North Korean Missiles

With North Korea about to test launch a long-range missile, the situation might give the U.S. the opportunity to test the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS), this in light of the Pentagon's warning that the North Korean's launching of a long-range missile would be considered a "provocative act."

The BMDS is an integrated and layered missile defense system has had its share of critics, including Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and once presidential candidate Wesley Clark. All components of the BMDS, however, have been untested in a real-world scenario. One proponent noted last year that "You can't operationally test a system until you put it in place." But some components are now in place. The current strategic locations in Alaska and California, employing a missile defense system that some estimates place having a success rate of only twenty-five percent -- and thus necessitating multiple launch sites -- are aimed at countering a small number of missiles that could be fired from North Korea.

At the moment, however, the chance of North Korea unleashing ICBMs with deadly nuclear warheads seems remote. Their missile capability currently consists of the middle-range Taepodong-2 that could accommodate a two or three-stage booster and reach the U.S. West Coast, Alaska and further inland. That missile modification, along with a nuclear payload capability, is still seen by some experts as a future, and not imminent, threat. However, in 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet told a Senate committee that North Korea indeed had the ability to strike the West Coast with a long-range missile. Lighter chemical or biological payloads, not nuclear, could be a possible payload.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman noted that the United States has limited missile defenses but would not say whether it intends to use them against a North Korean missile launch. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has claimed that even in its current form, the rudimentary system is a viable start to a national defense against a missile attack. "I mean, they'd still be testing at Kitty Hawk, for God's sake, if you wanted perfection" he argued last year.

The big test might be coming this week.