USNI News:
Operating under the assumption that North Korea can — or is close to — fielding a ballistic missile tipped with a nuclear warhead, the U.S. is working more and more closely with Japan and South Korea in the realm of ballistic missile defense (BMD).
Speaking on Tuesday, U.S. Pacific Command commander Adm. Harry Harris said the ballistic missile and nuclear threat from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is far from dissipating.
“I believe they have clearly stated their intent … We know they are working on their missile technology – their intercontinental ballistic missiles – they are seeking to miniaturize the [nuclear] warheads, mate them to the missile and threaten the United States,” Harris said during a Tuesday event at Defense One.
“I believe it when Kim Jong Un expresses his intent… I assume for the worst case and prepare accordingly and that’s what you all want me to do.”
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul signed a trilateral information sharing agreement in 2014 on North Korean missile developments and signs indicate the trio could still develop closer BMD ties. A recent trilateral BMD exercise and planned technical improvements to the Republic of Korea Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force point to the creation of a future linked BMD network between existing U.S. and Japanese Aegis BMD ships and Korean guided missile destroyers that are set to field a BMD capability in the future.
In late June, the U.S. Navy, ROK Navy and JMSDF conducted an exercise in which five ships shared tracking and targeting information on a ballistic missile target set to improve coordination between the three navies.
As part of the Pacific Dragon 2016 Exercise, USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53), USS Shoup (DDG-86), JS Chokai (DDG-176), ROKS Sejong The Great (DDG-991) and ROKS Gang Gam Chan (DDH-979) operated off of the coast of Hawaii to fine-tune their joint BMD tracking skills.
The U.S. and Japan both field guided missile destroyer capable of intercepting ballistic missile threats with Raytheon Standard Missile 3s. Following behind, the ROK Navy next three Sejong the Great-class guided missile destroyers will also be BMD combatants fielding SM-3s, USNI News reported in September.
With a technical path for all three navies to share tracking and targeting data coupled with the ability with the three to shoot down a ballistic missile threat in the future, the next step to create a robust sea-based BMD network is policy. Currently, there are no plans to create a trilateral early warning BMD network, a U.S. PACOM spokesman told USNI News on Wednesday. However, Harris said there was a need for the three countries to work closely together.
“The trilateral relationship between the U.S., Japan and Korea is important in this case,” Harris said.
“I think that we’re coming close to a true information sharing agreement between [South Korea] and Japan which gets at this in a real-time way and all of these are important and this adds to our defenses in the threat posed by North Korea.”
In the shorter term, the U.S. is deploying a U.S. Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense ground-based BMD system to South Korea sometime next year, Harris said…
