OPINION:
Threats from Iran, Russia and China have been dominating the news cycle lately, but we can’t lose focus on North Korea, which remains a serious peril to the U.S. homeland.
Take my experience with its missile program in the early 2000s.
It was 5:30 a.m., and I was sitting quietly in my office, in a “closed area,” trying to catch up on some work. At the time, I was working for Lockheed Martin. I had just returned from a Pacific island after conducting a successful missile defense test of a new interceptor we were developing.
The phone rang. It was a customer.
He asked, “Hey, Tory, is the launcher still on the Island?”
“Yup,” I replied. “Putting it on the boat Friday.”
“How’s the spare round we didn’t fire?”
“Good as new. Why? What’s up?”
“It looks like maybe North Korea might try to overfly Hawaii. Send us a message. Might be nice to send one right back. I know everybody’s on their way home, but how do you feel about staying put and maybe taking a ‘test’ shot at it?” he asked politely.
The days that followed were intense.
The system integration lab team slept on the floor, running Monte Carlos of the engagement around the clock. The test techs and engineers did the same on the island. Everybody did whatever it took to make this happen.
The day came. We were ready. The North Korean bird launched, was detected and was tracked.
Then it had an upper-stage issue and failed to enter our battle space.
Hawaii was not overflown or attacked.
We were deeply disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to take down the bird and showcase the superior U.S. defense systems, but we eventually managed to remember the bigger picture: North Korea had failed yet again in its attempts to launch a missile into the United States.
So, given North Korea’s repeated failures over the years, should we be worried about its capabilities?
The answer is a resounding “Yes.”
Most countries have national imperatives relative to a geopolitical goal. Russia wants to reestablish the buffer territories between it and Western Europe, being perpetually paranoid about being invaded by those countries for the third time.
China wants an Asian hegemony and to take its perceived “rightful place” as a world power.
The first Kim (Kim Il-sung) wanted the reunification of North and South Korea by coercion or force. The second Kim had to deal with the loss of a generous Russian economic subsidy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
So he put the South Korean unification goal as secondary to establishing an economic machine that would continue to support his family and the elites in the extreme wealth to which they were accustomed (while the North Korean populace lived in abject poverty). He did this by building a worldwide crime network, trafficking heroin, methamphetamines, arms, missiles, counterfeit medications, the best fake $100 bills in the world and human beings.
The current Kim lives high on the hog via this criminal business, but he has had to face another priority: regime survival. On Dec. 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged by the new Iraqi government at the appropriately named Camp Justice, northeast of Baghdad. The continuation of his regime had become unacceptable to the Bush administration after 9/11. America had simply swept it away, and Saddam was now pushing up daisies.
From that point forward, Kim Jong-un’s first imperative became the preservation of the North Korean regime.
Let us be clear: Mr. Kim’s government is an immoral and despicable regime that lives off the suffering of its innocent people and has no regard for any human life other than that of the “Glorious Leader,” Mr. Kim himself.
His father and grandfather had long seen military threats and provocations as a means to extort money and other concessions from the West. But now, a credible stockpile of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles to deliver them became a top priority.
As you read this today, Mr. Kim has an inventory of around 50 small-yield nuclear weapons and is increasing that by about a half dozen each year. He has developed many ballistic missile types, working their ranges up to threaten the U.S. homeland. Japan estimates that North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile could reach the U.S. homeland.
Army Gen. Xavier T. Brunson recently told Congress, “In the coming year, we expect [North Korea] to further develop hypersonic and multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicle capabilities to complete [the regime’s] goals.”
Mr. Kim imagines that if push came to shove, the U.S. would not trade Seattle for his miserable life and that if it did, he would at least have revenge and immortal fame.
But fear not. The U.S. has deployed the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in Alaska to defend us from at least a limited North Korean missile attack. Its technology upgrade, the Next Generation Interceptor, is currently in development.
Unfortunately, however, North Korea has long cooperated with Russia and China on weapons technology development. Although Russia refused to help North Korea with nuclear weapons, it did help with missile technology. This trio and at least a couple of other shady characters have historically formed a “black market coop” of weapons technology.
Russia and China are well aware of America’s exquisite missile defense capabilities and have been working hard on maneuvering hypersonic delivery vehicles that can challenge our interceptors to deliver weapons onto the heads of our troops and even our people here at home.
Although the “simple” ballistic missile remains the standard and most common threat, these hypersonic threats are just over the horizon.
Mr. Kim is aware of all this. He also knows that his current ability to penetrate the U.S. homeland missile defenses is anything but assured. He is very interested in the new toy his friends are developing, and we should be as well.
America needs to confront this threat now. At the very least, Ground-Based Midcourse Defense and Next Generation Interceptor should be given greater magazine depths, such as more interceptors. This would allow these systems to cope with a North Korean attack involving several missiles launched at the homeland in quick succession without running out of interceptors.
Better yet, we should also proceed immediately into the Golden Dome system. The most direct approach is to incorporate our already exquisite missile defense platforms into an integrated system defending the continental U.S. These would include Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, Next Generation Interceptor, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, and Aegis. Space assets such as the Space-Based Infrared System would also join to provide missile detection and tracking.
America has the advantage in terms of time and technology. We should act now and not squander that edge.
• Tory Bruno is the president and CEO of United Launch Alliance.
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