North Korea Reportedly Launches 4 Missiles

In what could be seen as an act of provocation, North Korea has reportedly launched as many as four missiles today. Reports state that some landed in the Sea of Japan. Some sources report that at least one of the missiles launched was in fact a long range missile, but it failed soon after launch.



In the arena of nuclear politics, there is no such thing as a coincidence. today's alleged test-launch was meant to be provocative. North Korea continues to play a rough game of statesmanship as it seeks to be welcomes in to the larger world community with the status of an "equal" nation.

The world hasn't seen this kind of nuclear brinksmanship since the darkest days of the first Cold War. In today's highly charged environment, the Chinese continue to put pressure on North Korea in public, while supporting them by covert means. This old-fashioned proxy fight could go on for the rest of this decade.



[edit on 4-7-2006 by UM_Gazz]

The long-range missile failed mere seconds after launch. That is hilarious, but also very good news. Not only that our hand wasn't forced, but also that Little Kim may finally realize that he is a long way from being taken serious in the area of technical capability.

40 seconds into flight is a decent amount of time.

I'd be worried that it got off the pad successfully.

Originally posted by jsobecky
The long-range missile failed mere seconds after launch. That is hilarious, but also very good news. Not only that our hand wasn't forced, but also that Little Kim may finally realize that he is a long way from being taken serious in the area of technical capability.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but you've got me thinking. Did this fail on it's own or did it have a little outside help.

Since the Dictator did this on our day of INDEPENDENCE, it should make a strong statement on his intentions. Though these tests seemed to fail they still state that North Korea will not negotiate willingly on major issues.. This fact, along with the reported fact that they have possibly 10- nuclear warheads makes them a dangerous country.

Is there any possibility that these tests were made to fail?

That these were to give the false illusion that they are incompetent and unable to launch a succesful strike on other nations?

July 4th, easily covered by news agencies, failed missles (4). All this could lead one to beleive that even if they were to load more missles on launch sites, that they most probably would fail. They would not be taken as serious as if the ones today were succesful.

It would make sense to let your enemy have the illusion of your incompetence. Especially if your technology was capable to the deliver the weapons accurately. It could cause the enemy to wait just enough to let your attack be succesful.

I hope this is not the case, but it has to be considered.

Originally posted by Nerdling
40 seconds into flight is a decent amount of time.

Not really, its takes 3-4 minutes for an IRBM to get out of the Boost/Ascent stage, that's the stage of flight where the missile is still gaining altitude, so 35 seconds is not impressive, too bad the missile didn't take out their only lunch pad in the process. For all Kim’s saber rattling and PR statements this highlights North Koreas technical limitations and vulnerability. Kim would do well to consider this before boasting of any Nuclear War.

By the way the North Koreans also fired two unguided short ranged SCUD missiles (which are launched form mobile trailers) as decoys to fool US surveillance systems.

BTW Intrepid the Taepodong-2 was not shot down, the two US ships in the Sea of Japan could not shoot down the missile that early in its flight. However jamming and or other electronic means of attack cannot be ruled out.

The only thing that bothers me is that this was done on the Fourth of July, trying to ruin our National Holiday, damn bastards.

[edit on 4-7-2006 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by Wolfpack 51
It would make sense to let your enemy have the illusion of your incompetence. Especially if your technology was capable to the deliver the weapons accurately. It could cause the enemy to wait just enough to let your attack be succesful.

I hope this is not the case, but it has to be considered.

It's a possibility, but a very expensive ruse, esp. for a country like NK, which is not exactly rolling in cash.

The game would change immediately if the missile were armed, however. At that point, chances are it would never be permiited to fail or succeed; I think we'd make sure of that.

intrepid if it did have a little outside help failing we won't ever be told about it. To admit such would be to unnecessarily provoke North Korea for one, and it would possibly reveal a capability we really don't want them to know about (if we do have such a capability).

Wolfpack 51, I don’t think so, the last long range missile North Korea launched was in 1998 and that too also failed while in mid flight. Kim would not build up all this hype only to make himself look incompetent and foolish. BTW the US will always have days, if not weeks, of notice whenever North Korea tries to launch a missile. This is due to them only having one launch site capable of facilitating long range missiles, and we have it under constant surveillance. As such we will have time to place defensive ABM systems in place, so if indeed a launch was successful we would be ready, then after that they could kiss their only missile site goodbye.

This is the best outcome for the US, we did not want our hand forced on just how capable our systems are, nor did we want all the BS that comes with shooting a missile down, if we had to. And at the same time it makes North Korea look incompetent because they have no one to blame but themselves.

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It appears in an effort to compensate for their earlier shortcomings the North Koreans have launched a 4th, 5th, and 6th missile just within the last minutes. Source: CNN TV. The 4th and 5th missiles were SCUD’s and the 6th was a No-Dong missile, none pose a threat to US territories.

Well, I guess we aren't the only ones launching fireworks into the sky today. Just to give you a relative estimate of North Korean missile ranges see below image.



[edit on 4-7-2006 by WestPoint23]

I have one wild and crazy hypothesis to put forward.

The flight of North Korea's "ICBM" may have been a first stage heavy-lift motor test. the second and third stages are basically SCUD motors, and they know those work. If they did not...they now have test data from five live drives now.

What happens when this one is tested and operational?

Link

NORTH KOREA'S MISSILE SYSTEMS





Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM)

Taepodong 2 (Daepodong 2, Nodong 3)
Range: 6,700km
Warhead: 700-1,000kg
Year developed: 2000
(Latest estimate by the South Korean Ministry of Defense. Earlier estimates were 4,000-6,000km)

Three-stage Taepodong 2 (Taepodong 3)
Range: 10,000-12,000km
Warhead: 500-1,000kg
Year developed: Being developed

Range requirements
The entire South Korea - 500km
US bases in Japan and major Japanese cities: 1,000-1,500km
US bases in Alaska and Hawaii: 4,000-6,000km
Continental US: 6,000+km
(Source: Joseph S Bermudez Jr, Shield of the Great Leader: The Armed Forces of North Korea, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001

The Taepodong 3 shows as being in development. Lets hope it doesn't make it beyond that stage.. Because this one could hit a large part of the USA.

Hopefully for the US if these last two long range North Korean tests are an indication of things to come then this missile will meet a premature fiery end as well. If that does not happen then we have to hope our ABM systems can shoot down a single ICBM.

NK missile launch count is now seven!
Last was launched few minutes ago (source is BBC and Japanese news agency Kyodo)

Yeah, so I heard. Impacted the ground 4 minutes after takeoff. It was a medium-range missile, with the capability of hitting Australia. Waiting for the eighth!

As much as we may like to laugh about these failed missile tests, it's important to remember that North Korea is learning "something" from each of these. It would not surprise me to learn that they deliberately dumped their own ICBM's after a certain point...just to leave some room for doubt in the minds of some Western leaders.

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
It would not surprise me to learn that they deliberately dumped their own ICBM's after a certain point...just to leave some room for doubt in the minds of some Western leaders.

Highly doubtful, since North Korea wants to prove that they have the power to launch ballistic missiles and its to be an attention getter. Not point in deceiving this way. After all whats the point of the missile launch again?

Just a little more info that I cam across.
www.irishexaminer.com...=world-qqqm=world-qqqa=world-qqqid=7656-qqqx=1.asp