DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: North Korea Admits Rocket Fails Shortly After Launch

DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: North Korea Admits Rocket Fails Shortly After Launch
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Steve Herman | Seoul - VOA
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - April 13, 2012: North Korea has acknowledged a multi-stage rocket it launched early Friday failed to reach orbit.

An announcer on North Korean television - interrupting programming four hours after the launch, which was not broadcast - says the Kwangmyongsong-3 earth observation satellite did not succeed in reaching orbit and scientific experts are investigating the cause of the failure.

Officials in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington say North Korea's rocket indeed blasted off from the launch pad but failed to get very far.

U.S. military officials called it a Taepo Dong-2 missile. They say it was tracked by satellite on a southern trajectory where the first stage fell into the Yellow Sea. The North American Aerospace Defense Command says the other two stages failed to continue in flight and never posed a threat.

Related - North Korean Rocket Fails Shortly After Launch

South Korean army major general Shin Won-sik, speaking to reporters at the defense ministry, says the missile began tumbling back to Earth at an altitude of 151 kilometers, separating into about 20 pieces and harmlessly falling into the Yellow Sea 100 to 150 kilometers offshore.

The general says the launch clearly violates UN resolutions 1718 and 1874 and was a test-firing of a long-rang missile disguised as a satellite launch. He adds this is a grave provocation and a serious military threat to international society and the Republic of Korea.

Japan's defense forces, along with the South Korean and U.S. militaries in the region, had deployed anti-missile batteries on land and at sea to possibly shoot down the object if it flew over Japanese or South Korean territories.

Authorities in Japan's southern Okinawan islands, which are close to the intended flight path, activated public address loudspeakers soon after the launch.

Citizens were advised that there was nothing to worry about from the North Korean missile launch.

Japanese newspaper vendors handed out copies of extra editions to relieved commuters at train stations.

The incident prompted emergency security meetings both in Seoul and in Tokyo.

The U.N. Security Council is to add an agenda item about North Korea to its already scheduled Friday session.

The Group of Eight nations  - composed of the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, the France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada - are calling for the United Nations to make an appropriate response to Pyongyang's action.

South Korea's foreign minister, Kim Sung-hwan, strongly condemns the North going ahead with the launch.

Kim says it is truly regrettable that North Korea spends huge financial resources on developing nuclear weapons and missiles while its citizens are experiencing such hardships.

Japan is echoing similar sentiments, adding it is considering additional financial sanctions on North Korea.

This marks North Korea's third failed attempt at a claimed satellite launch.

There is growing speculation in the intelligence community that North Korea will soon conduct a third nuclear test. Such underground explosions of nuclear devices followed its two previous attempted launches of multi-stage missiles.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Steve Herman | Seoul - VOA
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News: China’s Alarming, Puzzling, Missile Test

DTN News: China’s Alarming, Puzzling, Missile Test *Source: DTN News / Int'l Media By David Axe (NSI News Source Info) - January 29, 2010: On January 11, a large missile streaked upward from a test site in China. The missile rocketed beyond the atmosphere and struck another similar missile launched from a separate site. Later that day, the official Xinhua news agency announced a ‘test on ground-based midcourse missile interception technology.’ ‘The test has achieved the expected objective,’ Xinhua proclaimed. ‘The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country.’ It was a seemingly impressive accomplishment--and apparently a big surprise to Western governments. To date, just one nation has managed to fire one missile to intercept another outside Earth's atmosphere: the United States. And that was after some 20 years of concerted technology development. Today the United States spends around $10 billion a year developing and buying missile-defense equipment, yet has hit another missile in exo-atmospheric tests on just a handful of occasions. The Chinese test seemed to represent a huge step towards eliminating the US lead. It's unclear, however, how realistic the Chinese test was and how advanced the Chinese missile-defense technology truly is. It's equally unclear what exactly the Chinese missile interceptor is for. These uncertainties are not unusual. The whole field of missiles and missile defense is notorious for its political theater. Nations will fund, buy or just plan for ballistic missiles and ballistic-missile defenses--however technically troubled or operationally impractical--solely for posturing. ‘These things tend to be tools of international politics,’ says Phil Coyle, an expert in missiles and missile defenses. By firing just a handful of ballistic missiles, Iraq was nearly able to draw Israel into the 1991 Gulf War, which could have shattered the Western-Arab alliance arrayed against Iraq. North Korea, Iran and China all field ballistic missiles to back up their rhetoric towards South Korea, Israel and Taiwan, respectively. By the same token, systems that promise to render impotent these politically-empowering ballistic missiles carry much of the same weight in the halls of diplomacy and at the bargaining table. For that reason, missile defenses are also big business. The US arms industry earns billions of dollars a year exporting various command systems, radars, launchers and interceptors associated with missile defense. In one of the biggest recent deals, last autumn Turkey announced plans to spend $8 billion on US-made PAC-3 missile interceptors. States ringing heavily missile-armed nations are the best customers. The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia all have bought PAC-3 interceptors, owing to Iran's growing missile force. South Korea bought PAC-3s and sea-based SM-2s, and Japan bought PAC-3s and seaborne SM-3s, both to contend with North Korea. Taiwan is buying PAC-3s to defend against China. Was the Chinese test for real? Is the system meant to boost Beijing's position as it jockeys for influence over Taiwan? Was the point to send a signal to some other strategic rival--the United States perhaps, or India? Is the interceptor meant for export as part of a burgeoning commercial arms catalogue? ‘The bottom line is that people don't know for sure what's motivating this,’ says Michael Swaine, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. And considering how the Americans have been working on their own missile defenses, good answers regarding the Chinese system could be years in coming. Just one thing is certain: whatever their operational reality, whatever the rationale behind their development, missile defenses represent an important and growing concern for the whole world and in particular, Asia. Taiwan Theater

Every move by the Chinese defense establishment must be understood in the context of Taiwan. ‘The Taiwan question, bearing upon China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, has always been the most important and sensitive issue in China-US relations,’ Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said in January. Observers were quick to point out that the Chinese missile test came just days after Washington announced a $1-billion PAC-3 sale to Taiwan. One theory is that China simply insists on having all the same military capabilities as Taiwan, if not better. Since PAC-3 is a point defense against only smaller ballistic missiles flying in the atmosphere, the Chinese demonstration of a heavy, exo-atmospheric interceptor could be the trump card in a game of military one-upmanship. Swaine is skeptical. The Chinese interceptor test ‘doesn't seem tied to the Taiwanese PAC-3,’ Swaine says. That both rivals made big missile moves at the same time is coincidence, he insists. ‘This test has been in making for some time. It's pretty silly to think they pulled it out of their pocket ... right after the sale of PAC-3 to the Taiwanese.’ Besides, China doesn't really need a missile-interceptor in order to contend with the Taiwanese military. Taiwan doesn't possess ballistic missiles for land bombardment. In the cross-strait balance, it's China that has all the land-attack missiles--hundreds of them, arrayed along the southern Chinese coast, all within range of Taiwanese bases. Taiwan's posture is defensive, not offensive. For Taipei, buying PAC-3 makes sense: the island nation needs missile interceptors to protect its airfields and garrisons. But Beijing doesn't need systems to defend against Taiwan, for Taiwan has no way of striking the Chinese mainland. Still, there could be a connection to the cross-strait standoff. Taiwan's defense always has hinged, and still does, on the presence of US forces in the Pacific. Despite the United States’ increasingly close relationship with China, the Pentagon is committed to an independent Taiwan. In 1996, two US Navy aircraft carriers steamed into the Taiwan Strait amid increasing tensions between China and Taiwan. At present, the US does not operate non-nuclear ballistic missiles. But such a missile is in development. The so-called Conventional Strike Missile emerged in the early 2000s as a potential complement to US long-range bombers. Development got sidelined by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the change in presidential administrations in early 2009. But last year the Barack Obama administration revived the idea of putting conventional explosive warheads on long-range ballistic missiles. Such a system would be useful for striking Chinese targets in any shooting war over Taiwan. The United States famously deployed heavy, exo-atmospheric missile interceptors in Alaska beginning in 2004, in order to deter and defend against missiles fired by North Korea. In the same way, maybe Beijing is trying to head off the US Conventional Strike Missile deployment with its own missile defenses. India Deterrent or Sat Killer?

It's also possible China is developing missile defenses to tweak the balance of power between it and neighboring India. Both nations have nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. While not outwardly hostile, Beijing and New Delhi eye each other cautiously as they both grow into global powers. But again, Swaine has his doubts. ‘If the Chinese system is designed against a strategic threat such as India, it’s a pretty poor investment on the part of the Chinese.’ After all, India has as many as 80 nukes and could fire them all at the same time, easily overwhelming any defense. Missile defenses ‘are not a very cost-effective way of dealing with a strategic threat from a potential adversary,’ Swaine says. ‘It's better to deal with the Indian threat through a retaliatory capability.’ Which, it should be noted, Beijing already possesses. On the other hand, defenses could be useful against a rival with just a handful of nuclear weapons--say, one of the so-called rogue states. ‘The Chinese may feel the situation in North Korea could get so out of control that the North Koreans might use ballistic missiles against the Chinese,’ Swaine suggests. ‘I hasten to add that I don't share this view.’ Coyle says he was ‘impressed’ when he read details of the Chinese test. Military analyst John Pike, from the think tank Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Virginia, was not. He says the tests were all about ‘bragging rights.’ ‘Anything the Americans can do,the “Chicoms” can do better,’ Pike imagined Chinese officials thinking. Swaine appears to concur. ‘The test as I understand it was extremely scripted, even more than US anti-ballistic-missile tests. Apparently the target time and location was communicated to the interceptor. You may excuse that as early-phase testing, but some people have concluded that this system in its current form isn’t really suited to the anti-ballistic-missile mission.’ The Chinese system could, however, be used against slow, predictable targets--say, US satellites. In 2007, the Chinese military launched a missile to destroy a derelict satellite in a highly scripted test of a rudimentary anti-satellite capability. This year's test could represent a continuation of those efforts, Swaine says. Beijing has long sought what the Pentagon calls ‘asymmetric’ military capabilities meant to strike at key American vulnerabilities in its communications and surveillance infrastructure. As a legitimate missile defense, or a sat-killer, the Chinese interceptor could make for a valuable export item, Coyle says. Ironically, customers could include US allies worried about Iranian or North Korean missiles, which allegedly have Chinese components. Not that it’s unheard of for a nation to sell weapons to all sides in an international rivalry. Several years ago, Washington offered F-35 stealth fighters to Israel. In January, Lockheed Martin, the company that makes the F-35, said the Israeli sale would probably force Israel's Arab neighbors to buy F-35s, too. ‘I don't know what China's purpose or motives were for the test,’ Coyle says, an uncertainty that places him in good company. Swaine, for his part, says even the Chinese might have only the vaguest notion of what their new missile defense is for. ‘Absent any proof, one could say it's a prudent effort to develop technology that could be applied in several different areas,’ he says. ‘Maybe it's part of a longer-term project to develop technology, the uses for which ... no clear decision has been made about.’ David Axe is a US-based defence analyst and author of the 'War is Boring' blog

DTN News: Iran Test-Fires Missiles Amid Nuclear Tension

DTN News: Iran Test-Fires Missiles Amid Nuclear Tension *Source: DTN News / Int'l Media (NSI News Source Info)TEHRAN, Iran - September 27, 2009: Iran test-fired short-range missiles as its elite Revolutionary Guards began war games on Sunday aimed at boosting the Islamic Republic's deterrent capabilities, official media reported. In this photo released by the Iranian semi-official Mehr News Agency, Revolutionary Guard's Zelzal missile is launched in a drill, Sunday Sept. 27, 2009, near the city of Qom, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Tehran, Iran. Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during military drills Sunday by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the U.S. warned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility it was secretly constructing.* The missile maneuvers coincide with increased tension in Iran's nuclear dispute with the West, after last week's disclosure by Tehran that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant. State radio said the Guards on Monday would test-fire the Shahab 3 missile, which Iranian officials say has a range of around 2,000 km, potentially putting Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf within reach. It has been tested several times before. Iran's English-language Press TV said two short-range missiles as well as a multiple missile launcher were tested on the exercise's first day. It showed footage of a missile launch in desert-like terrain, leaving a vapor trail. "Iran tests two short-range missiles," it said in a scrolling headline, naming them as the ground-to-ground Fateh (Victorious) missile and the Tondar (Thunder) naval missile. The Revolutionary Guards said "the drill aims to maintain and boost the country's armed forces deterrent capabilities," Press TV said. The United States, which suspects Iran is seeking to build nuclear bombs, has previously expressed concern about Tehran's missile programme. Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful power generation purposes. Iran often conducts war games or tests weapons to show its determination to counter any attack by foes such as Israel or the United States. "FABRICATED WESTERN CLAMOUR" Neither the United States nor its ally Israel have ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear row. Iran has said it would respond to any attack by targeting U.S. interests in the region and Israel, as well as closing the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for world oil supplies. Iran acknowledged the existence of the enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom for the first time on Monday in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog. U.S. officials said the disclosure was designed to pre-empt an announcement by Western governments, which were aware of the site, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the plant was legal and open for inspection by the IAEA. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday the discovery of a secret nuclear plant showed a "disturbing pattern" of evasion by Iran which added urgency to its talks with six world powers in Geneva on Thursday. An Iranian official warned that "fabricated Western clamour" over the new enrichment plant would negatively affect the talks, state radio said on Sunday. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's IAEA envoy, said, referring to the six powers: "This Western approach will have a negative impact on Iran's negotiations with the 5+1 countries." Earlier this month, Obama scrapped a Bush-era plan to deploy missiles in Poland that had been proposed amid concerns Iran was trying to develop nuclear warheads it could mount on long-range missiles.

DTN News: North Korea Fires 7 Missiles Off East Coast

DTN News: North Korea Fires 7 Missiles Off East Coast

*Source: DTN News / Int'l Media (NSI News Source Info) SEOUL, South Korea - July 5, 2009: North Korea celebrated U.S. Independence Day with a test firing of seven missiles test into the waters off the peninsula's east coast from morning until evening on Saturday. A pedestrian passes by a television screen showing news of a North Korean missile launch, at the Seoul Railway Station in on June 4, 2009. North Korea test-fired seven missiles off its east coast. North Korea test-fired seven missiles off its east coast, South Korean officials said, in what appeared to be a calculated message of defiance timed for the US Independence Day holiday. The launches fuelled regional tensions after the communist state's nuclear test in May, which coincided with the US Memorial Day holiday. The missiles, however, were mid-range, not the long-range intercontinental ballistic test that some had feared — a threat which has led Washington to deploy anti-missile systems to Hawaii. "It is a provocative act that clearly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions 1695, 1718, and 1874 that bar North Korea's every activity related to ballistic missiles," South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Military officials told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the missiles fired had a range of 240-310 miles — enough to hit targets all over South Korea — and may have been of the Rodong class — a North Korean upgrade of the Russian Scud. The first test launch took place about 8 a.m. and the last one finished at 5:45 p.m. Meanwhile, in a statement released by Russia's Foreign Ministry, Russia and China both urged calm from all parties. Saturday's launchings were not the first to coincide with a symbolic American date. In 2006, North Korea test launched several missiles, including a long-range Taepodong 2, on Independence Day. This year, North Korea's May 25 nuclear test coincided with Memorial Day. North Korea had previously warned international shipping to avoid its east coast until July 10, indicating the possibility of more test launches to come. The Saturday barrage followed the test firing by North Korea of four anti-shipping missiles Thursday, after North-South talks broke down with no progress. While the South Korean Navy has said recently that its patrol vessels are superior to those of the North, and outgunned them in naval clashes in 1999 and 2002, anti-shipping missiles are considered a serious threat to South Korean ships. With North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il believed to be seriously sick, there have been signs that he is positioning his third son, Kim Jong-un to take over. Some experts in South Korea see the North's threatening behavior since April — missile and nuclear tests; bellicose rhetoric; the holding of two American reporters and a South Korean worker at a joint industrial park — in the context of moves to placate the North Korean military in advance of a move to emplace Kim Jong-un as head of state. Kim Jong-il's official title is chairman of the country's National Defense Committee and he has consistently promoted his songeun (military first) policy, but what Jong-un's relationship with the military leadership is, is unknown.

DTN News: Russian, Japanese Leaders Urge Serious Response To North Korean Tests

DTN News: Russian, Japanese Leaders Urge Serious Response To North Korean Tests

(NSI News Source Info) MOSCOW/TOKYO - May 31, 2009: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso held a phone talk and urged a response to North Korea's nuclear test, the Kremlin said Saturday. Since the start of the week Pyongyang has conducted an underground nuclear test explosion and test-launched at least six short-range surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles in defiance of previous UN resolutions. "The sides were united that it is necessary to react seriously to these steps, which are a challenge to the system of international security," the Kremlin said. Pyongyang is already under a number of UN sanctions over its first nuclear test, carried out in 2006.

DTN News: Iran Test-Fired Nine Long- And Medium-Range Missiles Wednesday

DTN News: Iran Test-Fired Nine Long- And Medium-Range Missiles Wednesday

(NSI News Source Info) TEHRAN, Iran - July 10, 2008: Iran test-fired nine long- and medium-range missiles Wednesday during war games that officials said were intended to show the country can retaliate against any U.S. or Israeli attack, state television reported. The test-firings were widely condemned in the United States, notably by the White House and the two main presidential candidates. The exercise was being conducted at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which about 40 percent of the world's oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.