Ballistic Missile launch - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

North Korea Fires a Ballistic Missile, in a Further Challenge to Trump

Mark Lander, Choe Sang-Hun and Helene Cooper — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 02:57:03 +0000

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, with two scientists — Ri Hong-sop, second from left, and Hong Sung-mu, right — in Pyongyang in September. Korean Central News Agency

WASHINGTON — North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday that flew both higher and longer than previous such launches, a bold act of defiance against President Trump after he put the country back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The president reacted cautiously to news of the launch, stating, “It is a situation that we will handle.”

But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed greater concern, emphasizing what he said were technical advances on display in the 53-minute flight, which began when the missile was launched northeast of the capital, Pyongyang, and ended nearly 600 miles to the east, when it landed in the Sea of Japan.

“It went higher, frankly, than any previous shot they’ve taken,” Mr. Mattis said in the White House, where he was taking part in a budget meeting with the president and Republican congressional leaders.

“The bottom line is, it’s a continued effort to build a threat — a ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace, and certainly, the United States,” the defense secretary said.

Experts said this latest launch — which landed west of the northern end of Honshu, Japan’s largest island — exhibited characteristics that underscored the increasing sophistication of North Korea’s program.

The missile flew higher and for a longer duration than two previous intercontinental ballistic missile launches, which flew for 37 minutes on July 4 and for 47 minutes on July 28.

David Wright, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the missile performed better than the two fired in July, and exhibited a potential range of more than 8,000 miles, able to reach Washington or any other part of the continental United States.

“It’s pretty impressive,” Dr. Wright said of the test flight. “This is building on what they’ve done before. It’s muscle-flexing to show the U.S. that they’re going to continue to make progress.”

However, Dr. Wright noted that in an effort to increase the vehicle’s range, the North Koreans might have fitted it with a mock payload that weighed little or next to nothing. So the distance traveled, while impressive, does not necessarily translate into a working intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a thermonuclear warhead.

For all the evidence of technical advancements, a senior White House official said the significance of the launch should not be overstated, given the number of missile tests North Korea has carried out this year. The White House had expected some form of retaliation after it put the North back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism last week.

Mr. Trump, officials said, will stick to his policy of rallying nations to apply economic pressure on North Korea, backed up by the threat of military action. In a statement, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson condemned the launch. But he added, “Diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now.”

The launch came in the middle of the night on the peninsula, with less advance warning, according to experts. Aerial photographs of North Korean launch sites did not show missiles waiting on launchpads to be fueled, although Japanese officials had reported that radio telemetry pointed to a possible launch.

Some experts theorized that North Korea was now fueling missiles horizontally, before they are placed on the launchpad. In the past, it went through a lengthier process of rolling a missile onto a launchpad, filling it with liquid fuel and then launching it — steps that could take days.

“This shortens the time from when they become visible to when they go in the air, and makes it less likely that the U.S. will be able to strike before it launches,” said Rodger Baker, a vice president of strategic analysis with Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company.

American officials offered no proof of the horizontal fueling theory, but they acknowledged that North Korea is searching for ways to get around the United States’ ability to mount a pre-emptive strike.

Mr. Mattis noted that South Korea had fired several “pinpoint missiles” into the water after the launch “to make certain North Korea understands that they could be taken under fire by our ally.”

Although it was the third time that the South had fired missiles in response to a North Korean missile test, this response was more muscular, officials said, with South Korea firing from a land-based missile battery, a Navy destroyer and an F-16 fighter jet. It was meant to show that the South had multiple ways of hitting a North Korean missile on the launchpad in a pre-emptive strike, according to South Korean military officials.

After the launch, the United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on the issue for Wednesday afternoon.

Matthew Rycroft, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that the launch appeared to be “yet again, a reckless act by a regime which is more intent on building up its ballistic missile nuclear capability than it is on looking after its own people.”

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan each called meetings of their national security councils to discuss the North’s latest provocation. Mr. Trump called both leaders on Tuesday, at their request, according to the White House.

Unlike the launches over the summer, when the missiles flew over Japan’s northern island, Hokkaido, the government did not issue cellphone alerts to warn its citizens.

In Washington, a spokesman for the Defense Department, Col. Robert Manning of the Army, said that the launch “did not pose a threat to North America, our territories or our allies,” and added that the American commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan “remains ironclad.”

Mr. Trump, who has in the past insulted North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and threatened “fire and fury” that would “totally destroy” that country, avoided threats of military retaliation against the North on Tuesday. But he did not hesitate to use the specter of a military confrontation in Asia as leverage against the Democrats in the budget wars in Washington.

The missile launch, he predicted, would “have a huge effect on Schumer and Pelosi,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the chambers’ Democratic leaders, both of whom boycotted his budget meeting.

“If you look at the military, we want strong funding for the military,” Mr. Trump said. “They don’t.”

North Korea has persisted in its nuclear weapons and missile development despite nine rounds of sanctions that the Security Council has imposed since its first nuclear test in 2006.

This year, the North has increased the frequency and daring of its missile tests, sending two missiles over Japan in August and September, while demonstrating technical progress that suggested it had developed the ability to strike the continental United States.

In the wake of a Sept. 3 underground nuclear test — the sixth by North Korea — the United Nations Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions against the country.

In the nearly three months since that test, as leaders of North Korea and the United States have exchanged insults, the world has braced for another show of force by the North.

Mr. Trump warned that if North Korea threatened the United States or its allies, Washington would have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” and he mockingly referred to Mr. Kim as “rocket man.”

Mr. Kim responded by calling Mr. Trump “a mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” and his foreign minister later warned that Mr. Kim could order the test of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.

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North Korea vows to launch more satellites into orbit

Jane Onyanga-Omara, USA TODAY — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 15:51:39 +0000

North Korea vowed to launch more satellites into space Monday, in what the United States and the U.N. view as a covert test of the reclusive regime’s ballistic missile technology.

The nation says its five-year space development program is aimed at helping to improve its economy.

“Some countries have manipulated U.N. sanctions resolutions against us and hindered the sovereign country’s space development. It is not a tolerable act,” the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said. “It is a global trend that a country seeks the economic growth with the space program.”

The plan to launch satellites is seen as an attempt by Pyongyang to build a case to potentially launch a long-range rocket, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. The North fired long-range rockets in 2012 and 2016.

Ballistic missiles and the rockets used to launch satellites have similar bodies, engines and other technology.

North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador Kim In Ryong announced North Korea’s plan for 2016-2020 to develop “practical satellites that can contribute to the economic development and improvement of the people’s living” at a U.N. General Assembly committee meeting earlier this month.

He said the U.S. was “going frantic to illegalize our development of outer space,” by claiming it violated U.N. sanctions.

Kim said no U.N. article states that satellite launches threaten international peace and security, “nor is there any article stipulating that one cannot use ballistic rocket technology in launching a satellite.”

“The U.S. is the country that launched the largest number of satellites and yet it claims that our launch of satellites is a threat to international peace and security,” Kim said. “This is a preposterous allegation and extreme double standards.”

Kim said North Korea launched its first pilot communications satellite, Kwangmyongsong-1, in August 1998. He said his country “entered the practical satellite developing stage” with the successful entry into orbit of Kwangmyongsong-4 in February 2016.

North Korea has not made any provocations since it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. Earlier in the summer, it launched missiles over Japan and test-launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported that Chinese police arrested two North Korean agents in Beijing on suspicion of plotting to murder Kim Han Sol, the 22-year-old nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim Han Sol’s father Kim Jong Nam — Kim Jong Un’s half-brother — was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur Airport in Malaysia on Feb. 13. Two women are currently on trial for murder, which they deny. Four other suspects including the alleged mastermind of the plot remain at large.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/30/north-korea-vows-launch-more-satellites-into-orbit/812313001/

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Trump says ‘all options on table’ after North Korea fires missile over Japan

Joshua Berlinger, Yoko Wakatsuki and Will Ripley, CNN — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 01:31:11 +0000

Tokyo (CNN)US President Donald Trump has warned Pyongyang that “all options are on the table” after North Korea fired a missile over Japan early Tuesday.

Tuesday’s launch was particularly provocative as it was North Korea’s first ballistic missile to fly over Japan. Kim Jong Un’s regime regularly fires missiles into the sea between its own territory and Japan.

On Wednesday morning local time the official North Korean news agency, KCNA, acknowledged the missile launch reporting that the North Korean leader guided the launch of the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan.

Officials summarized the media reports to CNN in Pyongyang, saying the launch was overseen by Kim Jong Un who was “very satisfied with the performance of the missile.”

They said the launch was a strong message in response to the ongoing joint US-South Korean military exercise in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. They added the launch was the first of its kind into the Pacific Ocean and was a prelude to more military options aimed at Guam with more launches planned in the future. It was also carried out on the 107th anniversary of the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1907.

“Initial assessment indicates the launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile,” according to a Pentagon statement released on Tuesday.

“The launch occurred in the vicinity of Sunan Air Base, North Korea and flew east … The ballistic missile overflew the territory of northern Japan before landing in the Pacific Ocean approximately 500 nautical miles east of Japan,” the statement said.

The launch comes as the US and South Korea conduct joint military drills on the peninsula and a day after drills ended between the US and Japan on the northern island of Hokkaido.

It also follows a fiery exchange of threats and insults between Trump and the North Korean regime, commenting through state media.

“The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: this regime has signaled its contempt for its neighbors, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behavior,” Trump said in a statement, taking a more measured tone than in his previous remarks.

“Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.”

Minutes after the missile was launched, residents in northern Japan received a text message urging them to seek shelter in a strong structure or a basement.

“We were awoken by sirens and messages from the government telling us to take cover,” one local resident told CNN.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — who had a 40-minute phone call with Trump on Tuesday — described the launch as a “reckless act.”

“This launch of a North Korean missile is an unprecedented serious and grave threat to Japan,” Abe said after the call, adding that Trump said “the US stands with Japan 100%.”

“I would like to make the utmost effort to protect the lives and assets of the Japanese people under a strong alliance between Japan and US.”

What happened?
The missile was fired just before 6 a.m. Japan time (Monday 5 p.m. ET), and the launch set off warnings in the northern part of the country urging people to seek shelter.

The unidentified missile flew over Erimomisaki, on the northern island of Hokkaido, and broke into three pieces before falling into the Pacific Ocean, about 1,180 kilometers (733 miles) off the Japanese coast.

The missile was in flight for about 15 minutes, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at an emergency press conference.

“There is no immediate report of the fallen objects and no damage to the ships and aircraft,” he said.

News had still not been broadcast to people in North Korea by Tuesday evening in Pyongyang.

The missile was fired from a location near Pyongyang, in a provocative and rare move by the regime. It may have been intended to deliver a message that pre-emptive US strikes on missile launch facilities could land uncomfortably close to civilians.

It was the fourth missile North Korea fired in four days — Pyongyang tested three short-range ballistic missiles, one of which failed, from Kangwon province that landed in water off the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea responded by conducting a bombing drill at 9:30 a.m. local time to test its “capability to destroy the North Korean leadership” in cases of emergency, an official with the country’s Defense Ministry told CNN.

Why Japan?
Tuesday’s launch is the first time North Korea has successfully fired a ballistic missile over Japan. Various stages of launch vehicles have overflown Japan during Pyongang’s attempts to launch satellites into space in 1998, 2009, 2012 and 2016.

While the missile flew over Japanese territory, one analyst said it wasn’t necessarily intended as a threat to the country.

“If they’re going to launch to a distance they’ve got to go over somebody. It looks to me like a risk reduction measure, they want to reduce the populated areas they fly over just in case anything goes wrong,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

The launch also comes just over two weeks after North Korea threatened to fire a series of missiles in the waters around the US Pacific territory of Guam.

The country has not followed through with that threat, but firing a missile over Japan and into the Pacific is in Guam’s direction, even if nowhere near the island.

David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNN that Tuesday’s launch shows a new level of confidence from the North Koreans.

“It is a big deal that they overflew Japan, which they have carefully avoided doing for a number of years,” he said.

He added that the country had in the past tested missiles upwards on high trajectories and launched their satellites to the south to avoid firing missiles over Japan.

CNN’s Will Ripley and David Hawley reported from Pyongyang. Yoko Wakatsuki reported from Tokyo, K.J. Kwon reported from Seoul. CNN’s Brad Lendon, Michael Callahan, Barbara Starr, Ryan Browne, Zachary Cohen, Yazhou Sun, Richard Roth and Angela Dewan contributed.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/28/politics/north-korea-launch-unidentified-projectile/index.html

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