Defense One:
North Korea’s launch of five missiles into the sea on Monday represents a “modest advancement” in technological capability for the Hermit Kingdom, but it may say more about the regime’s stability than its technical prowess.
It was the slightly longer range of the KN-09s that North Korea launched today that gave Bennett some serious pause. “Historically, the concept has been that North Korea couldn’t reach beyond Seoul with other than its big ballistic missiles and therefore the threat to U.S. airbases in the South was more limited.”
North Korea’s provocative actions were likely to continue until May at least, said Bennett, when Pyongyang holds the 7th Worker’s Party Congress. It’s the first such event since 1980 and might be used to signal a new direction for the party. North Korea’s elites are focused on looking strong in the run-up to the event, so don’t expect North Korea to stop shooting at the sea any time soon.
Monday’s event followed Thursday’s launch of two larger Nodong missiles from a mobile missile launcher – underlining North Korea’s efforts to develop a missile force that can’t be easily wiped out.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that one of the Nodong missiles flew 500 miles before falling into the sea, but the other disappeared quickly from radar, suggesting failure.
Monday’s launches appear to have demonstrated similarly spotty success. “The [KN-09] launcher that fires this missile carries eight missiles,” Bennett said. “When they last fired, we saw six of the missiles work. That means two didn’t. This time we saw five missiles fly. That means three didn’t. This is a development program, but they’re having firing issues associated with this missile system. The ones that did fire, we have no idea how accurate they would be, because they’re going into the ocean.”
Large missiles like that Taepodong-2, with a range of more than 2000 miles and the capability carry a nuclear warhead (if North Korea were ever to develop one), make for scary headlines but also a very visible target. The KN-09, conversely, is not the most dangerous rocket in the world, but it “could cause some significant damage to a U.S. Airbase in south Korea if they launch against it.”
What It Means: More Missiles
What happens when you keep lobbing missiles into the China Sea? You wake up surrounded by other missiles.
After North Korea sent a rocket into space in February, U.S. officials announced that they were going to work with South Korea to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system to the area. Like most mobile anti-missile systems, THAAD consists of a radar to track incoming missiles, a lot of fire-control and support equipment, and a launcher for its interceptor missiles. THAAD-maker Lockheed Martin advertises the system as useful against short-, medium-, and long-range missiles; in a demonstration last November, it tested well against short-range missiles. But Bennett said its usefulness is less certain against KN-09s launched at a low altitude. (High altitude is in the name, after all.)
The United States has just five THAAD batteries, of which four have been activated. “Especially in peacetime, it’s hard to deploy more than one-third of the batteries one has available. It’s too much away time for the troops. Yet we already have one deployed in Guam. We are just barely getting to the point where it’s even possible to deploy a second one to South Korea,” said Bennett. Congress, he says, hasn’t done enough to support the system, and that we’re only building one a year in an environment “where we could use THAAD around the world.”
