 2016, the President Barack Obama stated, “North Korea is a massive challenge. Our first priority is to protect the American people and our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan that are vulnerable to the provocative actions that North Korea is engaging in. They are erratic enough, their leader is, personally, irresponsible enough that we don’t want them getting close. But it’s not something that lends itself to an easy solution. We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But, aside from the humanitarian cost of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, Republic of Korea. One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile defense systems so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem with nuclear development inside of North Korea, we’re also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low level threats that they’re posing right now.”
Charlie Rose, co-host of CBS This Morning, interviewing President Obama in Hannover, Germany (Link to the interview). Given the clear and present danger of North Korea, we must ask of our President why we are not doing everything we possibly can today to protect Hawaii from North Korea and urgently increase our missile defenses across the Pacific. History has bluntly told the United States Government to never again fail to forget and defend Pearl Harbor, Hawaii against a real threat when there are known existing U.S. defensive capabilities in Hawaii that can be put in a state of readiness and remain vigilant. The U.S. ballistic missile defense of Hawaii/PACOM from North Korea’s nuclear road-mobile KN-08 long-range ballistic missiles leaves Hawaii at unnecessary risk compared, to the rest of the United States. This defense is completely reliant on ground based interceptors (GBI), known to have reliability issues that are currently being addressed, located 2,500 miles away and have one shot opportunity to successfully discriminate and intercept a ballistic missile. According to the Missile Defense Agency these reliability issues will not be completely resolved and the current kill vehicles upgraded or fully replaced until 2020 or later. In addition, GBIs used to defend Hawaii are heavily dependent on the Sea Based X Band (SBX) Radar, home ported in Pearl Harbor, to identify the correct target from a debris cloud to increase the probability of a kill. The SBX radar has a limited deployment time and has to be towed out, many days in advance, to the middle of the Pacific in order to detect and track a North Korean missile launch. This requires an accurate intelligence assessment, which is extremely challenging given mobility of North Korea’s KN-08 ballistic missiles. There is a limited number of 30 GBIs, costing around approximately $70 million per interceptor, with 26 in Alaska and 4 in California. The majority of current GBIs are first generation CE-1 interceptors that all have to be replaced or re-tipped. A smaller portion of the current fleet are second generation CE-2 interceptors, that are still being tested to prove upgrades. By 2017, all 14 additional interceptors will also be second generation CE-2 interceptors. These GBIs have to protect all 50 states from North Korea, as well as Iran, and due to their reliability issues, must launch multiple rounds at each ballistic missile to increase its probability. This leaves a one shot opportunity for the defense of Hawaii, as opposed to a two or three shot opportunity for the rest of the United States. The rest of the U.S. also benefits from having the opportunity to reassess after each shot and fire another interceptor if needed. Due to the distance and time required for the GBIs located in Alaska and California to intercept a North Korean launched ballistic missile headed for Hawaii, there is not enough battle space to shoot, assess, and shoot again to increase the probability of killing the correct target if the first round of GBIs fail. With the launch of multiple North Korean KN-08 missiles, the current GBI inventory would become quickly overwhelmed. The 1.42 million Americans in Hawaii and PACOM are more vulnerable now than the continental United States until 2020. Located today in Hawaii, unlike any of the other 49 States, is a proven “engage from remote sensors” non-operational integrated missile defense capability, with its missile defense test assets. These assets include an Aegis Ashore site with an eight pack launcher and a testing AN/TPY-2 X band radar located at the PMRF, as well as a baseline 9 Aegis BMD test ship in Pearl Harbor with an Aegis BMD crew and SM-3 block IB interceptors. These exiting assets in Hawaii have the ability to provide an emergency second and third layer of ballistic missile defense until 2020 in case the long distance GBIs fail or are oversaturated from North Korean nuclear ICBMs launched at Hawaii/PACOM. The Aegis Ashore facility in Hawaii is already paid for by U.S. tax dollars, at $450 million and requires little or no upgrades since it has successfully proven its ability to shoot down a ballistic missile in December 2015 (Link to Operationalizing PMRF in Hawaii for Emergency Use). This successful test enabled $750 million to be invested in the Aegis Ashore Site in Romania, which will become operational next month and will protect millions of Southeastern Europeans from Iran’s ballistic missiles. “Our first priority is to protect the American people and our allies, the Republic of Korea and Japan that are vulnerable to the provocative actions that North Korea is engaging in.” – President Obama, April 26, 2016. Actions speak Louder than words |
