Remnants of unresolved World War 2 rivalries are creating a dangerous realignment for increasing confrontations in a more militarized Super Powers in a multi-polar world armed with arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and high-tech firepower on-the-ground, air-borne, and near-Earth orbit.
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North Korea displays enough ICBMs to overwhelm U.S. defense system against them
This satellite image shows a closer view of missile launchers at a parade on Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. | Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP
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North Korea has just revealed a large enough number of missiles to conceivably overwhelm the United States’ defense against them, blowing a hole in decades of denuclearization and homeland security policies.
Images from state-run media show North Korea’s military rolling 10 to 12 Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missiles down the streets of Pyongyang during a Wednesday night parade. The U.S. only has 44 ground-based interceptors to launch from Alaska and California to destroy an oncoming ICBM in flight. Assuming North Korea’s weapons can fit four warheads atop them, it’s possible Pyongyang can fire more warheads at the U.S. than America has interceptors.
U.S. officials and experts have long felt it was only a matter of time before North Korea built its way out of the missile-defense problem.
The Hwasong-17 has the theoretical range to make it all the way to the United States from North Korea. But Pyongyang has yet to demonstrate the warhead’s survivability upon reentry or that it could hit a desired target from so far away.
Regardless, the message from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un is clear: Despite repeated efforts, the U.S. can’t stop us. It’s a defiant display that both underscores the nation’s stunning military advancement and Western failures to get the ruling Kim family to part with its weapons.
“It punches a hole in 20-plus years of U.S. homeland missile defense policy predicated on defending against a ‘limited’ missile threat from North Korea. That threat is no longer limited and the United States cannot count on missile defense to confer anything close to invulnerability to North Korean retaliation in a conflict,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “Kim Jong Un and the Bomb.”
Critics of the ground-based midcourse defense system, or GMD, say it wouldn’t take so many North Korean missiles to get past it. It might only take one. . .
It’s unclear how the Biden administration will respond — a request for comment from the National Security Council wasn’t immediately returned. But the implication for policy is clear: Administration after administration has failed to stop North Korea’s march to this moment, and now Pyongyang is literally parading in front of the world.
“North Korea, whether we like it or not, is a third nuclear deterrence relationship for the United States that will need to be dealt with, much like we’d plan to deal with Russia and China,” said Carnegie’s Panda." READ MORE
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Posted: 21 hours ago
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