North Korea’s test of a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on July 4 has been met by renewed calls in Washington for a space-based missile defense layer.
The rocket launch, which coincided with Independence Day celebrations in the U.S., is believed to be Pyongyang’s first military-grade ICBM. The reclusive nation already possessed long-range rocket technology for space launch.
In a July 5 statement, Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), said the U.S. missile shield must be extended to space “in a big way with both sensors and shooters,” with satellites providing precision observation, tracking, and discrimination of missile threats as well as intercept.
Ellison says space is the ultimate high ground and a space-based missile defense complex would augment and strengthen terrestrial assets, since sensors and radar sites on land and at sea are fundamentally limited by the curvature of the Earth.
Ellison says North Korea now possesses a “proven and tested” weapon capable of striking the U.S., with some analysts predicting it could hit Alaska.
The next step on Pyongyang’s path toward a truly nuclear-capable ICBM is to develop and demonstrate reliable warheads capable of re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
MDAA says it is “prudent” to assume North Korea can achieve this technical feat, especially since it defied predictions by launching this ICBM. “North Korea clearly has the mechanisms to deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S. and will continue to expedite their development and proliferate with mass numbers,” Ellison says.
The U.S.
confirmed North Korea’s launch of an ICBM, describing the move as “escalatory.” In response, U.S. and South Korean forces conducted a joint show of force, firing multiple MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATacMS) rockets into the ocean “to show our precision fire capability.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) described the “Hwaseong-14” test as a “brilliant success” and the final gateway to the completion of its national nuclear-armed forces. The launch comes 10 months after Pyongyang’s fifth successful underground nuclear test since 2006.
KCNA claims the missile achieved a peak altitude of 1,741 mi. (2,802 km), range of 580 mi. (933 km) and total flight time of 39 min. It was launched from what appears to be a Chinese road-mobile ICBM launcher.
Russia and China called for all sides to show restraint amid escalating tension. The White House may be feeling pressure to act, with U.S. President Donald Trump previously saying Pyongyang’s launch of a nuclear-capable ICBM would “never happen.”
The test will likely boost congressional support for more spending on missile defense.
Trump requested $7.9 billion to fund the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in fiscal 2018, and the Senate and House armed services committees have moved to increase that amount.
On June 27, former MDA director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering called for significant investment in new missile defense capabilities to achieve “birth-to-death tracking and discrimination” of missile threats and intercept opportunities at every phase of flight.
This would include a space-based observation and “kill layer.” He says space vehicles could be armed with exoatmospheric kill vehicles and potentially directed energy weapons to destroy missiles without violating treaties against the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space. He supported the development of MDA’s Multi-Object Kill Vehicle, which would allow single interceptors to take out multiple warheads.
Obering also wants a boost-phase kill capability, which would be laser weapons carried aboard high-altitude stratospheric UAVs.
“Today, we launch multiple multimillion-dollar interceptors against a single threat missile,” Obering, now executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s now possible to have a lethal laser in the next 10 years, capable of conducting boost-phase intercept missions from a high-altitude airborne platform.”
